What is the Universe Made of?

**ButterflyWoman** · 18th November 2010, 05:01 AM

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/what_is_t ... e_made_of/

Scientists have identified a number of elemental particles that are not known to be made up of smaller particles. But how do you wrap your head around the idea that something is made of nothing but...itself? Is it absurd, illogical, or just hard to understand?

Now suppose we someday determine that these elemental particles are indeed made of something else. It just pushes the question down a level. The moment we discover the new and smaller substance, we wonder what that is made of, and so on forever, or until...what?

Consider the possible answers. [...]

Very interesting blog post, and a very interesting comment discussion following.

**Beekeeper** · 18th November 2010, 10:27 AM

What does it say about me that when I read your thread title my first thought was, "Sugar and spice and everything nice."?

Interesting.

**ButterflyWoman** · 18th November 2010, 01:18 PM

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, perhaps?

**CFTraveler** · 18th November 2010, 02:48 PM

I don't know why this is an issue. I've read many articles like this, and I don't get the what's so perplexing about it. Oh well, I must be weird.
However, I do think that it's cool that it's Scott Adams talking about it.

**ButterflyWoman** · 18th November 2010, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by CFTraveler

Oh well, I must be weird.

Uh, yeah. Maybe just a little.

Originally Posted by CFTraveler

However, I do think that it's cool that it's Scott Adams talking about it.

Yes. He's got a huge readership (many of them geeks, unsurprisingly). Every now and then he slips something like this out there. Pretty cool.

**Tutor** · 18th November 2010, 04:42 PM

the Universe is made of You, and in you it is first as You.

**ButterflyWoman** · 18th November 2010, 05:03 PM

To quote Carl Sagan, "We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands."

**Tutor** · 18th November 2010, 05:11 PM

Originally Posted by CaterpillarWoman

To quote Carl Sagan, "We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands."

yeah! "billions and billions and billions"....i miss ole carl's pleasant voice of childlike imaginative wonder. much unlike all these 'fear' oriented deadly scenarios we are handed these days. the sun is gonna blow, asteroids are gonna destroy earth...yada yada yada.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

what we've lost in such 'humbleness', in just a short decade or so, is enough to cause weeping.

though, i suppose, that carl sagan didnt realize it, he sort of proses an epitaph to science as it was meant to be toward humanity's best. which in a short time has deluded us into disposable technological commoditys, deadly blackmarketed pharmaceuticals, unmanned weaponry killing wantonly from a hand control in the sterile distance, these of which we have no 'real' need nor want. :cry:

**eyeoneblack** · 21st November 2010, 03:29 PM

Nice thought, Tutor.

What is the Universe made of? According to Arthur Schopenhauer it is made of WILL and IDEA. That pretty much settles it for me.

But, what he means by that isn't so easy to grasp, and absolutely impossible if you don't read his book The World as Will and Idea.

**tor86** · 23rd December 2010, 07:18 PM

I got two theories. The first, is that maybe the whole universe is the imagination of god, or that it is created out of pure energy (God's energy), forming all levels of reality.

Like in a person's dream. It all seems 100% real for the person dreaming, and the landscape can be pretty convincing. Then it's like the buddhists think. Reality is a dream, but where do you come when you wake up? No one has been able to answer that, and probably no one never will, at least not here in this existence..