# Where are we? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 30, 2004, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925 "2004-09-30T20:53:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/1 "2004-09-30T20:53:10Z")
Disclaimer: I’ve had difficulty expressing this question to others in the past, i.e. finding exactly the right words to express it, and getting them to understand what my question is, but I’ll give it a try anyway. Many years ago, while looking down on the plains from a mountain on a clear day, a thought struck me: “Where \*is \* all this?” That is, I was standing on a mountain, in a certain country, on the Earth, in the Solar system, …, in the Universe. The problem is, I’m not interested in my coordinates within spacetime (or the universe, or whatever), I’m interested in \*where \* does this all exist? Of course, space has no meaning outside of spacetime, so “where” is not the right word, but I don’t have enough of a philosophical nomenclature toolbox to help me come up with another term. This question is independent of whether you believe in God or not. This universe exists (whether or not God created it), and my question is “where” does it exist? The answer I’m expecting from some people is “Spacetime is all there is, there is nothing outside it, so there is nowhere that Spacetime could exist _in_”. For me, this answer falls \*way \* short of helping me get to the bottom of this question I’ve had since that day on the mountain. Maybe it’s because I simply can’t fathom Spacetime being “all there is”. For example, scientists believe that the Big Bang was not matter exploding into space, but that in fact spacetime itself expanded from a single point to a very large volume. But, if something “expands”, it must be contained in something into which it expands. I just can’t visualize/conceptualize the concept of all-there-is expanding. Anyway, the main question I have is “Where are we? Where is all of this?” I try to forget this question since I think I can never find an answer, but once in a while something makes me remember it, and whenever I do, I get the visceral feeling that \*this \* is not all there is. Completely unscientific, of course, but there you have it. ---
**Author:** ![Dog\_Lady\_of\_OKC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90ced4/32.png) [@Dog\_Lady\_of\_OKC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog_Lady_of_OKC)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/2 "2004-09-30T20:59:33Z")
Perhaps where is not a place, but a condition. Can we be certain that what we perceive exists, is real. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/3 "2004-09-30T21:01:08Z")
There are a number of questions and concepts that humans are simply incapable of comprehending. I think this is one of them. Another is, what was there before the big bang (assuming you believe that theory), Our instinct is to assume that time was and is infinite in ‘length’ so there must MUST have been time before the big bang, but there simply wasn’t. But there are interesting ways to make the lack of an understandable answer _understandable_ such as - Asking what came before the BB is like asking what’s further north than north (if you carry on, you’re travelling south) ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/4 "2004-09-30T21:01:52Z")
Wow. Great question… We–the Earth, the stars, the sun, everything–are groups of matter clustered roughly together in a sea of… well, nothing. No matter, no particles, nothing. It’s hard to say how far this expanse of nothing goes out beyond the realms of matter (the edges of the universe, so to speak), what kind of parameters it has. It could be an infinite amount of nothing. The problem is, after that expanse of nothing, what do you have? Where are its limits? And limits to that expanse are what you’d need to find out where we are in this existence. Seriously mind-bending, dude. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/5 "2004-09-30T21:04:11Z")
> [@Kythereia](#): > > Wow. Great question… > We–the Earth, the stars, the sun, everything–are groups of matter clustered roughly together in a sea of… well, nothing. No matter, no particles, nothing. It just struck me that it’s not nothing. It’s space. I just percieved space as being a thing, a dimension (or 3) Nothing is things that don’t exist. But space does exist. ---
**Author:** ![kezami](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eb8c5e/32.png) [@kezami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kezami)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/6 "2004-09-30T21:09:31Z")
Isn’t there supposed to be a guy sitting cross-legged on top of a mountain, who apparently has all the answers. Guess you were on the wrong mountain. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/7 "2004-09-30T21:12:42Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > It just struck me that it’s not nothing. It’s space. I just percieved space as being a thing, a dimension (or 3) > Nothing is things that don’t exist. But space does exist. But what exists in space _is_ nothingness, between the stars and planets and stuff? Technically, it exists on an analytical level as ‘nothing’–we can classify it, give it a name. But… there isn’t anything there. It’s a weird concept 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dog\_Lady\_of\_OKC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90ced4/32.png) [@Dog\_Lady\_of\_OKC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog_Lady_of_OKC)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/8 "2004-09-30T21:16:11Z")
Is this the same concept as “zero”? Zero is something, yet nothing. However, depending on your mathematical application, zero IS something. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/9 "2004-09-30T21:26:54Z")
> [@Kythereia](#): > > Technically, it exists on an analytical level as ‘nothing’–we can classify it, give it a name. But… there isn’t anything there. But the way I managed to percieve it, there is something there, if there was nothing there the possibility of being there would be nil. I am trying to think beyond the level of matter (and energy and time)=something everything else=nothing. _nothing_ is something that doesn’t exist. Space exists. Otherwise we couldn’t be in it. So it is something. Or whatever. I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Dog\_Lady\_of\_OKC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90ced4/32.png) [@Dog\_Lady\_of\_OKC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog_Lady_of_OKC)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/10 "2004-09-30T21:27:58Z")
I’m leaving to rest my brain. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/11 "2004-09-30T21:37:23Z")
The only meaningful answer is that we do not yet have enough information to place our cosmos within a larger frame of reference . . . I guess it would be a “metacosmos” or “hypercosmos.” We know something of our solar system’s position within the galaxy and our galaxy’s position in our galactic cluster and the galactic cluster’s position relative to others – all that refers to material objects within the universe created by the Big Bang, which is the only one we know anything about. And we have a rough idea of how long ago the Big Bang was (13.7 billion years – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big\_bang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang)). There might be other universes produced by other Big Bangs, and someday we might discover a way to at least perceive their existence, but at present we don’t have any way. [flashing on the computer animation sequence at the end of _Men in Black_ (the first one)] On a smaller scale – the Michelson-Morley experiment ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley\_experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment)) seems to have established to everyone’s satisfaction (for now) that there is no rigid background of invisible luminiferous aether and, therefore, no “absolute” frame of reference or coordinate system within which we can definitely place the position or motion of material objects in this universe. “Where are we” is a question we can meaningfully answer by placing our planet relative to the other stars in the galaxy, and ourselves by latitude and longitude coordinates, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/12 "2004-09-30T21:40:17Z")
> [@Dog Lady of OKC](#): > > I’m leaving to rest my brain. Seconded. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/13 "2004-09-30T21:56:21Z")
I was watching “Origins” on NOVA last night, and there was one scene that sort of started off showing the vastness of our galaxy, in great detail, and then panned back to show that our galaxy is just one of “billions and billions” of galaxie and I started to think about the Bush/Kerry debates, and it kind of put things in perspective. If you know what I mean. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/14 "2004-09-30T22:01:05Z")
Wow, **BrainGlutton** have I ever agreed with you before? That was a good post. Spot on. Just think of a large yellow arrow right above your head pointing directly down at you. It says simply “You are here.” You probably have to hear the inflection on the word ‘here’ to get that this is a profound statement. Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/15 "2004-09-30T22:05:35Z")
Or a spinning blue diamond. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/16 "2004-09-30T22:11:35Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > It just struck me that it’s not nothing. It’s space. I just percieved space as being a thing, a dimension (or 3) > Nothing is things that don’t exist. But space does exist. It’s not space. Space exists inside the universe. The universe is expanding … but it’s not expanding INTO anything. Then there would be space out there, which isn’t the case. How about this: If you have a set with the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 and you add to the set the numbers 6,7,8 then the set has expanded … but what has it expanded into? There is measurable distance between numbers in the set, and the span from 1-8 is greater than the span from 1-5 was … but you didn’t have to “steal” space from anywhere to make the set bigger. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/17 "2004-09-30T22:13:30Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > There might be other universes produced by other Big Bangs, and someday we might discover a way to at least perceive their existence, but at present we don’t have any way. But, even if there were other universes, they would all have to exist “somewhere”. Where is that “somewhere” that contains all these things? ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/18 "2004-09-30T22:18:07Z")
> [@toadspittle](#): > > How about this: If you have a set with the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 and you add to the set the numbers 6,7,8 then the set has expanded … but what has it expanded into? If you envision a universe where “1,2,3,4,5” is all there is, you can’t simply add “6,7,8” to it, because in this universe, “1,2,3,4,5” is all there is; “6,7,8” doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/19 "2004-09-30T22:35:16Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > There are a number of questions and concepts that humans are simply incapable of comprehending. . This has always bugged me, and also made me think. We could be incapable of comprehending simply because we evolved a brain that is not smart enough to comprehend these issues. Or, we could be in a brain-in-a-vat situation, and some measures were taken to prevent this brain in a vat from realizing the situation it is in, even if it periodically had “questions” about reality. Of course, only the former possibility is scientifically acceptable, since we can’t prove the latter, but the latter possibility is less boring 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925/20 "2004-09-30T22:35:27Z")
**Polerius** forgive me if I have missed something, but it seems to me you answered your own OP in those last two posts. Simply expand your understanding of the 12345 set into the whole of the universe. No, the known universe, mind, but the universe as it exists, whatever that means. I think it makes the question you are struggling with different. If you ask what exists beyond the known universe, rather than where are we, you are asking two different questions with entirely different answers. Although, they may overlap. You simply have to draw a more discernable distinction between “Everything that is” and “Everything that is known”. My appologies if I have missed some nuance in your argument. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-we/266925.md?page=2)