Design Of The Universe

[Rev. Green]

If you had designed the Universe, would you have designed this one?

[jim360]

As I suggested earlier, it might depend on what I was trying to achieve. But the more "order" I'd try to impose, the more I'd expect that the Universe would end up being boring. It's (probably) good to have some messiness in play.

[Arksided]

That's a no From you Jim, me as well... as I posted with chaos in the universe is why we exist to even question it.

[Rev. Green]

The phrase 'or something similar' did too much work in my last post. 'proton' wasn't meant to be the familiar three-quark proton. In my ignorance, I thought photons mediated electromagnetism and W's and Z were responsible for the strong force.
Let me try again.
Could we have a universe consisting of two types of particle and three sorts of boson only? No quarks. No neutrinos, muons, etc. One boson would cause attraction between different particles (similar to electromagnetism). One boson would hold groups of particles together (like the strong force) and one boson would be a 'graviton'.
I can't see why this can't produce a sufficient set of chemical elements (albeit different from ours, and lacking isotopes).

[jim360]

There's nothing to stop you writing down a theory for such a universe. I can't off the top of my head think how to include gravitons, but you can add that easy enough to the theory if you *did* know what to do.

But I don't think I could agree with your idea that you'd get a "sufficient set of chemical elements". Not that you couldn't get structure, I'm sure you could, but isn't "sufficient" also doing a lot of work? The chemistry of this Universe would be so absurdly different from our own that it's not even worth trying to understand it, so what would it be "sufficient" for exactly?

NB I'm not trying to dump on this idea, I'm just saying that it would be so different that you shouldn't lazily assume it'd be doable without trying to check. And, hell, it could be fun.

[ToraToraTora]

We are already not in the main universe anyway, approx 95% is invisible to us. We only know it exists because of it's gravity and also the maths to make what we do see work.

[jim360]

Are you thinking of dark matter/energy, TTT? If so, that's part of our main universe. Perhaps you meant the Universe beyond our Observable Universe -- but, by definition, we can't know how much of that there is (because otherwise we'd be able to observe it), so we can't be sure that we're only 5% of that.

It's related to the question of whether the Universe is even infinite, in space that is -- we can never know, though I think we're able to set some lower limits on how small it can be.

[THECORBYLOON]

The liklihood is that the very same question has been or will be posted in one of the quintillions of other universes there are said to be possible.

[ToraToraTora]

jim: "Are you thinking of dark matter/energy, TTT? If so, that's part of our main universe." - yes of course, not the right terminology. I mean it's currently inaccessible, I sometimes wonder if the dark matter is full of civilisations wondering what's in the 5% they need to make the observations work.

[THECORBYLOON]

One scientific paper suggests there are at least 10^10^10^7 universes, a figure described as “humungous”.

[davebro]

Let's "Boldly Go"? Ah - too hard, back on the sofa!

We have been to the moon (the doorstep) and plan to go there again soonish. With any luck we might make it to the garden gate (Mars) this century.

Get real - man can't live off the earth in any meaningful way. The only way to explore space is with robots. Unless/until any alien species decides it wants to contact us we are just voyeurs.

[realtorsezfv]

If I were the developer of the universe, I couldn't come up with anything better than a big bang. I'm still struck by the idea that our universe is constantly expanding because billions of years ago, there was an explosion, and everything began to develop from a single point. The creator must be very proud of this law of life. It also amazes me that all of our life on this planet is interconnected with the vast cosmos. Why do we depend on emissions from the sun? Why does our mood change with the moon's phases, and our character develops depending on the zodiac sign? It's magnificent and frightening. Have you wondered about your zodiac sign? I've read a lot of info about Leo Midheaven meaning. https://www.trulydivine.com/midheaven/leo-midheaven

[Khandro]

'The is something obscure which is complete before heaven and earth arose; tranquil, quiet, standing alone without change, moving around without peril. It could be the mother of everything.
I don't know its name, and call it Tao'.

[ i ] Lao Tzu, 5th cent. BCE [i]