I was thinking about the universe. We know that the size of this universe is huge. It is beyond what we can even think of. The galaxies that are millions of millions of light years away - are just a part of the universe. And this big huge gigantic structure called universe - is even expanding every moment as if the current size was not enough for it to be happy. What a puzzle !
But then, we know that there is an end of this size - an imaginary boundary of the universe. The problem starts only after that. What is there outside this universe ? What is there beyond the boundary of universe ? Is there another super-gigantic structure within which our universe exists ? If so, then the outer universe also has a size (although we tend to loss the meaning of size by now). What is there outside the outer universe ? Where is the end of this outer and outer and outer ? Or does it at all have an end ? The outer and outer and outer universe can keep unfolding before us giving rise to an object of size infinity. Really it cannot have an end if we think in this way.
The beauty of this universe is not only that it has an infinite limit in size, but it also has an infinite limit if we try to divide matters into small pieces and divide each piece into molecules and go to the sub-atomic level. Now at the sub-atomic level we can divide an atom into electrons, protons and neutrons. Then we can even divide these fundamental elements into quarks, leptons and photons etc. We never know if quark or lepton is the tiniest possible element or if they can be further divided into more pieces. With the progress in particle physics, we may discover even smaller and smaller elements. I am particularly not convinced that we have already reached the limit in dividing the matter into smaller elements. We will continue to discover even smaller elements. I believe that there is infinite limit in this direction as well. Let us call it the Lower Limit of matter. The Upper Limit of matter will be the infinite size of the outer and outer and outer universe. Both these limits are infinite as far as humanly possible measurement process and senors are concerned.
Big = Small, Small = Big
I will first take an example.
Let us take a big size rim or a wheel and an ant. If we let the ant go round the wheel along its circumference, it will cover the entire circle and come back to the same point from where it started the journey. It is so easy for us to understand. But what about the ant ? I do not know the IQ of an ant, but for our discussion let us assume that an ant is not an intelligent animal that understands the concept of 3D space - but it understands the concept of 2D. So the ant will analyze this incident like this: It started the journey in one specific direction... it never changed the direction and it never reversed the direction... so it was going far and far away from its initial point. However, all of a sudden, it will meet the initial point again. It will not be able to explain this phenomenon supported by its own understanding of "space" and "physics" and hence it will conclude that the initial point from where it started the journey and the point where he ended the journey - are exactly similar to each other, but still they cannot be the same point. This is a very natural conclusion for the ant. If it has to accept that both the points are actually the same, it has to discard all the laws of its 2D geometry. Hence it will say that by traversing through the circumference of the wheel, it has reached a far distance where another world exists and this new world has a replica of everything that the previous world had !
And it does not end just there. If the ant keeps on traversing again and again along the circumference of the wheel, it will reach the same initial point every time. And every time it will conclude that it has reached yet another world that has an exact replica of the previous worlds. It will then logically conclude that there are infinite number of such worlds equi-distant from each other and whichever way you go - you can never reach the end of this chain of worlds :) Interesting, right ?
Now let us take the case of our world. We see that there is no end to the upper limit of our universe. This universe may be contained within another universe, which in turn may be part of yet another universe and so on. On the other hand, if we go to the sub-atomic level, we see a very similar structure that each particle is made of N number of smaller particles and each of those smaller particles are again made of even smaller particles. The interesting point is, both in the case of this universe or the atomic particles, the structure has a lot of vacuum and the actual matter is very less. The matter in this universe is very less compared to its size. Most of the space is "filled" by vacuum. Same is the case of an atom - most of it is just vacuum.
Now the last part of this idea is here. What if these 2 boundaries of matter - Upper Limit and Lower Limit as we have defined above - are not really distinct ? What if this is like a circular chain where the Lower Limit is itself the Upper Limit ? If we keep breaking the matter into smaller and smaller pieces, we actually reach the universe from the opposite side and then we reach our known world. Then we break it even more and reach the same universe again and again... this goes on in a circular fashion and there is no definite "end" to it.
Sounds like a mad idea ? I know. It does not sound anything logical but it is an idea that came to my mind. I believe in one thing. If there is some solution to this "whole universe", it has to be finite is some sense or the other. If it is really as big as infinity, we cannot solve it. Hence I thought of the above idea where we bring a finite structure and it still maintains its "infinite" character. It is finite in the sense that we are actually not talking about infinity when the size of the universe is concerned. We can reach the universe either by crossing thousands of thousands of galaxies... or by simply going into the particle and further deep into it. Each particle and its pieces can take us back to the same universe. This idea or concept is also infinite in the sense that we can never find an edge or boundary line from where the Big becomes Small or the Small becomes Big. It is very absurd to think of. I know that. But who said that our universe is a simple thing ?
Like most of my other ideas, this also needs to be developed further before we can make any use of it. This is only a beginning and I will spend much more time into it throughout the rest of my finite life.
Let us take a big size rim or a wheel and an ant. If we let the ant go round the wheel along its circumference, it will cover the entire circle and come back to the same point from where it started the journey. It is so easy for us to understand. But what about the ant ? I do not know the IQ of an ant, but for our discussion let us assume that an ant is not an intelligent animal that understands the concept of 3D space - but it understands the concept of 2D. So the ant will analyze this incident like this: It started the journey in one specific direction... it never changed the direction and it never reversed the direction... so it was going far and far away from its initial point. However, all of a sudden, it will meet the initial point again. It will not be able to explain this phenomenon supported by its own understanding of "space" and "physics" and hence it will conclude that the initial point from where it started the journey and the point where he ended the journey - are exactly similar to each other, but still they cannot be the same point. This is a very natural conclusion for the ant. If it has to accept that both the points are actually the same, it has to discard all the laws of its 2D geometry. Hence it will say that by traversing through the circumference of the wheel, it has reached a far distance where another world exists and this new world has a replica of everything that the previous world had !
And it does not end just there. If the ant keeps on traversing again and again along the circumference of the wheel, it will reach the same initial point every time. And every time it will conclude that it has reached yet another world that has an exact replica of the previous worlds. It will then logically conclude that there are infinite number of such worlds equi-distant from each other and whichever way you go - you can never reach the end of this chain of worlds :) Interesting, right ?
Now let us take the case of our world. We see that there is no end to the upper limit of our universe. This universe may be contained within another universe, which in turn may be part of yet another universe and so on. On the other hand, if we go to the sub-atomic level, we see a very similar structure that each particle is made of N number of smaller particles and each of those smaller particles are again made of even smaller particles. The interesting point is, both in the case of this universe or the atomic particles, the structure has a lot of vacuum and the actual matter is very less. The matter in this universe is very less compared to its size. Most of the space is "filled" by vacuum. Same is the case of an atom - most of it is just vacuum.
Now the last part of this idea is here. What if these 2 boundaries of matter - Upper Limit and Lower Limit as we have defined above - are not really distinct ? What if this is like a circular chain where the Lower Limit is itself the Upper Limit ? If we keep breaking the matter into smaller and smaller pieces, we actually reach the universe from the opposite side and then we reach our known world. Then we break it even more and reach the same universe again and again... this goes on in a circular fashion and there is no definite "end" to it.
Sounds like a mad idea ? I know. It does not sound anything logical but it is an idea that came to my mind. I believe in one thing. If there is some solution to this "whole universe", it has to be finite is some sense or the other. If it is really as big as infinity, we cannot solve it. Hence I thought of the above idea where we bring a finite structure and it still maintains its "infinite" character. It is finite in the sense that we are actually not talking about infinity when the size of the universe is concerned. We can reach the universe either by crossing thousands of thousands of galaxies... or by simply going into the particle and further deep into it. Each particle and its pieces can take us back to the same universe. This idea or concept is also infinite in the sense that we can never find an edge or boundary line from where the Big becomes Small or the Small becomes Big. It is very absurd to think of. I know that. But who said that our universe is a simple thing ?
Like most of my other ideas, this also needs to be developed further before we can make any use of it. This is only a beginning and I will spend much more time into it throughout the rest of my finite life.
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