this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just watched a Tibees video about the possibility of a force like gravity potentially traveling through folded 4D space and affecting something before the light can reach it.

I realize this sort of thing has been thoroughly tested and debunked, but I can't get it out of my head. What if it's some force other than gravity? What if Earth just happens to be folded against some empty bit of space - and what if that were to change?

Like, I've thought about folded spacetime before, but always in the context of traveling between points (like the classic ant-on-paper thought experiment). I never really considered that something could in theory radiate a force (like gravity) in 4+ dimensions.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe you've seen this already, but if you haven't, here's a wonderfully terrifying thought:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-fundamentally-unstable/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

An interesting read, no doubt, but I still disagree with

Is this something we actually have to worry about?

Maybe.

The "threat" here would entail no negative emotions, no human (or other) suffering, just... nothing. Plus, it sounds like if the universe were indeed unstable/meta-stable, there's nothing we could change about it anyway. So of all the things I can worry about, I feel this deserves the least amount of worry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ice-9 for the fabric of reality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Tibees video

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.