# why is the universe a mystery? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 9, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630 "2011-12-09T16:22:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/21 "2011-12-09T20:51:01Z")
The universe will remain a mystery while love is a battlefield. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2011, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/22 "2011-12-09T21:19:15Z")
But, see, there are a bunch of fallacies in what you are saying there. (ETA this was to blood63…composed and didn’t send this about an hour ago) [QUOTE=blood63] I’ve seen some of the equations related to Quantum mechanics and they are challenging. [/QUOTE] A lot of things are challenging, but mostly because people lack specific skills and education to fully comprehend them. Brain surgery, for instance, is fairly complex and demanding, but doctors who specialize in it are quite able to do what they are trained to do. Same with flying a fighter jet, or even being a TV repairman. For a physics major, Quantum mechanics is challenging. For a lay-person it’s nearly incomprehensible. For a PhD physicist it’s pretty much old hat. > [@](#): > > Other equations that describe multiverses etc. are pretty crazy and are only accessible to a few great minds. Very few people study it. That said, I’ve seen it discussed at least at a high level on popular cable shows for years now, and it’s not all that hard to grasp at least around the edges. I understand it at least as much as I understand, say, brain surgery or plumbing. > [@](#): > > Are our brains too tiny to develop a math that describes the full nature of the universe? Not at all, especially considering that we HAVE developed the math to at least theorize about much that you are asking here. Whether every member of our species has the innate ability to understand it all is another matter, but people who specialize in this stuff certainly can at least describe the math. The trouble is that our collection of data is incomplete. Again, we’ve only been doing this for a relatively short period of time. Even if you take the entire history of our species you are only talking about a few hundred thousand years. The universe is over 14 billion years old. Give us some time. Say 1 ten trillionth of the total span of the history of the universe from beginning until today, lets say. If we can’t do it by then, well…perhaps we are slow learners. 😉 > [@](#): > > What really gets me here is the black hole. Why should this thing be beyond our comprehension? It is simply compressed matter. We have supercomputers do we not? Not at all. Black holes have been modeled, the math has been there for quite some time, and we’ve even been able to indirectly and even directly observe them, or at least observe their effects on the universe around them. Again, we’ve only been studying this stuff for short time…can’t expect us to figure out everything in less than a century, right? > [@](#): > > It may be more of a religious question after all. I’m not asking why it is so complicated but why it should it be so complicated? Well, why shouldn’t it be complicated? Why should the universe be simple and easy? I’m not sure what religion has to do with it…I would expect that if there was a God/god/gods/Super Beings of Ultimate Power™ then things would probably be…well, who knows? I’d guess simpler though. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/23 "2011-12-10T00:34:41Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > . . . Why are the deepest mysteries of nature beyond our grasp? Why couldn’t they be simple like F=ma? > [@blood63](#): > > . . . We have broken it all down to four fundamental forces. Why is the reconcilation of these forces so difficult? . . . > [@blood63](#): > > . . . Why should this thing be beyond our comprehension? . . . Be patient. It could have been worse. You could have been born before the invention of toilet paper. Think how you could have complained then. And feel free to add your bit to the process. Just a few hours a day for a few decades . . . ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/24 "2011-12-10T01:16:34Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > What really gets me here is the black hole. Why should this thing be beyond our comprehension? Our normal conception of reality is merely a computational convenience. Normal reality is populated with middling-sized solid objects that move around in space at relatively slow velocities. But we know from scientific investigation that the underlying structure of the universe is very different from our normal perception of it. “Solid” objects are really mostly empty space filled with tiny specs vibrating insanely fast. Things whiz around so rapidly that time flows at different rates. We’re not even sure if space is really 3-D or if reality is just a complicated wave function on a 2-D surface. The problem is that we experience the world with a brain that evolved to keep us alive on the plains of Africa. Our brain organizes our sensory input into a form that is useful for that purpose. It creates a simplified version of reality organized into comprehensible chunks where nothing is too big or too small or too fast or too slow and time flows in a simple forward direction. It’s a fiction that evolved in response to our needs in a particular very homogenous environment. But because it’s a fiction that’s very narrow in its applicability, we find it difficult to wrap our head around more accurate descriptions of how the universe works. ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/25 "2011-12-10T01:29:09Z")
The universe is under no obligation to be simple enough for you to understand. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/26 "2011-12-10T01:31:29Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > Well, you might say that we know so much about it but at its heart is the great mystery of where it all came from. We can start with the big bang theory and end with the mysteries of the nucleus of the atom. The large hadron collider may gives us clues but if this mega billion dollar project doesn’t solve it all, then what will? > Are we just not smart enough to put these pieces together. Is our math too simplistic for such a large problem. Has science got it all wrong from the get go? Do we just need more time? > Why are the deepest mysteries of nature beyond our grasp? Why couldn’t they be simple like F=ma? And what efforts have _you_ personally made towards finding out and putting together the answers you seek? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/27 "2011-12-10T01:53:52Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > We have broken it all down to four fundamental forces. Why is the reconcilation of these forces so difficult? > Newton thought he had it all figured out with his simple equations. > Now, its all so freekin’ complicated. Yeah, but – so what? Whenever we’re trying to do stuff Newton’s “simple equations” handled, the math still works as well as it ever did. We may as well be living in a Newtonian universe if we ever want to calculate, say, the trajectory of a bullet moving nowhere near the speed of light – sure as we can still construct a biplane that works exactly like one the Wright Brothers experimented with back when, sure as we can still build atomic bombs just like those pioneered and used during WWII. We’re still looking for the Higgs boson. We still have a lot to learn about quarks. But (a) we know more now about such particles than we did in the '40s, and (b) we can still do all of the '40s-style work we’d learned how to perform with protons and electrons and the rest. We haven’t yet unified electromagnetism and gravity – if that’s possible, and we don’t know whether it is – but even as we keep discovering more about both, we retain our knack for every electric and magnetic and gravitic trick we’d learned along the way. So what difference does it make if things get increasingly complex as we delve deeper? The simple answers are still as good at getting the job done, when making the same predictions and solving the same problems, as they did before. ---
**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:** [December 10, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/28 "2011-12-10T01:58:30Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > At the end of it, all theories should come togther into one grand idea (unified field theory?) to explain the big and the small of it. Why must this be so? It would be nice if it were, but why must it be? > [@](#): > > Where did the universe come from? > What is an atom made of? > There should be a full understanding of all of natural processes. What do yo mean “there should”. We know more than we knew 100 years ago and we will know more 100 years hence. What is so magical about this point in time that we “should” have this full understanding that you talk about. How did you determine what our understanding should be? ---
**Author:** ![pragmatic55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@pragmatic55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pragmatic55)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/29 "2011-12-10T09:43:27Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > Well, you might say that we know so much about it but at its heart is the great mystery of where it all came from. We can start with the big bang theory and end with the mysteries of the nucleus of the atom. The large hadron collider may gives us clues but if this mega billion dollar project doesn’t solve it all, then what will? > Are we just not smart enough to put these pieces together. Is our math too simplistic for such a large problem. Has science got it all wrong from the get go? Do we just need more time? > Why are the deepest mysteries of nature beyond our grasp? Why couldn’t they be simple like F=ma? F=ma is a brain kink. There is no such a thing as ‘force’ - what is a force? Why is it called force? It is really type of ‘oomph’ and\*\* all we’re saying is a certain ephemeral quality we call oomph varies to a degree only when it increases in weight or increases speed, but why this is the case, no one the hell knows.\*\* This deals with the brain, how it processes physical objects outside of us. Why do we see things as ‘seperate’ to begin with? Why are we able to distinguish lines and borders, contrasts, etc, when everything enters the eye in only 2-dimensions? (with a huge blind spot hole in the middle) You mentioned the nucleus, or the higgs, why do we actually think things ‘touch’ and are ‘single entites’ if we know, at a deeper level, this period placed before you –\> . really is not even close to being solid, and it is a kink in the brain to even suggest some unitary thing exists at the basis of everything. [it took u and me 60 words and we already know more about the nature of the higgs boson than higgs himself!] It becomes disheartening the more deep you go, but do it, why are certain people more ‘intrigued’ by questions about the universe (or try this, why are some people so plagued by its mysteries, to the point of ill health, while others can go about their trivial daily affairs, perfectly without care? which condition is better, which is worse? does the persons own disposition answering the question automatically determine their answer?.. physicists are like robots born with machineries they don’t understand, trying to use them to grasp things they still don’t understand, when what they are looking for is missed because they dont understand why they are robots, giving way to their impulses! (how easy is it to open a physics book about forces and nature and be awed, like a rock, rather than look in the mirror and see your own notion of a universe is based on a slither of bounced off wavelengths.. only a small percentage of the information thats really out there.. all the while radio infrared and, perhaps, other forms of energy, bombard us constantly, speaking to us of other things besides our petty sense detection systems, and we sit, on the earth, a small spinning rock, thinking our own solitary extrapolations while we stay here and calculate, will determine the nature of things. ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/30 "2011-12-10T11:58:44Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > We’re still looking for the Higgs boson. At least until Tuesday… maybe! ---
**Author:** ![blood63](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/97f17d/32.png) [@blood63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blood63)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/31 "2011-12-10T16:05:32Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Why must this be so? It would be nice if it were, but why must it be? > > What do yo mean “there should”. We know more than we knew 100 years ago and we will know more 100 years hence. What is so magical about this point in time that we “should” have this full understanding that you talk about. > > How did you determine what our understanding should be? I guess I am extrapolating from my own personal experience. Take a police investigation as an example. As you dig deeper you come closer to the truth. Certainly, the opposite is not true. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/32 "2011-12-10T17:35:21Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > I guess I am extrapolating from my own personal experience. Take a police investigation as an example. As you dig deeper you come closer to the truth. Certainly, the opposite is not true. But digging deeper in such an investigation can require increasingly complex science, right? It’s relatively easy to figure out that the guy was killed by someone who used a knife and wore size-12 shoes; it’s harder to learn the blood type of the killer, and harder still to run the DNA (as there was a time when we could do one but not the other, though learning how to do the latter didn’t remove our ability to do the former) – but let’s say the blood on the dead man’s knuckles _ **does** _ let us narrow it down further, and we get to the point where only one person could have done it; how do we “dig deeper” when the guy says he only killed in self-defense, or pleads insanity by saying he thought was slaying a hallucinated purple dragon? Is he lying? What really happened in that room? What words were said? ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2011, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/33 "2011-12-11T14:53:39Z")
Whoa whoa whoa. And here all this time I thought it was Colonel Mustard in the Ballroom with the Candlestick who did it. ---
**Author:** ![wayward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a87d85/32.png) [@wayward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wayward)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2011, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/34 "2011-12-13T10:01:31Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > Let me put it another way. > I’ve studied Newton’s equations and they are pretty simple. > I’ve seen some of the equations related to Quantum mechanics and they are challenging. > Other equations that describe multiverses etc. are pretty crazy and are only accessible to a few great minds. > Are our brains too tiny to develop a math that describes the full nature of the universe? > What really gets me here is the black hole. Why should this thing be beyond our comprehension? It is simply compressed matter. We have supercomputers do we not? > It may be more of a religious question after all. I’m not asking why it is so complicated but why it should it be so complicated? > I don’t suppose that is directly answerable but maybe someone can shed a bit of light. Have you ever tried to explain Newton’s equations to a dog? Never gonna happen. Similarly, there must be things in the universe that we just do not have the capability to comprehend. We’re much better at understanding abstract concepts than a dog, but it would be arrogant and naive to suggest that we’re _the absolute best that there can possibly be_. ---
**Author:** ![brittekland](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@brittekland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brittekland)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2011, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630/35 "2011-12-13T10:10:30Z")
Time… we need to know something before we can wonder about/figure out the next thing; Higgs Boson is one of those. We know a whole lot more than we did and we will know a whole lot more than we do now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-universe-a-mystery/605630.md?page=1)