How many people are there in the Universe?

[Paddy]

Hey Jörg, I'm just the messenger! Shout at Mr Douglas Adams if you'd like!

[Fat Tone]

He'd have to shout pretty damn loud...more's the pity.

[gt40]

Stop it, all of you, yer giving me a headache!!

[jonnylane]

i smell an argument about infinity...

dont start on this; it'll go on forever!



im not funny, i know...

[Paddy]

[jonnylane]

As an example, consider the process of counting. We can imagine it going on infinitely if we do not count real sheep or apples, but simply produce concecutive numbers. Let us represent numbers (whole and positive) by strings of the symbol '1'; then the process is:

1, 11, 111, 1111, ... etc. infinitely.

When we say that this process is infinite, we mean that whatever is the current number, we can add one more '1' to it. Thus we deal with potential infinity.

To convert it into an actual infinity, we must imagine an object that includes in itself all whole numbers. We call it the set of all positive whole numbers. Suppose that such a thing exists. How would it be possible for an abstraction function F to distinguish it from other objects, e.g. from the set of all whole numbers with the exception of the number 10^{50}? Intuitively, F must examine the infinite number of the elements of the set. Since this is impossible to achieve in any finite time, the needed function F does not exist.

What we can do, however, is to create an objectification of the process which generates all whole numbers. A machine which initiates this process (and, of course, never stops) is such an objectification. This machine is a finite object. It can be made of metal, with an electric motor as the agent causing the process of work. Or we can describe it in some language addressing a human agent, but requirung only simple "mechanical" actions uniquely defined at each stage of the process. Such descriptions are known as {\algorithms}. If we use the English language for writing algorithms, the machine, to be referred to as N, could be as follows:

At the initial stage of the process produce the number '1'. At each next stage take the number produced at the preceding stage and produce the number obtained by adding '1' to it."

Now we can say that the set of whole numbers is N. We have no objections against sets defined in this way. Their meaning is crystal clear. Their infinity is still potential.

objectification my ass.
That is not a word.

[GNEP]

you're gonna start talkin about dem damned alephs next

[Fat Tone]

or this...?

http://einstein.stanford.edu/index.html

[jonnylane]

Originally posted by Tony Andrews
or this...?

http://einstein.stanford.edu/index.html

Strange site that one (gravity probe b)

some good "technical" acronyms though:


A analysis - not a good acronym

ALRM Attitude Reference Platform Launch Restraint Mechanism - i'd get confused with "ALARM"

CD Compact disc - very technical
EOL End of Life - oh very nice
L Launch -
L Left \
L Length |
L Level |- confusing!
L Liter |
L Low /
L Lumen -
STK Satellite Tool Kit - every astonaut should have one
U.S. United States - buh

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
How can the universe be infinite when space is curved? It's sure to come back on itself sooner or later, in which case it must be finite.

Starting at the big bang, all the matter in the universe was pulled gravitationally into a minute space at such a rate that the space between the particles was eliminated. The result of the explosion was sending all the debris, which was blown into subatomic particles, most of which combined into hydrogen atoms. Today, at the farthest reaches of the universe, there are still clouds of hydrogen atoms that have not collided or been pulled into gravitational fields or slowed down by them. It would seem reasonable that these pioneer atoms that have travelled farthest from the centre form a sphere of unimaginable radius (curved). I would guess that, as their kinetic energy is eventually dissipated by collisions and gravitational pull, one day, in a few zillion years, they will stop and go into reverse gear and all matter will be pulled back again to the centre for the next big bang. However, I'm not worrying about that happening, at least today

What I'm saying is that the universe, as we understand it, can never be infinite. It is only out brains that are too small to be able to comprehend its finite size, so we prefer to think of it as quasi-infinite.

Only God is infinite, if she exists.

Only God? Not time or the mind?

God is a fabrication of humanity and humans have only been on this planet for a tiny fraction of a percent of the time since the beginning of it's existance (it it ever just began that is). So God is infinite? I say the whole "God" theory is still in it's infancy, but if the mind is infinite than I can see how you can think that the God concept is too.

See what I don't get is that there's always a beginning to everything. Why? Why do we (us humans) ALWAYS say that there's a beginning to everything? Especially in regards to the Universe (something we know little about anyways). I mean there's so much about it we don't know, and what's even funnier is we barely know much about our on planet yet we can say which such confidence that the rest is so, like the big bang. But I guess it's one perspective though.

[Helevitia]

4

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Paddy


Any other fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy here?

Of course, where else would we learn how to throw ourselves at the ground without thinking about how much it is going to hurt

Dave

[Paddy]

Pad's off to find a good quote for his sig

[Paddy]

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.


--Life, The Universe and Everything
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.


--Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
The history of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now so complicated that every time I tell it I contradict myself, and whenever I do get it right I'm misquoted. So the publication of this omnibus edition seemed like a good opportunity to set the record straight--or at least firmly crooked.


--Douglas Adams
You barbarians! I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'l have you hung, drawn, and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until you've had enough. And then I will do it again! And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will JUMP on them! And I will carry on jumping on them until I get blisters, or I can think of anything even more unpleasant to do...


--Arthur Dent
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continuously stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right?


--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?
Ford: We're safe.
Arthur: Oh good.
Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of.


--HHGTG
Charming man. I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one...


--Arthur Dent
He was experiencing the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of colored dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses.


--THGTG
Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The arguement goes something like this:


"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.

--THGTG
Arthur: You know, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.
Ford: Why, what did she tell you?
Arthur: I don't know, I didn't listen.

"Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines, one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe."


--HHGTG
THE UNIVERSE:
4. Population


It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.


--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Don't you want to interrogate the prisoners, sir?" he squaled.

The Captain peered at him in bemusement.

"Why on Golgafrincham should I want to do that?" he asked.

"To get information out of them, sir! To find out why they came here!"

"Oh no, no, no," said the Captain. "I expect they just dropped in for a quick jynnan tonnyx, don't you?"

"But they're my prisoners! I must interrogate them!"

The Captain looked at them doubtfully.

"Oh all right," he said, "if you must. Ask them what they want to drink."

A hard cold gleam came into Number Two's eyes. He advanced slowly on Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.

"All right, you scum," he growled, "you vermin..." He jabbed Ford with the Kill-O-Zap gun.

"Steady on, Number Two," admonished the Captain gently.

"What do you want to drink?!!" Number Two screamed.

"Well the jynnan tonnyx sounds very nice to me," said Ford. "What about you, Arthur?"

Arthur blinked.

"What? Oh, er, yes," he said.

"With ice or without?!" bellowed Number Two.

Oh, with, please," said Ford.

"Lemon??!!"

"Yes, please," said Ford, "and do you have any of those little biscuits? You know, the cheesey ones?"

"I'm asking the questions!!!!" howled Number Two, his body shaking with apoplectic fury.

--THHGTG
Number Two's eyes narrowed and became what are known in the Shouting and Killing People trade as cold slits, the idea presumable being to give your opponent the impression that you have lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem.


--HHGTG
Fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you're going to die if you don't. That way you stay ahead. The secret to healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.


--Ford Prefect

He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn't stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away.

During the following weeks Ford Prefect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter Q into a privet bush.

--The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

[drslump]

Originally posted by Brian Ellis
Only God is infinite, if she exists.

Why "she"? I mean, it's an english thing that God is female? or is it that you imagine it like a woman?
if so how would her look like? Natasha Kinski, Nichole Kidman, Opra ...

later, Ivan