Re: Small Universe Equation
Reply #1 –
Small universe???
How about this: When Columbus set out in 1492, he had absolutely no idea that the place we now call America even existed. His one thought was to get to the riches of the Far East by sailing West, around the world. Now, regardless of the myths you may read, most educated people knew by then that the Earth is round, so all that hokum about falling off the edge of the world can be put into the nonsense file. At issue, then, was the size of the Earth. Columbus thought the Earth was a lot smaller than it actually is, and he reached land right about where he expected to find it. Problem was, he expected to find India and the islands of the Far East and instead he ran into this place. Just as well, since-- if this place hadn't existed, the fears of other educated people would have come true. His ships couldn't carry near enough supplies for a trip around the world as it actually is, and the dangers of starving and/or running out of drinking water were very real.
So now you talk of a small universe. How small? Small enough for light from the furthest star to actually get here in less than ten thousand years?* That's mighty small. Especially since present-day science indicates the universe to be just a wee bit bigger than that-- by several billion light years. And, that's just what we can see. We have no idea if the universe might be bigger since we still can't see quite that far.
*Yeah, I know ten thousand years won't play well here. But, we have "young Earth creationists" floating around who counted the "begats" and came up with the idea that the entire universe is right around six thousand years old plus or minus a week, and are even willing to bend the laws concerning the speed of light to make that happen-- so for the sake of argument we run with that as the smallest possible size of the universe. 10K years for light from the farthest star to reach Earth-- that's about as small as we can make it.