What is the Universe Made of?

[ButterflyWoman]

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/what_is_t ... e_made_of/ (http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/what_is_the_universe_made_of/)


Scientists have identified a number of elemental particles that are not known to be made up of smaller particles. But how do you wrap your head around the idea that something is made of nothing but...itself? Is it absurd, illogical, or just hard to understand?

Now suppose we someday determine that these elemental particles are indeed made of something else. It just pushes the question down a level. The moment we discover the new and smaller substance, we wonder what that is made of, and so on forever, or until...what?

Consider the possible answers. [...]

Very interesting blog post, and a very interesting comment discussion following.

[Beekeeper]

What does it say about me that when I read your thread title my first thought was, "Sugar and spice and everything nice."? :wink:

Interesting.

[ButterflyWoman]

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, perhaps?

[CFTraveler]

I don't know why this is an issue. I've read many articles like this, and I don't get the what's so perplexing about it. Oh well, I must be weird.
However, I do think that it's cool that it's Scott Adams talking about it. :)

[ButterflyWoman]

Oh well, I must be weird.
Uh, yeah. Maybe just a little.

:P


However, I do think that it's cool that it's Scott Adams talking about it. :)
Yes. He's got a huge readership (many of them geeks, unsurprisingly). Every now and then he slips something like this out there. Pretty cool.

[Tutor]

the Universe is made of You, and in you it is first as You.

[ButterflyWoman]

To quote Carl Sagan, "We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands."

[Tutor]

To quote Carl Sagan, "We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands."

yeah! "billions and billions and billions"....i miss ole carl's pleasant voice of childlike imaginative wonder. much unlike all these 'fear' oriented deadly scenarios we are handed these days. the sun is gonna blow, asteroids are gonna destroy earth...yada yada yada. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

what we've lost in such 'humbleness', in just a short decade or so, is enough to cause weeping.

though, i suppose, that carl sagan didnt realize it, he sort of proses an epitaph to science as it was meant to be toward humanity's best. which in a short time has deluded us into disposable technological commoditys, deadly blackmarketed pharmaceuticals, unmanned weaponry killing wantonly from a hand control in the sterile distance, these of which we have no 'real' need nor want. :cry:

[eyeoneblack]

Nice thought, Tutor.

What is the Universe made of? According to Arthur Schopenhauer it is made of WILL and IDEA. That pretty much settles it for me. :|

But, what he means by that isn't so easy to grasp, and absolutely impossible if you don't read his book The World as Will and Idea.

:wink:

[tor86]

I got two theories. The first, is that maybe the whole universe is the imagination of god, or that it is created out of pure energy (God's energy), forming all levels of reality.

Like in a person's dream. It all seems 100% real for the person dreaming, and the landscape can be pretty convincing. Then it's like the buddhists think. Reality is a dream, but where do you come when you wake up? No one has been able to answer that, and probably no one never will, at least not here in this existence..

[tor86]

The buddhists think that physical existence is just an illusion, just like the dream one dreams when sleeping is also an illusion. It sure seems real when one dreams, and so does it when waking up. The buddhists believed that to be free from illusion would be nirvana, the end of all suffering. So to "wake up", would be to see reality just as it is.

Perhaps, if there are any buddhists here, can help me describe this, so it is easier to understand...

[Sinera]

it's a computer game. we're avatars in it.

consciousness is the computer.

(... and what's the stuff of consciousness? don't know, bits and bytes in non-locality .... will we (as humans) ever know? I doubt it.)