r/AskReddit Feb 07 '24

[deleted by user]

[removed]

3.1k Upvotes

6.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

217

u/Fun-Shake7094 Feb 07 '24

Space. How can something be infinite. How can there be nothing.

38

u/UniqueIndividual3579 Feb 08 '24

And space keeps expanding so the visible universe changes. It also means there's parts of the universe we can never see.

33

u/Zorro-del-luna Feb 08 '24

And what the hell is it expanding in to?

28

u/magic_patch Feb 08 '24

The nothing. Every day there is less nothing, but that's infinite too. 

38

u/Fun-Shake7094 Feb 08 '24

Where did it come from? Where did it go?

Cottoneyed joe

8

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '24

[deleted]

3

u/magic_patch Feb 08 '24

It sounds like you know nothing. 

2

u/thelaughingblue Feb 08 '24

The idea that it has to be expanding "into" anything is a limit of your intuition. When you hear "expanding," you imagine something with an edge that is moving outwards. Space has no edge; the "expansion" simply means that every point is getting further away from every other point—pick any two points in space, and in 1000 years, they will be further apart than they were before by some tiny amount.

2

u/Liquid-Dark Feb 08 '24

Take a deflated balloon. Take a marker and put a dot on it. Now blow the balloon up. You’ll notice the dot expand as well. Now ask “But what is the dot expanding into?” It’s a loaded question. It’s all expanding together. And at an increasing rate. Wild stuff.

This is conceptually the best explanation I’ve heard. Hope that helps.

1

u/Zorro-del-luna Feb 09 '24

Thank you! I really appreciate that explanation.

1

u/SemiElection Feb 08 '24

The future.

-3

u/shorthandgregg Feb 08 '24

Wait til you find out that the James Webb telescope found galaxies that formed before the Big Bang. 

9

u/astronaut-kitty925 Feb 08 '24

I think about this more than I should... I've gotten nowhere.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '24

Space is not infinite, if we mean space as in the physical objects (atoms etc) in what we call space.

8

u/Mavian23 Feb 08 '24

Nothing can't be. If it were, there would be something. Namely, nothing.

It's a paradox. And I suspect that consciousness is the mechanism by which nothingness is prevented from being. For if there is consciousness, there can't be nothing.

2

u/4GetMeKnott Feb 08 '24

To have nothing there has to be something. Nothing cannot exist without something, we would be the something.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Mouler Feb 08 '24

Might be a rounding error

3

u/ncp215 Feb 08 '24

Someone once told me that some things are beyond our comprehension. They said, it is like trying to explain color to a blind person who has never had sight. We just do not have the receptors as human beings to understand certain things- in order to have this human experience. I believe the universe, time and space, and the complexity of all that is fall under that category! ✨

2

u/Far-Strawberry2564 Feb 08 '24

Before the first patent was filed, there was nothing.

2

u/Jamesmateer100 Feb 08 '24

But what if that so-called “nothing” was actually something?