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Sorry, this still off topic.

xSadar, just thought I would present some VERY limited scientific backing for my statements and tickle your pet peeve a little more

There is a large amount of known data that supports the idea of a finite amount of matter and energy in the universe. Gravity is one of the biggest indicators of the amount of matter in the universe. Given our current understanding of physics, which is admitedly not complete, gravity is a force exerted by all matter that extends across the entire universe. No matter how far away two particles are in the universe, they still exert a force on each other. At this very moment the matter that makes up your body is being grivitationaly influenced by evey other piece of matter in the universe. Based on this alone there has to be a finite amount of matter in the universe. If there was an infinite amount of matter in the universe and that matter gravitationaly affected all other matter in the universe, and the effects of gravity are cumulative, every bit of matter would experience the effects of an inifinite amount of gravity. That would in essence tear all matter apart as happens inside black holes with much less than infinite gravity.

Energy is something that we cannot measure directly since we can only measure its effects on matter. These observed effects, such as heat, and radiation, seem to point to a finite amount of energy as well.

Our understanding of phyisics is admittedly not complete or totaly acurate, but based on our current knowledge there should be a finite amount of both matter and energy, and while the amounts of both have not been calculated, ratio of matter to energy has been calculated roughly.

The notion of an inifinite amount of space is a little less concrete since I think our definition of what exactly space is has a lot of holes still.

It is not true that an infinite amount of matter would result in an infinite amount of gravity. I'll give an example: Consider a particle with mass M at some point in an (Euklidian) space and an infinite sequence of particles with mass m, arranged in a straight line, with distance r between two neighbours and the first particle, looking like this:

M <-r-> m <-r-> m <-r-> m <-r-> m <-r-> m ...

Now compute the effect of gravity on M. The k'th mass m particle attracts M with a force G M m / (k r)^2. Sum this over k from 1 to infinity, the result is Pi G M m / 6r^2, which is obviously finite.


Let's apply this result to the universe, but in a more relativistic way. As I stated somewhere in this thread, cosmological modelling is mainly solving the Einstein equations. A very simple model assumes that space is homogeneous and isotropic, i.e. there are no differences between different locations or different directions. Of course this is not true on small scales, since it is a huge difference if you are in free space or inside some star, but we assume it is true for very large scales, so each point of the universe has the same energy density (which is in fact the same as matter - there is no difference) and pressure (which is computed in the sense of thermodynamics - but that would lead much to far to explain here).

It is possible to solve the Einstein equations for this model. The first result is that the universe is not static. Its geometry is time dependant and one finds that there has to be a finite age of the universe. There has to be a global time origin which is known as the Big Bang. The second result is that there are three possible solutions, depending on the energy density, as I stated in this thread.


So what has been calculated based on observations? First of all, there is Hubble's constant, which is the ratio of distance and speed of far galaxies. It corresponds to the inverse age of the universe. Using the model above, it is possible to calculate the ratio of energy density and critical energy density, which is close to 1. The second thing is the density of visible matter, also knows as stars. It is about 5 percent of the total energy density. By observing rotating galaxies one finds that there has to be much more matter inside these galaxies than visible matter, because the gravity of the visible matter is too small to keep the galaxy together at high rotation speeds. Another observation is that galaxies are like lenses, by curving spacetime through their gravity. These effects are evidence for the existence of the so called dark matter, which is about 30 percent of the total energy density. The missing energy is called dark energy.


If you are interested in cosmology, I recommend some books. Of course it depends on your scientific background - since I don't know about that, choose what you like.

One of the best books for beginners is "A brief history of time", written by Stephen Hawking. He's my favourite author and cosmologist.
A nice introduction on the web can be found at http://www.superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo2.html It explains in more detail what I summarized above.

If you like to go deeper into cosmology (and maybe solve the Einstein equations?), I recommend reading a good book about general relativity. Unfortunately the best books I know are in german... Einstein's original article is also quite interesting.
A simple solution to the Einstein equations is shown at http://www.superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo2a.html This is the mathematical way.
There are also lots of tutorials on the web, but general relativity requires a lot of mathematical knowledge. Don't try to understand it unless you know about manifolds, tensors and tangent spaces!


One final thing: In general relativity, spacetime is thought of as a manifold, which is well-defined. Space is finite if and only if a certain integral over this manifold is finite, which can be computed for the models above. So there is an exact definition of finite or infinite space.

Actually the Matrix wouldn't need to simulate the whole universe, but only those parts which the humans can perceive. If none of the humans are visiting Antarctica, then there is no need for the machines to simulate Antarctica. Cells on a microscope slide would not need to be simulated until a human is actually looking through the microscope. And so on.

There are lots of corners that the machines enslaving the humans could cut. After all, the only real purpose of the Matrix was to keep the humans' brains active so that their bodies could continue to generate electrical power.

We are not into matrix, so lets make better use of this BBS, put some better quenstions, which will improve the knowledge base, rather then some time pass Morpheus activities.

This Thread will be continued here, so as not to offend Chase, or the others:http://www.osdever.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1224
Any further discussions on the Matrix, please post them here. Thank You

Humans  created machines which as smart as humans.

But now humans have realized their mistake and successfully found the bugs in the machine.

In the real world man is slowly taking over the machines.

The machines are not using us for power.

They are using human intelligence in the matrix to create a machine smarter than humans.

Like a mobius strip...