Countable infinity????

Hey! Seriously I don’t know the real ‘countable’ and ‘uncountable’ infinity stuff. But, this is what bites me when some one comes to me and says “The universe is infinitely large”. Like, have u ever given a thought about these words…..” everywhere’ ‘always’ ‘everyone’ . ‘God is everywhere…..every where u know(or u can imagine of)……. “U see a creature and tell “ This in no way belongs to the earth”…..If only u have seen everything on earth……..The sun is always there….The always U KNOW…….

It is just that for the sake of understanding….we define our scales and beyond that everything is meaningless….SO how is the universe infinitely large? Provided u have seen everything in the universe…Bah! We hardly know 5% of our universe….(But, it is brilliant when one of the NASA data told us we had discovered 5% of the universe???)….What the hell! What is 5% of infinity???? SO if the universe isn’t infinity???? What is beyond it….Man can only keep wondering…Some fishy person has kept us in a shell so the laws of this universe don’t allow us to look beyond any of the scales given to us…..

AMEN

P.S: Please do get me your gmail ids...I have started using gogogle talk and am finding it interesting....

I dont believe that we have seen 5% of the universe. bcos this means we know what 100% is, which means Universe is finite. I don't think anybody has ever proved or disproved that universe is finite.

Here is what coutable infinity in short means (to my limited knowledge) :
you have an infinite set, but u also have a scale using which you can measure this set.
This scale obviously has to be infinitely long, but there exists one.
And also the scale does not make sense if you don't know how to measure using it.
A way to measure is by defining a 1-1 mapping, between the scale and the infinite set that u are trying to measure.
And in mathematics, this scale is usually the set of rational numbers.
You might think that since rational numbers are infinite, you can measure anything using that as a scale.
Set of irrational numbers is something that you cannot measure using this scale. (proof: it would get too mathematical to put it here)

Posted by Sriks | 4:48 AM PDT

grey :))... infinite... i beleive universe is infinite... n this 5% thing is not rite... we dont know much... n we cant count wat we know... lol i hope i m making some sense here...

Posted by musings | 8:30 AM PDT

My AstroPhysics teacher used to tell us- We may all be a part of a Science project somewhere- we don't know where. Scary thought that was!!

Posted by Kroopa Shah | 8:48 AM PDT

I think they say its infinitely big to summarize something that we can comprehend in size and also in idea.

5% is of what we have seen using optical telescopes and xray scopes. I think in a few decades when space-tech develops we might jump to 10%. Its a big figure, but like Grey said, 10% of infinity means it will keep on growing...so techinically we would never know anything completly.

The universe is an immense and beautiful structure. I would love to explore the dynamics one day.

Posted by Gp | 12:08 PM PDT

So how else can we quantify the scale of this universe?

Posted by Narayanan | 4:32 PM PDT

Buddy Vampire,

Your new template looks sleek, but please increase the font size. I feel it is too small!! :-(

Posted by Vinesh | 6:31 AM PDT

Bush and the Republicans were not protecting us on 9-11, and we aren't a lot safer now. We may be more afraid due to george bush, but are we safer? Being fearful does not necessarily make one safer. Fear can cause people to hide and cower. What do you think? What is he doing to us, and what is he doing to the world?
What happened to us, people? When did we become such lemmings?
The more people that the government puts in jails, the safer we are told to think we are. The real terrorists are wherever they are, but they aren't living in a country with bars on the windows. We are.

Posted by Antibush | 9:56 AM PST