Does Space have a secret?

[Space Moose]

Does Space have a terrible secret?

What could it be?

How would we be protected?

[Sidhe]

What?

Are you thinking of something specific? Because I'm lost here.. hep an old man out..

[Space Moose]

It is open ended. Make what you will of it.

Start with an answer to the first question, and if you think yes, then go on.

[Mystify]

Definition of the word "secret"

/"si:krt/ adjective 1 not (to be) made known or seen. 2 working etc. secretly. 3 liking secrecy. noun 1 thing (to be) kept secret. 2 mystery. 3 effective but not widely known method. in secret secretly. secret agent spy. secret police police operating secretly for political ends. secret service government department concerned with espionage. secretly adverb.

Well....if that's the case then i'm almost positive there is much about space we don't know. That's a secret.... and in my opinion a never ending one as we in this life will never reveal all of them, actually doubt if we hit 1% of all spaces secrets.

[Space Moose]

But is it a TERRIBLE secret? Do we have to worry about it, or is it benign?

[j6p]

The only secrets that space has are those that we create. All the answers are there all the secretes are exposed if we ask the right questions.

What secret do you want to reveal? Now formulate the question.

[Homer]

The only secrets that space has are those that we create. All the answers are there all the secretes are exposed if we ask the right questions.

j6p, no offense, but what the hell are you talking about?

Other meanings for secret, and ones that are more appropriate when speaking of space, are things that are unknown or mysterious.

Everybody in the world would agree that there are things not understood about space. Therefore, space would have a degree of 'unknown', 'unexplained', 'mystery' or 'secrets'(whatever you want to call it)

That being said, how is anyone to know if this 'secret' is TERRIBLE or not? We can't accurately identify the secret, because we only know of the existence of the secret by our lack of understanding of space.

What could the secret be? I have a very open mind, and in my humble opinion, the secret could be anything.

How would we be protected? I will protect you Space Moose

[Bizarro]

Homer, i won't answer for Dan but i do follow his idea. i had an astronomy professor that had the same philosophy about space. he figured that we only learn something new about space when we ask the right questions about it. for example, when neutrinos were discovered. no one really knew what a neutrino was at that time, but they asked the right question(experimented) and the answer was revealed. neutrinos always existed, but it was only the question that led to their discovery.

[Sidhe]

The secret of space is terrible because we project all of our fears onto it. We can be protected from this fear by paying $150/hour (that's really 50 minutes) to a psychotherapist for a decade or so.

Now let's form a single line.. no pushing..

[Space Moose]

Now let's form a single line.. no pushing..

Are you suggesting that we might be safe if we are pushed somewhere?

[Saru]

I'm not sure you can say space has 'a secret', more like the universe is full of things that we have yet to understand. You can't really say that there is a single outstanding fact that we have yet to learn that is the most important fact in the universe.

Something we are not yet aware of may be 'terrible' if it could spell the destruction of life on earth for example, but there are likely to be a lot of terrible facts in that sense, things that we may be powerless to prevent. As the human race develops and advances however, there will be more and more we will be capable of doing to protect ourselves from disaster.

A couple more decades for example and we will very likely have the means to stop a large asteroid from colliding with the earth. Think of what we could accomplish in a million years - preventing disasters on a galactic scale could easily be possible for mankind in the distant future.

[Loonboy]

I think mostly all of space's secrets will be terrible because by definition they will be alien and until we (as a species) learn not to fear something because it is unknown or different to us then fear will be our reaction to it every time.

[j6p]

Homer, What I mean is this: Take any problem, ask the right question and you will find the solution. If the solution isn't found it's not for lack of information or lack of knowledge it's because the right questions aren't being asked.

Now as far as the Universe is concerned, to some people it's a jumbled ball of knotted twine. To others it's a clear pool of water. I think we all have flashes of insight. Today I see a clear pool. Tomorrow it may be a jangled knot of strings and multiple dimensions.

I, just yesterday, started reading The Universe in a Nut Shell for the third time. That guy screws with my head. I don't believe he's even real

[Mentalcase]

This has to be one of the most nonsensical rhetorical threads I have ever seen. A question that has no direct connection to anything relevant. No point in debating over this guys, but if you want to...go ahead.

I too have read and own Universe in a nutshell, I enjoy the book and his knowledge.

Mentalcase

[Homer]

I agree with you MC, which is why I was making light of it

j6p, asking the right question doesn't guarantee the right answer. For example, my question is:How many atoms are there in our sun? That could be considered a secret(or a mystery, as I have explained earlier about more appropriate words to describe it). Nobody knows this answer, and nobody will ever know this answer, and by your argument, it's because we didn't ask the right question. What about my question? Why wouldn't that be the right question for the information I'm wanting?

I guess I don't understand what you mean by the 'right question'

[TheOracle]

I guess we will just have to decide on whether to take the Blue pill or the Red pill

[Kismit]

I can't see what's wrong with this thread . I have read over all the information put forth in these post's and calculated the degrees of probabillity to within 3.1472% of accuracy and the answer is obviosly 47.

It scares the *something nasty* out of me.

[SpaceyKC]

Kismit! And those riddle makers think they've got you

fooled! HA!

TO, now that you've posed the question, what would

be your answer?

[Sidhe]

Here's an answer for Homer and his atom counting experiment.

The crux of your issue with j6p lies in a critical conundrum in science that still isn't resolved today. j6p has some standing if he thinks expectation may play a role in what you discover. Quantum physics shows that things don't "exist" in a tangible sense until an observer actually goes looking for them.

So, to the quesion of how many atoms exist in the sun.. we have a couple of problems.. Science can give a very good estimate of the number. Then, if they had an enormous detector, they could sample a certain number of them and make an even better educated guess. But in a very real sense, the *actual* number of particles that makes up the sun may not be an issue "decided" until someone actually goes to the trouble of counting them..

I don't mind making the leap, scientifically unjustified as yet, that j6p makes.. i.e., the "macro" level world might be as "undecided" as the quantum world. At the very least, we can't deny his theory out of hand. The jury is definitely out on that one.

The funny thing is, science has known about this "incompleteness" since the early 20th century, but we still grow up thinking things are solid and countable all up and down the scale, when really, it is only once you reach a certain size that this becomes the case, apparently.

The philosophy called phenomenalism suggests that only our looking and paying attention to the things we percieve turns them into "real" objects. What's fascinating is they came up with this idea long before science caught up with them and showed that it was indeed the case at the "lowest" level of reality.

[Homer]

Sidhe,

Thank you, you have shown that I am correct. In some thought processes, some believe that it isn't real if you can't perceive it. Those same thought processes believe that if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, then it doesn't make a sound. Those same thought processes believe that asking he right questions will give you all the answers. In all circumstances, those thought processes are wrong. How are they wrong, you might ask? because I perceive them to be wrong, and by those very thought processes, what you perceive is your reality.

But seriously, though, that whole 'reality is what I perceive it to be' is ridiculous, in my humble opinion. In our 3 dimensional spacial universe, 2+2 will always equal 4. Always. It doesn't matter what you call the values, 2 will always be 2 until it isn't 2 anymore. That being said, if someone perceived the sum of the value of 2, added with the value of another 2, as being something other than value of 4, than they are wrong. Their perception doesn't make it real.

Also, I want some examples of how asking the right questions reveals the secrets of the universe, as j6p states. Also, what does j6p mean by "The only secrets that space has are those that we create?" This implies that every secret in the entire universe is created by us. What gives?

[Bizarro]

well, i dont have my astronomy book handy(its buried in a box under 20 boxes of books) but i can remember another instance of asking the right question:

i was going to post a link, but considering our discussion the other night, Homer, i will just post the text here

Sir Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822) was born in Hanover, Germany, and became well known as both a musician and an astronomer. He emigrated to England in 1757, and with his sister Caroline, constructed telescopes to survey the night sky. Their work resulted in several catalogs of double stars and nebulae. Herschel is perhaps most famous for his discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781, the first new planet found since antiquity.

In the year 1800, Herschel made another very important discovery. He was interested in learning how much heat passed through the different colored filters he used to observe the Sun and noticed that filters of different colors seemed to pass different levels of heat. Herschel thought that the colors themselves might contain different levels of heat, so he devised a clever experiment to investigate his hypothesis.

Herschel directed sunlight through a glass prism to create a spectrum - the "rainbow" created when light is divided into its colors - and measured the temperature of each color. He used three thermometers with blackened bulbs (to better absorb the heat) and placed one bulb in each color while the other two were placed beyond the spectrum as control samples. As he measured the temperatures of the violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red light, he noticed that all of the colors had temperatures higher than the controls and that the temperature of the colors increased from the violet to the red part of the spectrum. After noticing this pattern, Herschel decided to measure the temperature just beyond the red portion of the spectrum in a region apparently devoid of sunlight. To his surprise, he found that this region had the highest temperature of all.

Herschel performed further experiments on what he called the "calorific rays" that existed beyond the red part of the spectrum and found that they were reflected, refracted, absorbed and transmitted just like visible light. What Sir William had discovered was a form of light (or radiation) beyond red light. These "calorific rays" were later renamed infrared rays or infrared radiation (the prefix infra means `below'). Herschel's experiment was important not only because it led to the discovery of infrared, but also because it was the first time that someone showed that there were forms of light that we cannot see with our eyes. Herschel's original prism and mirror are on display at the National Museum of Science and Industry in London, England.

Today, infrared technology has many exciting and useful applications. In the field of infrared astronomy, new and fascinating discoveries are being made about the Universe. Medical infrared imaging is a very useful diagnostic tool. Infrared cameras are used for police and security work as well as in fire fighting and in the military. Infrared imaging is used to detect heat loss in buildings and in testing electronic systems. Infrared satellites have been used to monitor the Earth's weather, to study vegetation patterns, and to study geology and ocean temperatures.

so here is an instance of asking the right question. Herschel didn't know why there was heat in an area of the spectrum that he could not see, but it existed. he asked the right question, and a secret was revealed.

[j6p]

I marvel at your logic Homer

I'll try to clear up what I meant.

If you take any problem that has ever been solved in the recorded history of the human race and follow it back to where it was first conceived you will find that there were a series of questions asked or experiments performed in order to find the solution to that problem. Along the way you will find that there were some wrong answers but eventually the solution was found. One of many examples that I can offer now is cancer. We will find a cure but there will be many more experiments performed (questions asked) before we get to the final cure (answer). My mind reels at the flood of input relating to examples that I can put forth so what I will do is this. I'll ask. What answer needs no question?

As far as "the only secrets in the universe are the ones we create" I'll stand by that and try to clear it up by adding: There are no secrets of the universe only unknowns, if we call them secrets of the universe then we are affording the universe the status of a thinking entity that holds secrets from us. The universe isn't alive it holds no secrets.

Another way that I look at it is that there are many things out there in space that are now unknown to us. They aren't secrets because we aren't aware of them yet. When we become aware of them then they can be called secrets. Somebody has to know something before it can be held as a secret.

For some reason I detect that we are closer on this one than it may appear.

[Homer]

j6p,

I am now of the belief that instead of a difference of opinion, there is a misunderstanding of what is being said. I have been correct from the start(obviously), and now that you cleared it up, I see your point. DS's post only confirmed my belief, because Herschel's discoveries were due to questions and experiments. But your statement:"We will find a cure but there will be many more experiments performed (questions asked) before we get to the final cure (answer)" indicated the questions are the experiments. Where I come from, they are two different things.

[Sageghost]

I believe that eventually (if the human race lasts) we can and will find answers to conceivably any question we might ask ourselves. I agree in that it isn't a case of unlocking 'secrets' more it'll be a process of discovering knowledge through a process of trial and error.

But could there be one question that will always elude us?

WHY ARE WE HERE?

(as in the meaning-of-life, deep fundamental question)

Maybe we have to die B4 we find out about that one?

[Kismit]

I am now of the belief that instead of a difference of opinion, there is a misunderstanding of what is being said. I have been correct from the start(obviously),

@ Homer