Declan Fox wrote:
> Adrian
>
>
> back to models of the universe---
>
> what happens beyond the--what is the term for it??--observable
> universe is, I think, another story. Sorry, I am probably not
> explaining that bit well but if the universe is 100 million years old
> (for example) then we cannot see further out than 100 million light
> years. Have I got that right? And if so, then what goes on beyond that
> distance is impossible for us to observe. Or did Hawking show that
> basically there is bugger all farther out? I forget.
>
A useful phrase for this is "light cone". This is a proper cone,
applying to future as well as to past. What is inside the cone is, at
least so far, the observable universe. Supraluminal events would give
at least an appearance of time-travel, whether massive or informational,
and would be a good contender for manipulation of causality or
acausality, which I would be inclined to take for the moment as
indications of at least weakly godlike properties and behaviour.
Specifically, AFAICS, action like that is equivalent to timetravel, and
presumably allows an oracle, whereby reality can be iterated until the
desired effect is attained. There is some reason for thinking that more
than one of those would not fit well into a universe, and in that
instance the universe includes everything outside any arbitrary light
cone as well as the inside.
> So I can argue that he/she/it is simply too way out of our ken for us
> to have any hope of spotting him with our equipment.
But to influence us, the entity must have, and actually display,
properties as above.
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