XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: wthyde1953@gmail.com   
      
   Paul S Person wrote:   
   > On Sat, 31 Jan 2026 06:25:57 +0000, Peter Fairbrother   
   >  wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 30/01/2026 17:03, Paul S Person wrote:   
   >>> On Fri, 30 Jan 2026 07:03:16 +0000, Peter Fairbrother   
   >>   
   >>>> 10^80 hydrogen atoms is a good estimate for the observable universe. Of   
   >>>> course we don't know whether the universe is finite or not..   
   >>>   
   >>> I would thing the triumph of the Big Bang over the Steady State pretty   
   >>> much implies a finite universe.   
   >>   
   >> Big Bang doesn't change anything as far as the finiteness of the   
   >> universe goes.   
   >>   
   >> The observable universe is known to be finite, but as for the "whole"   
   >> universe - we just don't know. The "whole" universe is very likely very   
   >> much bigger than the observable universe, but as we can't ever see the   
   >> rest of it .. how can we be sure?   
   >   
   > How, indeed?   
   >   
   > A better question is: how can the above be distinguished from   
   > religion?   
      
   Evidence, deduction, mathematics.   
      
   Our models of the universe say that it is finite but unbounded.  The   
   models could be wrong, but they are based on what we can observe, the   
   physical laws we know, and are not guesses or fever dreams.   
      
   We can see that the universe is expanding, and has been expanding for a   
   long time. Run that back a billion years and there are areas which were   
   within our light cone, which no longer are.  Move forward a billion   
   years and areas of the universe which we can now see will be beyond our   
   view.   
      
   Maybe it's all wrong.  Maybe we are misreading the situation and the   
   universe is not expanding, or at least hasn't expanded for long.   
   There's a Nobel waiting for anyone who can throw a serious spanner into   
   current models.   
      
   As opposed to, say, a stake or a cell.   
      
   A cosmologist could tell you more.  But the crux of it is that our ideas   
   are tentative, based on what evidence we can gather, and must survive a   
   gamut of tests.   
      
   A hundred years from now current physics may look as quaint as   
   phlogiston. But I suspect not.  Whatever ideas we have in a hundred   
   years will contain some component of current thought, just as relativity   
   is consistent with classical mechanics in the right circumstances.   
      
      
      
   William Hyde   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)