Grapefruit

[jambouk]

I don't understand physics, at all.

But how could the whole universe have originated from something the size of a grapefruit?!? Honestly, someone needs to be sensible about this, how could all the matter in the universe have been that condensed? It just doesn't make sense!

(I'm watching an Horizon programme I recorded the other week on the end of physics.)

James

[Alien 13]

Some would say it still is that size or smaller and what we see is a holgram.

Alan

[kirkster501]

Smaller than a proton or even a quark, billions of times smaller.  It exploded from a singularity so the theories suggest.

[DazC]

Wow! I've had too much wine for this topic!

D.C

[ronin]

No one really knows what size it began from, using the present expansion the size to time relationship heads to 0.

But what is zero when we are using sizes that are measured in lightyears, our solar system would be 0, never mind a grapefruit.

It started and expanded, after 13,700,000,000 year of expansion drawing 2 lines and saying it was this big at the start is prone to error.

It is probably about time they came up with another or more correct newer idea. Someone will soon, Hawking keeps throwing them out.

Strange that in physics and maths 0 is generally a no go area, numbers do not work when 0 is involved, but when it comes to the big bang and black hole 0 is the first thing considered.

[Chris]

Well I know that all matter is practically empty space which is why super massive stars can implode into pulsars 10km across, but yes the whole universe into a grapefruit is a whole new level. The grapefruit sized universe I think is just how big it appeared for the smallest amount of time before expanding, as all the matter appeared from somewhere else I presume?

[Twiggles]

Men in Black, Universe in marble. I'm happy, anything else makes my head hurt! But if E=MC^2 and you had some sort of infinite energy that was condensed to a grapefruit then it could be converted to matter??

[Floater]

If it's hard to handle now, the Large Hadron Collider is really gonna mess things up ...

... or maybe make things darker?

[JamesF]

I don't understand physics, at all.

But how could the whole universe have originated from something the size of a grapefruit?!? Honestly, someone needs to be sensible about this, how could all the matter in the universe have been that condensed? It just doesn't make sense!

(I'm watching an Horizon programme I recorded the other week on the end of physics.)

James

Perhaps the "matter" of the current universe wasn't "matter" when it was grapefruit-sized?

James

[Qualia]

Who would have thought that all this:

Came from something so small as this:

Perhaps the idea of the universe starting out from a singularity is no less bizarre than assuming that you and I began our lives as infinitely small eggs.

[gooseholla]

And yet no matter how carefully you try to remove a segment to understand it, and no matter how sharp your spoon of investigation is, you're still gonna get whacked in the eye by cosmic grapefruit juice. Grapefruits don't like being probed it seems - real or cosmic!

John

 

[Cath]

zygote-embryo.jpg

Perhaps the idea of the universe starting out from a singularity is no less bizarre than assuming that you and I began our lives as infinitely small eggs.

Perhaps it's not the universe that's bizarre, but our biased/infinitely-limited thinking on it all

[Cath]

But how could the whole universe have originated from something the size of a grapefruit?!? Honestly, someone needs to be sensible about this, how could all the matter in the universe have been that condensed? It just doesn't make sense!

What would make sense to you James ?

[jambouk]

Yes, we all developed from a single fertalised cell, but that cell was given nutrients and building blocks from an outside source, the mother, who ate and drank and fed it. The remarkable thing about that, for me, is that the code and execution is crammed into DNA.

Cath - as someone said above, i appreciate that the vast amount of "space" inside an atom is empty, so can understand that matter as we know it could be compressed down to maybe less than 1% of its current volume. But to "compress" all the matter in the universe into the volume of a grapefruit just seems "daft" (no disrespect to particle physics intended). Ok, so maybe the whole universe did originate as a single entity highly compressed, but it why not an appropriately sized one; maybe the size of the solar system (i'm plucking at something as i don't know the mass of the universe or the volume of the solar system), but something much larger than a grapefruit. It just seems so utterly unplausable that everything would "fit in" a grapefruit. Maybe, like the embryo, ias it began to grow, it was fed from outside, sucking in everything around which may have been an earlier universe.

JamesF - yes, i get that matter may have been created, but again from what? The "Energy" needed to creat all that matter would again be so huge, how would it be concentrated in a grapefruit?

I think i'm far too ignorant for this topic, the whole grapefruit thing just doesn't sit well with my logical, non-physics, brain

Thanks for the replies.

James

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

I can just about get my head around the concept of our whole Universe being condensed to the size of a Grapefruit.Now if you'd said Kumquat,I'd have said "No way!"           

[Zakalwe]

I don't understand physics, at all.

That doesn't mean that it couldn't have happened though.

But how could the whole universe have originated from something the size of a grapefruit?!?

A singularity can have thousands or billions of solar masses condensed into an infinitely small point.

Honestly, someone needs to be sensible about this, how could all the matter in the universe have been that condensed? It just doesn't make sense!

So what if it doesn't? I'm sure that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to the minds of an evolved primate that's sitting on a rock orbiting a fairly typical Sun in a fairly ordinary galaxy.

[Cath]

You're not ignorant James. You're just like the rest of the human race, you're just trying to understand something no one else understands. The fact that you're asking the question shows you're not ignorant. Most people will never ask it, most people don't want to ask it, most people just want to know what's going to happen in the next episode of eastbenders.

Don't give up on the questions just because we'll never be able to provide our own answers that will ever make sense. The fact that the universe exists at all makes little sense.

[ronin]

What ever makes you think anyone really understands?

Believe me you know as much as most of the others do, possibly more as you are happy to say you do not understand so your thinking is not fixed.

If they ever work out that this universe came from a exo-dimensional being that dropped their blacmange and we are just a blob of that blacmange there are going to be a lot of embarrassed faces.

[JB80]

I wouldn't get too caught up on the grapefruit thing, I mean that is just one interpretation. Some suggest that at it's beginning the universe was infinitely small and infinitely dense whilst others say it appeared virtually from nowhere and a whole menagerie of other possible origin explanations in between.

Whether one is right or not and which one it may be they all are going to be boggling, even for those who are experts in the field.

But I agree with Cath, it's good that people can ask these questions and I believe it is important to try and understand it even if it's difficult.

[andrew65]

I was thinking the same yesterday I made a trifle and I topped it with a tin of squirty cream in a can but the cream that came out was much bigger than the tin I couldn't get my head around it so I just though about it for 2 minutes and eat it but I'd just eat a massive cooked dinner and I started thinking how did all that fit in me but I fell asleep then and that was that I might try this experiment again been as it's bank holiday

[Cath]

I'd just eat a massive cooked dinner and I started thinking how did all that fit in me but I fell asleep then and that was that I might try this experiment again been as it's bank holiday

The ever expanding mid-rift universe

[andrew65]

Lol not far wrong there cath ☺

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

A rather ironic joke that I read yesterday: "Thank God the Hadron Collider is being switched back on today.My life has been meaningless without it."      Made me laugh,but it also sums up the average person's outlook to this kind of research.

[Dave Lloyd]

If time and SPACE were locked within the singularity size is irrelevant.

[BobSki]

I wouldn't get too caught up on the grapefruit thing, I mean that is just one interpretation. Some suggest that at it's beginning the universe was infinitely small and infinitely dense whilst others say it appeared virtually from nowhere and a whole menagerie of other possible origin explanations in between.

Whether one is right or not and which one it may be they all are going to be boggling, even for those who are experts in the field.

But I agree with Cath, it's good that people can ask these questions and I believe it is important to try and understand it even if it's difficult. IMPOSSIBLE

There..... fixed it for you.