Now tell me if I'm gone completely off the mark in my reasoning here...In the past I haven't been able to express my thoughts very coherently on this when trying to explain to friends/family...
But ok, here goes...
I reasoned with myself one day that we as humans cannot really 'see' the universe with our simple naked eye, and only when we discovered the existance of things such as ultra-violet rays and the like could we make instruments to 'see' them...and so couldn't it be possible that the universe is much more 'full' then we currently think, as we can't actually 'see' what's there with our limited perceptions, and simply haven't the instruments to view or sense them for us, as we are obviously ignorant of their existance in the first place?
Let's say, for instance, there could be anything between here and the moon, only we have not the capabilities nor the knowledge of its existance to sense, view or detect it in any way.
We can only go by the physics here on earth that we already know exist, but could not the physics of the universe in its whole be entirely more vast, and we are simply blind to it all, limited earth-bound creatures that we are?

Just makes you think...
...So, any thoughts??

I think it is very possible. I was watching on the history channel once about the early inhabitants of Easter Island. This may be a myth, but it is an interesting concept anyway. They were so isolated that they believed they were the only ones that existed, spared by a god (someone correct me If I'm wrong). One day a tribe leader noticed waves on the shore were much more violent than usual. Something was coming inland, but they could not understand what. That something was a ship full of European settlers (again someone correct me if I'm wrong).

They had no preconceived notion to what a ship was, or what it looked like, therefore they couldn't see it.

Dark matter is something we can't see and is only inferred by it's gravitional effects. Anything existing in hyper-dimensions we can't percieve would be included, but would these be a part of our universe? Then again if there are any non-perceptable phenomenon around we'd never know it by definition. Although we are always making new discoveries in physics, the physical processes we observe on earth and from earth seem to be universal to the entire universe. Our place on earth is not so special. You bring up an interesting point, though. I've always thought there's more going on than we percieve.

Good point.

It sounds like this one book I read, where for some reason these few kids could see blue parasites crawl over someone right before that person died. It turned out that the parasites took the pain away from death, and had some special frequency? I can't remember exactly, but this sounds like what you are describing. There could be other things out there that we cannot simply physically see.

This is reality.

Everything is forever affecting everything else. There can be no coherence except
temporally and locally. As you expand your point of view there is increasing amount
of unknown forces and processes. Nothing is predictable and as you learn more, you
of necessity gain more questions than answers. This is the condition of nature and
would be true no matter what sort of technology were employed to study it.

This is true not only on the human scale but is likely moreso as the scale is decreased.
While it's more complicated than simply small scale events triggering large scale pro-
cesses, this is likely much of the cause of the unpredictability of things.

If I may add some thoughts for you. I understand what you are trying to say in your post. I think I may be able to help explain some things that may give you a better perspective on it. (perhaps not though).

Think of all that you see (or experience) as a rainbow. Okay lets say that you can see all of the things in the purple band only. You can't see things in the other colors of the rainbow, but yet the rainbow is there with all of it's colors, but you can only see the purple. Now lets say that you know that there is more to that rainbow than just purple. Now, you decide to create methods to see if there is any more to the rainbow other than just purple. You figure out that you can look through a prism and then you split the color purple into two other colors. Now you know that yes, the rainbow has two other colors in it besides purple! This is sort of how it works, and I will try to explain further.

In reality (or at least the one we seem to be locked into), everything you see and hear are based on frequecies. It all works on vibrations. If you hear a real bass note in music, you are hearing a sound that is from 20 hertz on up to 80 hertz etc. Those are where the real bassy notes reside in the sound spectrum. As the notes get higher, the frequency increases. Most women can hear up to near 20,000 hertz. Men can't hear quite as high, but that is why we have dogs (they can hear much higher frequencies than humans). So, now this sound spectrum is only one of our senses. Our vision works just the same as the sound spectrum. The only difference being, is that the frequencies for "light" is much higher than sound frequencies. The principle works just the same though. Just as you can't really hear a sound below 20 hertz, or above 20,000 hertz, you also can only see within the spectrum that your eyes are designed to function at. Even though there is much more information that we could see, our eyes are only seeing part of the information. Cats can see in other frequencies than we can see in it seems. They watch things sometimes that are invisible to us! We have the infra red spectrum that our instruments can detect and decode. We also have the x-ray spectrum, the ultra violet spectrum, the radio spectrum as well. Our favorite spectrum though is the "visible light" spectrum. That is what our eyes are designed to see in. We do have radio telescopes that do look in all of the other spectrums that we can't see in. Infra-red, ultra-violet, x-rays, and radio waves etc. This allows us to see in every frequency that our eyes cannot see in. We can then detect anything that is emitting or reflecting most every frequency that we know of.

Since we have the ability to see in all of these frequencies, we have a good idea of what is around our neighborhood and can also see way out into the known universe. We can actually see billions of light years into the universe! We even have a fair amount of data on the actual shape of the universe
itself now. So, anything that is in frequencies that we know exist are able to be seen. This doesn't mean that we know of all frequencies though.
There could be other frequencies that we have not found yet, but we have most of the possibilities found so far. Dark matter is one thing that science
and astronomers haven't quite figured out entirely yet. Our universe has more mass to it than we can see or sense. Many of the scientist/astronomers
have done a lot of speculation on dark matter, but have yet to make any real conclusions as to why we have all of the mass that is not able to be seen or detected. I think that they just have a hard time in detecting "frequencies" that would reveal the problem.

Whereas it is probably unlikely that there are things between us and the moon that we can't see, you can never say for sure on anything. Those that say that it is impossible, are usually proved wrong at a later time. The bottom line is that we are all living in a giant frequency generator we know as our universe. We have detected so many things within it, but who is to say how much more we have yet to find? The newest area of serious study is the possibility of alternate universes. There are actually some that are considering the possibility that we do have other planes of existence intertwined within our own. I wonder how they intend on detecting those?

Good question that you raised!

Even "science" - the one who is usually so proud of its deafness/blindness to anything that cannot be perceived by the coarsest sensorial system - knows now that the "empty" space between the stars, for example (or any matter, for that matter), is not really empty - not at all!

My (very rough and completely intuitive) estimate is that what we call the "world" is comprised of 2-3 % of what we can see, while the rest of reality (whatever this means) goes unseen, unheard, untouched - though not necessarily unexperienced.

I think you're right on the mark.

usually address this concept with things like:

We don't know what we don't know. what we don't know Can affect us and Can hurt us
Perfect logic based on a false premise leads to perfectly logical fallacy.
3 blind men and an elephant.
limited human perspective.

You must remember also that there cannot be too much of this "stuff" we cannot see. Because that would distrupt scientific models of the universe etc (im not including dark matter in this "stuff"). But yes, I agree that there most likely would be something we cannot see, maybe blackholes with no matter surrounding them or something else.

I believe the lack of existence holds some significance to all existance. Currently I am tossing around the idea that nothingess and everythingness are simbiont concepts. And you can't have one without the other, same goes you can't have one and the other. To really comprehend what infinte possibilities means you have to fit the concept of nothingness into those possibilites, for nothing is a concept therefore it must fit into the grand scheme of everything. I also believe that the nothing or true unmeasurable cracks in everything is our conscioucness as well as what might be theorized as gods thought networked amongst everything for that is the only way a truley infiniteness could be.

Along those thoughts there has to be purpose for motion to occur. The only knowledge left if somthing were near omnipotence would be to ask the question what I were not. But because of time it was, so It could never truely be not. But within time it could be everything in one unit and nothing the next, while in infintness it would be both nothing and everything.

When you strip away the idea of time and try to comprehend visually what everything must look like I can only imagine it would look like nothing. But insert time and then you can step down and through different dimensions to pull out segments of existence. That in itself can describe the concept of everything except for the concept of nothing. So I believe it is truley a contradiction that is existance, if it is indeed infinite.

We know of dark matter which is basically un explained gravity fields, could this be a proof of the interactions of nothingness and somthingness?

Yes, interesting. What if there is some type of dark matter that dosent even affect gravity?

It has to exist if the concept of infinity exists. What it would truely mean to be infinte would encompass everything you can and can't comprehend. It would have to otherwise there is a limit and that my friend is not infinite.

It sounds like you're talking about more than just light but I want to start with that. The sun's emissions peak in the visible region (i.e. it's brightest in those wavelengths) of the spectrum, which is why our eyes evolved to see visible light in the first place. Aside from stars, however, the emissions of most things don't peak in the visible part of the spectrum--since the wavelength things emit at is temperature dependent--and yet we still see most things. What I mean by that is that almost everything around you, including you, is emitting radiation in the infrared portion of the spectrum. It's true that in a pitch black room you can't see much without the help of special goggles designed to pick up infrared light but when a source of visible light (the sun or perhaps a lamp) is around then things become visible, simply because they'll reflect visible light, even if they're not emitting it.

As things heat up, they emit light of shorter wavelengths (higher frequencies) so something at room temperature that just keeps getting hotter and hotter will go from glowing red to blue to white. However, the amount of visible light it emits will keep increasing, even as its temperature gets so hot that its peak wavelengths move into the ultraviolet or even beyond that. What that means is that we can never heat something to the point that it becomes invisible because even if its emitting most of its radiation in a low wavelength that we can't see, it still leaves a long tail through other wavelengths--that is, it emits lots of visible light that we can see, too. So its really only the cooler bodies that don't put out enough visible light for us to see but as long as the sun shines on them they'll at least reflect enough light for them to be visible to us.

I guess your broader point, though, is that maybe there are things analogous to wavelengths of light that can't be seen. Dark matter has been mentioned in this thread and that might be a decent example of what you're thinking about. Only particles that are charged will interact with light (of any wavelength); if it's not charged, it won't emit electromagnetic radiation and we won't see it (even with the fanciest detectors that can see at almost any wavelength).

As far as we understand, there are only four ways that something can interact with the rest of the universe. One is electromagnetically (i.e. through light) but as I just said, only charged particles can participate in this way. Another is through what's called the weak nuclear force. Instead of trading photons, particles interacting this way trade what're called W and Z particles. Light can travel over great distances but W and Z particles can travel only over extraordinarily tiny distances so the weak force is a very short range force. The same is true of the third method of interaction, the strong nuclear force. They're called "nuclear forces," incidentally, because they only work over the scale of atomic nuclei. The fourth way to interact is gravitationally and that, of course, does work over large distances. So you can have something that contains charged particles (and thus emits light) and also interacts gravitationally. A good example is the sun--it's bright but also we can feel its gravitational pull. You could also have something with no charge (i.e. doesn't emit any light) but does emit gravitation. We wouldn't see something like that but we'd see its pull on other objects. It would literally be dark matter.

In order for there to be another way things interact that we can't see and don't know about there would need to be some fifth force, which is possible. There is, however, another possibility which you might find interesting. In this suggestion, the same forces (interacting through photons, W's, Z's, etc) are at work but they're still invisible to us because they are a sort of mirror image of the photons, W's, and Z's we're familiar with. It takes a little while to explain but ultimately it suggests there really could be anything between here and the moon and we wouldn't be able to detect it (except through its gravity).

Check it out in this thread: Mirror matter.



As we understand the universe, all energy couples to gravity. Meaning that if it exists, it interacts with other things through gravity. You can't avoid it.

there is so much our senses miss that anything is possible.

lately been looking at this as the cause of dna and whatnot, some "unseen" force doing something similar
light and sound are frequency, vibration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY6z2hLgYuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sonpvUxGL8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKxKVpHZe5Q

There are many particles we're just barely able to detect, as well others which we have predicted should exist but haven't yet been able to observe. Reason suggests that there should be more particles which we simply have no method of detecting. For all we know, all of space could be absolutely packed solid with all different kinds of particles which simply do not interact with matter as we know it.

Fun fact: Right now there are around 65 billion solar neutrinos passing through every square centimetre of (daytime) Earth.

Humans are designed to learn and understand their surroundings, and we are equipped to do so.
I understand what your trying to say but its just not possible.
Eyes for sight, nose for smell, skin for touch, and emotions to comprehend the best course of action.

There's a recent PhysicsWeb article that some of you might find interesting:

If it dosent interact with other things through gravity dosent mean it dosent exists. Maybe its gravitational properties are somewhere in between normal matter and dark matter, in the zero zone, this means it has very little affect on the gravity if not, no affect at all, it has no gravitational properties. Of course this is only a theory but it is possible.

This would also mean that it even dosen't interact with itself by gravity.

gravity might be an indirect side effect of the activity in those videos above. These "particles" may shift/separate out into exsistance due to whatever "primal" vibration is out there, causing things like gravity, the different forces, physical matter etc... to manifest in the states it does.

We may not be able to directly observe, but should be able to observe (and misinterpret) the effects, which is how we started looking towards gravity. It's like a reverse engineer.

I like that one guy's ping pong ball analogy.
Take a Perfectly still lake type deal. Now, get some ping pong balls with little motors in them and toss them out in the lake. When they start vibrating you'll see these ripples coming from the ping pong balls. The ripples will go out and hit the ripples from other ping pong balls and make all these different patterns. Now, get some ping pong balls with little lights in them and toss them out on the lake. The balls with lights you'll see bobbing up and down at different rates and heights from the different ripples and interference, frequency/amplitude etc... Now turn off all the lights in the sky so it's Completely dark, and you'll see these little points of light dancing around on the lake.
That's what we see as our starting point, little balls of light dancing around on a lake... the effects we can observe and misinterpret.

Let there be light and the vibration caused light to happen. In the beginning was the vibration of information, etc...
still playing with it but it fits so far I think

We're equipped to survive in our environment, nothing more. With our five senses alone there's very little we're able to directly detect, which is why we rely on technology.

wow....i am really impressed by the responses here and the open-mindedness (and of coarse knowledge! ) of the posters! it really does make me feel better cos' i'm usually met with--> or

so thanks guys

gotta go check out some of those links now!!

I disagree, humans are equipped to learn and create new ways of interpreting information. We can survive in almost any environment, and if we cant naturally, we create a way we can.

doesn't mean that we are aware of everything that exists out there ...or even will anytime soon!

and i think there would be environments even us 'mighty' humans couldn't find a way to exist in! we aint that great...

Don't take this to heart LiV but personally I think you are slightly off your mark. Let me qualify why...

There are many things that we cannot see with our naked eye (or sense with our other senses) and that is why, as you already mentioned, we have instruments to detect them. But in all cases nature acted as a detector before we even designed any such instruments. What I mean by this is that everything that we know to exist has some effect on its surroundings and in many cases it was the observation of these "unexplained" effects that led to theory and then FURTHER detection (things we don't see have effects sometimes way down the line of cause-effect that we do see). The instruments we design are not the first detectors of the effects but rather detectors designed for a SPECIFIC PURPOSE and of course designed to test a specific theory.

For us to say something exists it has to have some effect on/in the known universe. If we theorise something that has no effect on our surroundings then even if it truly exists (which cannot be proven if it has no effect) it does not exist as part of the universe, IMO.

Of course we could have anything between the earth and the moon but if we don't have anything to detect it chances are nature does not either. What I mean by this is that even the most undetectable things have effects that cascade to detectable arenas (neutrinos, theorised Higgs & graviton) so if there is anything there we cannot detect with our current instruments its collective effects will fall into areas of science/physics that we already know but perhaps cannot explain or plainly misinterpret. So, in such cases, is it still really unknown/undetectable? IMO no, just not understood.

In closing, the universe IS much more 'full' than it seems for us now and that is in it being understood (ie. since we really don't understand much it is not as 'full' to us) but IMO it is as 'full' as it will ever be in constitution. Our understanding of the constituents is most definitely not full though. That is not to say that there are not more particles than we have detected in colliders/accelerators (going into hundreds now when counting hadrons/mesons) but the basic constituents can always be successfully inferred to be part of a set known constituents. The problem IMO lies with understanding the universe/laws/processes not necessarily what constitutes it.

Could there be some other force or some other new basic particle? Yes, of course but any new force would actually arise from refined understanding of some existing force which may then be classified as two based on some new understanding - this is hypothetical and I don't believe there are any other forces. Any new particles will be just new understanding of existing particles. I don't know if I explained that correctly but what I'm getting at is that if there is any more vast physics out there in the outer reaches of the universe the only difference from our physics here will be our understanding of the processes within this realm as opposed to having entirely new 'things'.

Cheers

"Think you of the fact a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? "

---Orange Catholic Bible

I think I tend to disagree with this proposition, although it has some limited merit.

Logically, whether we are created or evolved, we would have been designed to operate effectively within our "world", simply so we could survive and prosper in it

This means that we have to be aware of most of it. (The "real world")

Now we may not require high frequency hearing, like bats or dolphins, vision in infrared or ultra violet, or multi faceted eyes.for our survival. However, the existence of all those creatures possessing them, combined with our intelligence, has allowed us first to infer or deduct their existence, and as science progressed, to quantify and reproduce such mechanisms.

So there may exist some physical things and some laws and relationships between them which we are not yet aware of. However, within our present Physical universe (that which we can observe and manipulate) probably only a small % is unknown, and only a tiny %, if any, might be "unknowable")

Of course, some of the physical universe, so far, remains outside of our ability to see or manipulate, eg sub atomic particles and very distant parts of the universe. We tend to think that we can study these, using models based on our existing knowledge, and it is here that there is a possibility for error, although probably only a small possibility. For example, we can posit and model silica based organisms, but tend to use carbon based ones to do so.

but isn't it possible that we could have been designed only to be aware of a tiny fraction of it, not really needing to be aware of the rest for survival? the rest would serve more as....enlightenment really! no??...

Yes this is possible, but, again, if evolved or created with the potential for enlightenment, then we would all need some awareness of supernatural/paranormal realities outside of physical ones. Despite the claims of a few, such ability seems so limited as to be almost non existent.

I do think that part of our our nature is to seek after the unknown, and other potentialities than those we can easily see. This does not mean that all we seek for actually exists, however. Enlightenment is more commonly a person's state of mind in response to actual stimuli or the cognitive operation of their mind. An actual independent state of enlightenment probably does not exist.