1) Is cosmos God's trick/optical illusion?

2) I ask because often times I wonder what could be the purpose of such a (supposedly) gigantic, nay infinite, universe?

3) Trillions of stars, possibly with their own satellites (planets), which in turn have their own satellites (moons)?

4) And one of the planets/moons possibly having life in myriad forms?

5) Isn't one solar system and earth enough?

:-)

6) Isn't universe redundant in this context?

7) Or, perhaps, our understanding is defective?

8) Look at Ursa Major and Ursa Minor constellations. Don't their shapes seem so similiar, even identical, except their sizes as visible to the naked eye?

9) Now, my question is, do space, deep space and our atmosphere
combine in some unknown way to create optical illusion of a vast/infinite universe, using reflection, refraction and such other optical phenomena?

10) There may not really be two said constellations. What we see could well be a reflected image (illusion or magnified/dwarfed image) of one constellation? In other words, there could only be just U.Major (or U.Minor). The other is a mirror image or something like that?

11) Apply this possibility to every other celestial sight. Presto, what do you have? Actually one 'small' universe, but seemingly infinite, as if it is a kaleidoscope at work, a mere trick, imagination of the mind.

My suspicion, I suspect, may evoke laughter/derision/anger. But looking at so many as yet little understood and hypothetical aspects (dark matter, dark energy, black hole, worm hole, etc) of universe, I am inclined to ask anyway.

Shall appreciate your insights.

Physics is our way of understanding the universe that He created.

Physics can only move forward by being based on one massive assumption. That the universe operates by certain laws that do not change.

Our ability to understand these laws may be limited, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I didn't read most of your original post. I got bored with it. Sorry.

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Why must the universe have a purpose? It's hardly redundant, either, nothing in space is an exact copy of anything else.

As for atmosphere distorting images, why don't we then get two Moons or some such? And why does the Hubble Space telescope (Outside of our atmosphere) confirm our findings? How can we accurately measure and predict astral phenomenon if the images we get are distorted? And why doesn't the night sky mirror itself more?

All those would have to be answered for that idea to really work.

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That all depends on one's beliefs about the nature of God (and whether he even exists). As such there's no real correct answer, or at least we have no guaranteed way to tell which answer is right. Science can only tell us what the universe looks like and how it works, it can't tell us what the purpose behind it all is.


The atmosphere does distort things by a small amount, but not in the way you're asking about. Have you ever seen heat waves rising of a hot section of pavement or a burning fire? That is essentially what we can encounter (though over a larger scale and to a subtler effect) when viewing things beyond Earth. But note this atmospheric effect just bends light slightly, it doesn't reflect it around.

Of course, there's a great way to get around any atmospheric distortion that does exist: get out of the atmosphere. That's why we have telescopes orbiting the Earth now.

Actually, it's not such a crazy idea that the universe might be setup somehow so that we see the same objects in different places. For instance, imagine that the entire universe is like a long cylinder. Now take this cylinder, bend it, and connect the ends together. Since space itself bends in this universe, light coming from a sun or a galaxy or such would follow the curved shape of the universe. And if a person inside this universe could see far enough, they might be able to spot a star in one direction that looks just like a star see in the opposite direction. Of course, how this would really work with the actualy universe gets a whole lot more complicated and harder to describe. But the general idea is the same, that the universe essentially curves around on itself.

However, beyond any theories about this, so far no one has observed the same object when looking in different direction. To the best of our knowledge, every star and galaxy out there really is a unique object and not an alternate view of something we've already seen. Though it might still possible the universe curves around on itself and the indications are just further that we can see. But even if that's the case, there are still a vast number of real individual stars and galaxies out there.

Just about the initial question here, there is a theory actually that the universe might be a giant simulation in a massive computer, which, for all we know, could be part of a simulation in an even more massive computer, endlessly perhaps. However, being part of this simulation, we might never even realize that we were just part of one.

It's an interesting though, and who knows, it might even be true, but you see, it's not really an important question. If we can never know, then we might as well go on the assumption that what we see around us is real, and try to make principles about it. As long as the simulation has rules, my feeling is that understanding how those rules work is what's really important, not speculation about what the ultimate reality might be.

So my answer, in short, would be: it could be, but it's irrelevant.

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I take it you are actually talking about the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper. They are far from identical.

Little Dipper:



Big Dipper:



If you are in fact referring to Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, then there's no resemblance whatsoever.

As with all other constellations, what shape they display depends entirely on where one draws the lines. In the best sense, what we see are two dimensional "patterns" our minds create out of three dimensional arrays.

No. See explanation below as to why.

A mirror image would display the same geometric relationships of the original, just with the "left-right" aspects reversed. We don't see this anywhere in the sky.

Everything's a possibility, but some are much less likely than others, and with enough observational evidence, can be ruled out. The latter applies to this idea.

You have to remember two things here:

1. The sky as we see it from Earth is the result of three-dimensional arrays of objects being perceived by our eyes and minds as two-dimensional patterns. There is nothing inherently "real" about the patterns in the night sky. Just moving a hundred light years from Earth's location would result in significant changes to these stellar patterns.

If you watched Cosmos tonight, there was an excellent example of this. The "ship of the imagination" approached the Pleiades star cluster, and as it got close enough, the stars forming the familiar "Micro Dipper' pattern began to shift in relation to each other until the asterism was unrecognizable.

2. We have numerous methods for determining the actual distances to the stars and other galaxies, including parallax, Cepheid variables, and the red shift. All of these confirm we're in one really big place, measuring at least ~13 billion light years in any direction.

Why? This is a science board. Those are good questions.

But our understanding of these increases daily. Plus our understanding of the size of the observable Universe and the methods for determining such data are becoming more and more accurate over time. That's one of the nice things about science, it tends to build on accumulated demonstrated knowledge, with of course an occasional revolution that suddenly expands out understanding while retaining verified objective evidence from the past and still remaining within the precepts of the scientific method.

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Hi everyone,

Thanks much for your insights.

I think I may have got the names of the constellations mixed up.

Ursa Major is also known as Great Bear right, the seven-star bunch?

It comprises four main stars, with a "tail" of three stars. The second/middle star of the "tail" has a tiny little star dangling nearby, as though by way of a tag, faintly visible. In Indian tradition, this constellation represents Saptha Rishi Mandal, or Seven Seers, the progenitors of mankind. And the faint star is known as Arundhati, wife of one of the Seers. Newly married couples are shown this Arundhati star, who is believed to be a role-model for wives in terms of chastity, purity, etc. Anyway....

There is a similar-shaped constellation which usually appears right overhead, in the middle of the sky, unlike Great Bear which spans the north-eastern skies during May, when viewed from tropical regions.

Reg why there is no "reflection" of moon: well, I can only guess that moon vision is subject to only earth's atmosphere, not space an deep space.

"Great Bear" is a literal translation of the Latin phrase Ursa Major. There are many more than seven stars in Ursa Major. Here is an article about the constellation.

Constellations are mapped-out areas of the sky. In the article all the area within the yellow boundary is part of the constellation Ursa Major. Think of a constellation as being like a state of a country. It's just an area that's been defined with distinct boundaries. The whole thing typically doesn't resemble what the name implies, i.e., the state of Washington doesn't look like George Washington.

However, within those state lines, there may be local features that resemble something, such as in North Carolina there is a group of three cities known as the Golden Triangle. Same deal with constellations. Within the boundaries of Ursa Major is a pattern of seven stars which people have seen as looking like various objects, including a plow, a wagon, or a water dipper.

Although the definition is a little hazy, most of these patterns within constellations are called asterisms. These usually are obvious patterns of relatively bright stars that are considerably smaller than the entire constellation.

Sometimes these patterns take up most of the constellation's area, such as this depiction of the "Great Bear", within which the "Big Dipper" is definitely an asterism.

Interesting. I wonder what the origins of those ideas were?

Overhead at what time of the year, and at what time of the night? Plus what's your latitude? Without knowing this information, it's hard to know which constellation you're referring to.

Funny thing here is that the Moon sometimes does appear as a reflection, and it's due to the distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere. Meanwhile, in deep space, there may be gravitational lenses, but no mirrors, in the sense of objects many times larger than galaxies which happen to be optical flats, or spherical/paraboloidal light collectors. What we see is what we got.

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I've actually seen a reflection of the moon. (is that the right term for what I saw, those of you who remember the discussion?) I went outside, and there was a double crescent moon. I came inside and asked why, on the old BABB. they could answer it. seemed like science at work to me. (not just the answer, but the fact that people thousands of miles away could answer the question within half an hour.)

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"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The way I see it is that, God made the big bang and just let it go. The reason? Maybe he got bored...what else would there be to do? He's probably just watching or something there's a lot of interesting things happening in our universe. But there's no evidence for any reason why we're here. There's just no reason to believe there's some sort of plan to all this.

Yes, they are good questions, but they appear not, alas, to be scientific questions (questions of faith rarely are). So are they any use in this board? I.e. will they have any chance of being answered? Because that's after all the topic of the main thread ("Questions and answers").

No offence to anyone; as I said, they are good filosofical questions.

Kristin

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If you put my response in context, you will see I was referring to the OP's questions about the possibility of some sort of extra/intra-galactic reflection causing illusions of vastness where there weren't any. Those were the particular questions I was talking about.

Re the metaphysical (i.e., "filosofical") stuff, I let that go, since it's not applicable to the board.

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Careful, there certainly are very good reasons for believing there's a plan or a purpose-- peace of mind, sense of relevance, identity, etc. This is very important for scientists to remember when they venture out of the confines of the scientific approach and deal with society as a whole. What you really mean is, science will not postulate that the universe is an illusion until it becomes necessary to understand it that way. It's all about what is the minimum number of postulates that are necessary, we certainly make equally grandiose assumptions all the time, but it's because we need them to make progress and they have not been falsified. Furthermore, many great scientists (Newton, Einstein, see where I'm going?) actually did believe there was some sort of plan to all this and it even affected their scientific thinking, but it did not end up anywhere in their legacy because it was not required.

Obviously a trick. How else does one explain the existence of Detroit?

Ergodicity?

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I was thinking about distant galaxies and the suggested far wrap-around of space (not lensing)...

Actually with a circular (toroidal/hyperwhatever) universe we wouldn't expect to see the same object in two different directions, because we would see it (almost certainly) at different ages, and probably at different angles (I doubt we'd just see the "other side"). However even if there is some limit to the universe we should be able to say already what the minimum limit is, because of galaxy mapping, where we're really confident that we're not looking at the same galaxy via different routes.

As for stars within the Milky way, we know way too much about them for this to apply by any sort of multiple light path process.

I wonder whatever became of Mars_Admirer?

Living on the air in Cincinnati?

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