Something very different.

The real question is: Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?

Jonas Otter

If one could travel in a straight line at the speed of light, both the part of universe behind you and the part in front of you would start to recede due to the fact the universe is expanding faster than light can travel. That's terrifying but true. Also, if you were able to accelerate to the speed of light, you'd never be able to stop again because time, from your frame of reference, would stop completely.

Andrew Sloniger

Yes. Add an extra dimension to the paper, make it spherical, and the line would meet itself.

And what's beyond this reality (the ball). There isn't a beyond, not even empty space.

You're drawing the line on a flat piece of paper. If line was drawn on a ball, the line would go around the ball until it meets its beginning. Maybe reality has an extra fourth physical dimension, so if you travel far enough in a straight line you'll come back to your beginning (wrap around).

It's quite odd to think that the Hitchiker's Guide now exists in the form of our large screen smartphones.

Big Clive

Don't Panic...

Closest thing I can think of at the moment...sleeping without dreams. Just a wait I was there. Now I'm here (in time). Otherwise...that idea doesn't click well with my brain.

Whereas everything is something, nothing is not. I find that a difficult concept to understand. Nothing.

Yeah, no alcohol.... but a heavy dose of shrooms,

Michael Gilchrest

I have to take exception to the assertion that "many mathematicians have a faulty understanding of 'infinite'" and that mathematics "plays fast and loose with infinity... " The concepts of infinity and the the infinitesimal have been at the foundation of mathematics since at least Newton's day. Perhaps you are thinking of "applied mathematics."

Rob Clark

You have also caused me to remember something else that I've lost many nights sleep over. If you measure your line with a tape measure in inches, or millimeters (for you Europeans) It's pretty clear you'll start with 1, then go to 2, 3,4,5,6...etc. And if you imagine an integer number of millimeters/centimeters/inches/miles - you get infinity when you count them all up, if God gives you an infinite life span (even then, it wouldn't work, but you get the idea). Now between 1 and 2 inches on your tape measure is 1/2 an inch, and 1/4 an inch, and 1/8 an inch, etc - all the way to Zeno's paradox infinity. There's an infinity of fractional bits between any two numbers on your tape measure. So clearly - that number of fractional bits has got to be larger than the integer numbers on your tape measure, right? So is the infinite number of fractional bits bigger than the infinite number of integers? Erm. Um. Yep. Holy cow. Please dismantle more power supplies and bring us back to this planet.

iceowl

This is why actual cosmology and particle physics is so cool. Every physicist on this planet (anyway), has asked the same question. And the truth of it is - nobody really knows the answer to - what is infinity? Nobody. And the theoretical physicists scratch their heads and have to say to you - nobody knows. Of course - just because "nobody knows" doesn't mean something "isn't." To the best of everybody's knowledge, though - unless you master antigravity or gravitational propulsion - you can't go faster than the speed of light if you're made of "stuff." And because we're all "stuff," we can't see beyond what's 13.5 billion light years away - because best as we can tell (using stars as clocks) - that's how old the universe is. It doesn't mean there's no "stuff" farther than 13.5 billion light years away - it's just that the "stuff" that's that far away has only now the possibility to reach us. Farther "stuff," can't get to us - no matter what. So - physicists don't even ask the question: 'what's outside our "light cone?"' Because until we reverse-engineer all UFOs - we have no way to ever find out. Questions we have - to which the answer is - we can't ever find out without new physics - simply don't get asked because our current physics is so incomplete we don't even bother with the non-physics stuff (and : what's beyond the light cone? is non-physics stuff). Now - questions we do need answers to - which are physics and are still absolutely mind-blowing - include - why is it that as far as we can tell, we can only see about 30% of all "stuff?" 70% of "stuff" in this universe is dark matter, or dark energy - and we know it's there because we see what it does, but we have no clue how to "see" it (hence the moniker "dark"). Think of that - if you want to lose sleep forever - we can't really understand 70% of things IN OUR OWN VICINITY but we know it's there. Thanks for provoking thought. Sweet dreams.

iceowl

I almost drew a vertical line next to the earth and said "And this is the Planet Earth viewed from the side." But I thought it might spoil the real point of the video.

Big Clive

Dude! It's the UNIVERSE. It was worth three sheets of paper.

Big Clive

But Clive! You missed the fact that the Earth is flat! :)

To put the counter argument as simply as your hypothesis: "There is no such thing as a straight line". You only have to look at the stuff you measure every day to realise everything is on a log scale and the faster, further, deeper or darker the more bent it gets.

I’ve been pondering recently about the idea that our brains are “spirit tuners”. That there are levels of consciousness floating in the universe and our brains “simply” evolve to “tune one in” during our brief existence. When we die, The conciseness continues but doesn’t “exist” in the body anymore, and has to wait around for a new compatible brain to be formed at conception to tune it back in. All of the memories and such are local to the body though. I should write a movie :)

The Griffiths Family

Lets meet the meat!

Steven Raith

At the end of the universe is Milliways!

Michael Thompson

Clive stop wasting paper 😂

Does space exist when there are no particles to define it? Imagine that you are in a universe that is completely empty apart from a single electron. Imagine you are that electron. You have only your own diameter measurable as a dimension because there is no other object to define a distance to or from you. It isn't possible or even relevant to say if you are stationary or moving at a constant velocity. You can not feel an acceleration because there are no other particles to interact with. You are essentially in a universe the size of the diameter of an electron. OK, now imagine a second electron in your universe. There is now a dimension which is the distance between you and the other electron. Because you have similar charges you will mutually repel and shoot off in opposite directions. As you fly apart, the measurable universe grows to the size of the distance apart you are. Because there are no other references, other than you and your electron friend, the universe is growing at the rate of your relative velocity. The problem with the idea of 'infinite universe' is that most people (and that includes many scientists and mathematicians) have a faulty understanding of what 'infinite' actually means. Infinity is not a number or a distance. It is just the property of something to always have the possibility of being bigger. It might sound like playing with words but the difference is an important one. Take for instance the paradox of Hilbert's infinite hotel. It is only paradoxical if you have the idea that infinity is a very big number. The paradox relies on the concept of 'reaching infinity' when the very definition of infinity is that which is unreachable. Mathematics plays fast and loose with infinity by using the convenient fiction that if it WAS just very large but reachable, their equations can be fudged to yield useful answers. Convenient fictions are unquestionably useful, like conventional current flow and the square root of minus one. Paradoxical stuff starts popping up however when you start accepting the fiction as fact. The truth of the matter is most likely to be that there IS an edge to the universe if you define the word universe to be that which is measurable as described in the first paragraph. As the matter of the universe expands, it defines more measurable space. The infinite nature of the universe is that it can continue expanding and however big it gets, you can still add more. There is no hard edge or impenetrable barrier just unoccupied space that is not measurable because it has no matter to define it. I've struggled with getting a mental model of infinity since my days as a physics undergraduate in the 1970's. No matter how much you can define it with equations, like quantum electrodynamics, if you are happy with it, you have not understood it properly.

Dave Davies

"But don't worry about it, because everything is just fine".........I love the certainty and total optimism in that final comment.

John Carr

The description of the whoosh sound and a jet of flames does sound like a lithium battery failing. The power tool ones have a similar capacity and current delivery to racing batteries. I wonder what triggered the failure and if the person who had it is OK. (Noting that they were arrested and then released.) Perhaps it had been modified for another use or refilled with a different cell arrangement.

Big Clive

UNREALATED.. Seeing many are crying cover up of last nights ‘explosion’ incident in the UK... 🙄 Clive we need you to show the world that those newer high capacity, higher voltage (50+v nowadays?) versions ie DeWalt etc. Can be dangerous when they decide to go pop.. make it happen, no one has really done it on YouTube!

You nailed it, Clive! The universe is beyond our understanding. The cool thing there is that there is infinite opportunity for learning and expanding our knowledge as our awareness grows. My personal belief is that corporeal creatures could overcome the limits of matter and become beings of pure energy given time. Sigh.

Michael Thompson

From my research the best that you can do is fall in love.

Michael Thompson

Contemplating the universe and my place in it doesn't bother me too much, but what always gives me the willies is seeing photos of astronauts doing spacewalks or similar, and realizing how very thin Earth's atmosphere really is.

Jeremy Impson

What if you're simply caught between the moon and New York City?

Not all scientists think in the scope that you describe. Also, the universe can’t be infinite if it had a beginning. It may only appear infinite to us trapped in three dimensions.

Jeff Groves

Fun time activity: getting people with the fear of heights to develop the existential fear of falling upwards infinity. My partner taught me that one since he did it to himself. Only that I found it funny because I'm a terrible person.

Kadah

We can also learn this from extrapolating a piece of fairy cake.

Kadah

Oh and btw it is not true that you lose confidence and motivation and commit suicide after thinking about these things — it was the very opposite for me at the end since I basically lost all of my inspecific fears by that.

L3P3

Something refreshingly different, really. As a matter of fact, I am just writing on a book about multiverses these days. It is quite a coincidence. I also thought about these things when I was young. Other people tended to say it was a waste of energy but I went on thinking and researching so here we are now close to the actual science of existence. I am interested in how everything works, basically. For me, electronics is just one great topic of many.

L3P3

we all known the world is flat and its in a bubble created by god 6000 years ago, NOT!!!!! lol

Steven Cox

This is the Planiverse and you are Yendred.

Rob Clark

Does it continue forever or is it just beyond our comprehension>? is infinity just a label for something we can't measure or understand? great video.. cheers

Richard Boyce

Watching that has resulted in me needing a Dark & Stormy. Too bad I don't smoke weed but that's a choice I may have to reconsider. :-)

Howard Simons

Clive, re-record this using a DECTalk emulator and I'll believe you.

Rob Clark

The infinite nature of the universe is something that I experienced as a young kid. I later recall seeing science programs presenting scientific theories that looked very silly indeed, including the donut theory. A real scientist would just accept that the universe is infinite until proven otherwise with a valid reason. And many scientists DO understand its infinite nature.

Big Clive

I don't understand the point of this video. Thinking about "big subjects" is fun, but you seem to spend a lot of time attacking scientists for believing things that I'm not sure they believe at all. What you call the "known universe", scientists call the "observable universe". That the universe may be infinite is quite a well accepted idea. (See: "The Hidden Reality", Brian Greene.) You talk about "human physics" but physics has nothing to do with us. Science works by hypothesizing about the universe and testing those hypotheses. Science is skeptical. Scientists don't "believe". They deduct. I fear you may anger physicists watching this, by trying to put words in their mouths.

David Glover-Aoki

I'm not sure too many kids contemplate the infinite nature of the universe in primary school.

Big Clive

Deep thoughts with Big Clive

Lostngone