[modest]

Originally Posted by dkv

Who thinks that the time and space are intrinsic to the matter?
Come forward to have a debate please.

"I'm your huckleberry"

Oh, wait...

That would be wildly off topic in this thread... If you're unable to find a thread with the appropriate topic, you can always create one. In which case...

"I’ll be your Huckleberry"

~modest

[Little Bang]

If we look at electromagnetic energy the wave length goes from infinitely short to infinitely long. I don't see how you can apply any universal scale to it.

[REASON]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

If we look at electromagnetic energy the wave length goes from infinitely short to infinitely long. I don't see how you can apply any universal scale to it.

Well, I guess, except to say that we must therefore experience it precisely at it's midpoint.

[CraigD]

I’m quite a few days behind on this thread, but don’t want to miss out on the fun

Originally Posted by modest

So, In terms of degrees of temperature, we’ve got much less room to get colder than warmer. In terms of real centimeters, we’ve got much less room to shrink than grow. In terms of plank size compared to human size compared to universe size, we’re medium and perhaps on the large side. There’s definitely some trickery there and I’m having the hardest time explaining it.

Though it’s getting perhaps overly philosophical, some would argue that whenever you map these curious, abstract, formal things called numbers to objective reality, you’re engaging in pretty profound trickery – but that’s a tack best saved for another forum, if touched at all.

Any quantity mapped to non-negative numbers of any kind has the “closer to its minimum (zero) than its maximum (infinity)” quality. It this rankles, one can perform a routine bit of scale transforming magic, and use a logarithmic scale, regaining the full range of numbers to negative infinity.

Doing this with temperature, it’s then arguably easier to approach negative infinity than positive. If we could take the entire mass-energy of the known universe (about ) and make it into a hot plasma consisting of a single electron, its temperature would be roughly . On the other hand, experimenters currently cool gasses to , so it’s not too hard to imagine a very advanced civilization cooling something to some staggering negative logarithmic value – though perhaps uncertainty kicks in some way, placing a limit on low temperatures not given by classical mechanics.

There’s something wonderful, tricky or both (depending on your feelings about such things) in that nearly every number analogous to a physical quantity, regardless of what common units are used, has a logarithm between -100 and +100. Logarithmic scales have a way of humbling the big-but-not-infinite.

[REASON]

WOW! That's a lot for me to take in, Craig. I'm going to have to ponder that for a while. These kinds of numbers are truly hard for me to fathom. I'm still reeling from modest's explanation that I am larger compared to a plank length than the entire universe compared to me.

But it does sound like you are saying that we exist closer to the cold end of the temperature spectrum. Well, that's assuming it is proper to even consider that there is an end.

How can one perceive of something infinitely hot or cold? I guess that's why you say that a discussion of this nature starts to drift into philosophy.

Pretty cool stuff to think about, I must say.

[LaurieAG]

Originally Posted by LaurieAG

Where measurements of photons (or single photons) are made over great distances through particles that would not be considered very dense, and are then scaled down to our own 'scale', they should scale in proportion to more dense (or even solid) objects over smaller distances (in scale) and provide similar observational data.

I read a new article in the New Scientist that talked about astrophysical Methane Mazers. Wiki describes them in more detail.

Astrophysical maser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Discrete Transition Energy
Like a laser, the emission from a maser is stimulated (or seeded) and monochromatic, having the frequency corresponding to the energy difference between two quantum-mechanical energy levels of the species in the gain medium which have been pumped into a non-thermal population distribution. However, naturally occurring masers lack the resonant cavity engineered for terrestrial laboratory masers. Indeed, the emission from an astrophysical maser is due to a single pass through the gain medium and therefore generally lacks the spatial coherence and mode purity expected of laboratory instruments.

[REASON]

I was reading another thread, I think it was Doctordick's, and I thought of another possible Universal Scale, but since it's related to time, it probably falls under GR or something.

What I'm thinking of is the *rate* of time. At one end of the spectrum are objects that move or change at an increasingly slow rate of time, and at the other end, objects that are moving or changing at increasingly fast rates of speed.

This is a bit difficult to describe, but I'll try. I have often thought of Geology and considered how slowly it functions in nature. Gradual and slow processes that take tremendous amounts of time for the effects to be revealed. It is happening at a pace that relative to mine, is too slow to recognize that anything is even happening. You can only really detect the effects.

I've thought about what it would be like if time could be sped up at a rate I am familiar with so I could see the changes happening more rapidly. Animations have become much better at reinacting it, but of course they are nothing like the real thing would be. Imagine the sound genrerated by two crustal plates scraping against one another at a visible rate of speed we can relate to. Or consider the vibration.

Even clouds seem to function in a different realm of time, and I like it when time-lapse photography is used to reveal their transformations at a visible pace. The same goes for slow motion photography, where being able to see things at a slower rate is better because things that are moving or changing very rapidly can be difficult to see as well. An airplane propeller will seem to disappear when it is cranked up to full speed. Would we be able to see anything at all if it were going five times as fast?

So in the universe of slow rates of change and fast rates of change, where do our normal everyday movements rank on the scale?

Can something like that even be calculated?

[LaurieAG]

Originally Posted by REASON

Even clouds seem to function in a different realm of time, and I like it when time-lapse photography is used to reveal their transformations at a visible pace. The same goes for slow motion photography, where being able to see things at a slower rate is better because things that are moving or changing very rapidly can be difficult to see as well. An airplane propeller will seem to disappear when it is cranked up to full speed. Would we be able to see anything at all if it were going five times as fast?

So in the universe of slow rates of change and fast rates of change, where do our normal everyday movements rank on the scale?

Can something like that even be calculated?

Hi Reason, good point.

The propellor is a very good metaphor for how greater scientific accuracy leads to things that might appear 'invisible' to become very clear when the time period is slowed down (due to the fast rate of change of the observations) and the scale is about the same or smaller than our everyday movements.

On the other hand things that are much larger than us, like planetary and galactic movements become clearer when the time period is sped up (due to the slow rate of change of the observations).

It probably cannot be calculated but our everyday movements scale (EMs) could be represented as fast rate <= EMs < slow rate.

[Pluto]

G'day from the land of ozzzzz

The only scale that can be detected is what we are able to see. This does not limit the scale of the universe.

[freeztar]

You simply must check this out, too cool!

It's an animated journey from the universe scale all the way down to the atomic scale using various examples along the way.

Nikon | Feel Nikon | Universcale