this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
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    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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Prove me wrong, I dare you!

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[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

The burden of proof lies with the one making the claim. But cool thought though!

[–] WhiteTiger@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Prove me wrong, I dare you!

Well, the thing about atoms is that they arrange themselves in patterns to create those larger building blocks you speak of. Solar systems move much too slowly, so that by the time they would have arranged themselves into anything resembling the patterns exhibited by atoms, the heat death of the universe would have occurred.

The resemblance you see is orbit, but the major issue with uniting the orbit of atoms and the orbit of planets under one theorem is the scale of the forces at work. Gravity is many orders of magnitudes weaker than electromagnetic force holding electrons in place (and it needs to be that much stronger because of how much faster electrons move relative to their size than planets).

But now we're getting into string theory.

[–] Kata1yst@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Great point. We should also add for @Vupperware 's benefit that subatomic orbitals the way they're envisioning them are a lie we tell ourselves because quantum mechanics is too damn weird to think about.

In fact, probably the greatest argument against atoms as smaller scale worlds is the fuckiness (technical term) of quantum mechanics on that scale. "Worlds" existing only as a probabilistic distribution might make existence difficult.

[–] WhiteTiger@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

See I'm the opposite, the fuckiness at that scale is my greatest argument for their possible existence, accepting that their existence would be in a manner completely alien and unintelligible to me. There's SO MUCH fuckiness that anything is possible.

[–] Feweroptions@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] Vupperware@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Okay, so what if galaxies are synonymous to atoms in that they are the building blocks of something greater?

insert something here about protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks etc. being comparable to solar systems and planets.

[–] Feweroptions@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

Galaxies form galactic groups and clusters. Clusters can form into super clusters. Beyond that, you're looking at the universe itself as the next large collection of stuff.

[–] youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They are. Solar systems make up galaxies, which make up clusters, which make up super clusters, which make up galaxy filaments the largest known structures in the universe. Each one of these recursions make the one before it seem infinitesimally small.

[–] Vupperware@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So they must all form something… right? What is that something?

[–] youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The universe… which might actually be the inside of a giant black hole. Turns out the observable universe contains more than enough mass to create a black hole the size of the observable universe. This would also make sense because the Big Bang started as a singularity of infinite density, and what’s at the center of a black hole? A singularity of infinite density. This also would jive with the recent developments around the holographic universe theory because black holes have been shown to store all contained information holographically (basically all of the information is encoded on the 2d surface of the event horizon).

The theory that our universe is inside a black hole isn’t new, nor is it accepted as fact by the whole scientific community, but it is a genuine possibility. Then begs the question, is there another universe outside this black hole, and are there universes inside the black holes in our universe? It might be an infinite self contained loop of infinite universes.

Please note that all of this is way oversimplified.

[–] LexaPrime@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I guess that could also explain why we're only able to move in time in one direction? As in, time being the fourth dimension along which we are being pulled into that black hole of the higher, four-dimensional universe, with three-dimensional "surface" of the event horizon? Would that make any sense?