Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Classic episode - How big is the Universe?

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Does the Universe go on forever, or have an end? What shape is it?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials easier.

Complex problem solving takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the. iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance brof trying to tell us how to spend our own money? No thank you. Instead, check out Brown Ambition. Each week, I, your host, Mandy Money, gives you real talk, real advice with a heavy dose of I feel uses, like on Fridays when I take your questions for the BAQA. Whether you're trying to invest for your future, navigate a toxic workplace, I got you. Listen to Brown Ambition.

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.

This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe, save my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of The Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grasias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there.

Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending With a little bit of chisement and a whole lot of laughs And of course, the great bibras you've come to expect Listen to the new season of Dacius Come Again On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast Inside Space is there a place where the matter ends And there's just empty space

And then past that space, is there something else that's not space? Can space have an edge, right? And so that to me is the concept of the universe, all the matter and all the space. Okay. Things beyond that space, if there is anything there, I would consider not part of our universe. Oh, I see. So we could, like, there could be stuff, and maybe at some point we run out of stuff, but there could still be space.

There could still be space. Hi, I'm Daniel. And I'm Jorge. And we're here to explain the universe. Today we're going to talk about the biggest question in the universe. The biggest question you could even possibly imagine. How big is the universe? Like, really, how big is it?

Like, does it go on forever? Is it just a little bit bigger than we can see? Does it wrap around on itself? Is it some other crazy thing? That's what we are going to try to tackle today. We went out in the street and we asked people what they thought about this, the biggest of questions. Oh, man.

It's pretty big. I'm pretty sure it's, like, unmeasurable because, like, we don't really know much about it. So I'm going to say, like, pretty big. Like, it's really unmeasurable. 10 to the something particles, I don't know. Do you want, like, a number? Whatever you think is appropriate.

I remember reading somewhere that's like, it's always growing, so it's like infinite, right? So most people seem to feel like, wow, the universe is pretty big. Some people thought it was like infinite, and some people thought, hmm, just really big. Nobody thought it was small. Nobody's like, I can see the end of it. It's just about, it's only my town. It's only as far as I can see.

That's right. And actually that's really interesting because I bet like, if you ask prehistoric man, how big is the universe, they would just say, like, say, like, look around you. This is what there is. Right, right. And they couldn't even really imagine. So let's break it down. There's all the stuff, right?

There's particles. There's matter, right? You know, there's matter and energy and all that stuff. Stuff that you feel and touch and see. But I think there's one other component, which I think is a little less usual for people to think about, and that's the space. Space, okay.

I would think of the universe as all the stuff and all the space that it's in. Okay. Space meaning, like the stuff, we can actually move around it. Yes, the place we can move around in, the space we have. At some point, that space ends. Yeah, space could end, right? Now, somebody out there listening, you smart, good-looking, listener, you might be thinking, what? How could space possibly end?

He's talking about space like it's a thing, like it's water, and the fish could run into the end of it or something. But briefly, we should just remind people that space, is not just emptiness. It's not just a backdrop. It's not just the nothing in which stuff happens. It's stuff. It has properties. It can bend and expand and ripple and do all sorts of weird, crazy stuff. And so we know that it's a thing. It's a dynamic, physical thing that can do stuff. So we have to consider the possibility that it ends. That's part of the question. How big is the universe is how much space is there and can it end? Right. It's like for fish and we're asking how big is the ocean?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Exactly. How big is the ocean? I wonder, do you think fish wonder about how big is the ocean? I think fish wonder about not getting eaten by other fish. Probably the main preoccupation. Right.

And fish might also wonder, like, are there other oceans, right? That's the multiverse for fishes. But in our universe, you're saying space might have a limit to it. Like there might be an end to. it. Yeah, exactly. Is it like a wall or is it like a, what does it mean to be at the edge of space? Well, there could be an edge to space.

And to think about what that means, we have to think about what space is a little bit more. Like, we have to think about whether space can curve or if space is flat, right? Right. And this kind of stuff is really hard to think about in three dimensions. Like, what does it mean for space, X, Y, Z space, right? X, Y, Z being one, two, three dimensions to curve. Really hard to think about it because it's hard for us to think about space curving in some higher dimensions. So usually it's best if we think about it in two dimensions, so we can think about it as curving in that third dimension.

So imagine that we are two-dimensional scientists. We're like living on a sheet of paper where we can only move in two dimensions like X and Y. And then we can ask, those two-dimensional scientists can ask, is our space curved? Is our paper universe curved? And that changes the answer. Like, say you discover that it is curved, and it has a positive curvature. Positive curvature would be like on the surface of a sphere or a planet, right? If it has positive curvature, that has consequences for its shape, because if it's positively curved, it can't go on forever, right?

Like, the Earth. You're standing on the surface of the Earth, and you know the Earth is curved, and that means the Earth can't be infinitely big, right? Right, right. So you're saying at the edge of the universe, maybe the space. space is curved and or maybe it's a possibility you have to consider that maybe space is curved everywhere if the universe had curved space and it was positively curved that would mean that it could be sort of looped on itself very naturally the same way the surface of a planet is and you could travel around it through space and not really get to the edge right like where is

the edge of the earth well the earth the surface of the earth the two-dimensional surface doesn't have an edge. Like people in prehistoric times, maybe they saw the earth around them, and it thought, oh, man, this is pretty big. It probably goes on forever. But they didn't know that actually the land curved. That's right.

And it turns out that we're actually kind of on this sphere. And if you keep going in one direction, you kind of loop back around. That's right, yeah. And it's not like you get to the edge and you get magically transported back to where you started or something. There's no shortcut or magic there.

On the surface of the earth, you keep walking, you come back to where you started. It's just connected back onto itself. Exactly. That's the key. So that's a possibility for space, like space that we're in could kind of like, if you keep going in one direction on a spaceship, you'll come back around to the same spot. Exactly. And the way you said it was perfect, it's the connection.

So we like to talk about space by using this analogy of living in two dimensions and thinking about it being curved in a third dimension. Now, pop that up to three dimensions, right? because we know our space is at least three dimensions. Pop it up and pop in an aspirin because now I'm getting it. Did we work on getting ad built to support this podcast

because we're sending them a lot of customers? Oh my God, that could be a great sponsor. That's right. So pop that up into your three-dimensional space, right? And then you can ask, well, what does it mean for three-dimensional space to be curved? Well, it's not that we imagine that it's curved in some other fourth-distance.

dimension. It's not that it's hanging in four-dimensional space and has a curvature in it. It's how space is connected. We call it intrinsic curvature because it reflects how one part of space is connected to another part of space. So without hanging in four dimensions, you can be connected in a way that space is curved and you loop back on yourself without ever really noticing. So when we talk about the size of the universe, we mean that it has maybe some kind of edge, but maybe that edge is not like how we think of an edge as a stub or a wall. maybe it's just kind of looped around until the size of it is kind of like this

blob of space. Right, yeah, exactly. And the possible answers for the size of the universe depend on how it's curved, right? If it's positively curved, then it can only really be like a big sphere, which means it's finite, right?

But what if it's negative, right? What if it's not, right? If it's flat, if space is flat, like it doesn't curve intrinsically, then it could potentially go on forever. If space is negatively curved, that's like the shape of a saddle, it's a negative curvature, then it could have all sorts of really weird shapes, but it could still be infinite, right? Okay.

So the options are infinite or not infinite? That's right. That pretty much categorized the options for everything. How big is your house, Jorge? Is it infinite or not infinite? I want to see that option actually on Zillow from that. Yeah, I know. I would love to have a infinite square feet house.

Would you really? Then I have to clean it all. And you have to look forever for your kids' shoes, right? Where'd you put them? I put them in room number somewhere between here and infinity. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about the possibilities of what could be beyond the observable universe. I mean, we talked a little bit about before, about maybe it's infinite, maybe it's not infinite.

Do we really have no idea whether the actual universe is just a little bit bigger than the observable universe, much bigger than the observable universe, or it could be infinite? We really have sort of no indication of which possibility it is. We have a few clues. They're kind of indirect. And I want to talk about that some more. But first, let's take a quick break. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown ambition.

This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking. up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months. You can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just

stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's HoneyGerman. And my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment. With raw and honest conversations, with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters, sharing their real stories of failure and success.

You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras, come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues

affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. Yeah? But the whole pretending and cold, you know, it takes a toll on you.

Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum,

the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life,

impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their course. courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost

always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first

thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel. It's how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstyles play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. One clue comes from the curvature of space. We talked earlier about how the curvature of space affects how the size of the universe could be.

And if space is curved positively or negative or flat, that limits the options, right? So that's something we can measure. We can measure it here. We can look around us and measure how curved is space in our universe. And that might be a bit of a puzzler, like, how does that mean? How could space be curved? How could you possibly measure it? And to think about that, it's best to go back to the two-dimensional example.

You're living on the surface of a planet, for example. If you were a two-dimensional scientist, living on the surface of a planet or some surface and you wanted to know, is this surface curved, what you could do is make a triangle. Because triangles are very sensitive to curvature. For example, you draw a triangle on a sheet of paper, you add up the angle, then you get 180 degrees. Every triangle, every flat surface, no matter what. Beautiful results in geometry.

That's just like basic geometry. That's right, yeah. Now imagine that triangle sitting on the surface of a tennis ball. You can draw a triangle on a surface of a tennis ball that has three right angles on it. Because triangles behave differently on a curved surface. Yeah. It could imagine that in mind.

Each angle could be 90 degrees, meaning that adds up to 270 degrees. Yeah, exactly. So let's take a break so everyone can go get a tennis ball and a Sharpie and try this at home, and we'll be right back when you have your tennis ball. All right, assuming you're holding a tennis ball and you've annoyed your partner or your spouse or your child by drawing triangles on it, you can see the triangles behave differently on a curved surface. It looks kind of bloated. Yeah, yeah, it looks distorted.

And so if you just make a triangle and add up the angles, you can see whether or not the space you're in is curved or flat. Is that kind of a good way to think about? But the curvature of space, it's kind of like a distortion of space. Yes. Yes, it's a distortion in how the pieces of space are connected to each other, which changes how you move through space, changes like how you can get from one spot in space to another spot in space. Yeah.

Like I think I'm going straight, but I'm actually kind of being distorted one way or the other. Yeah, it changes what straight means. Okay. So then the curvature might give us some clues as to whether like we wrap around in ourselves or whether we don't. I mean, that's all it can tell us, right? It's whether we're in a sphere or we're not in a sphere.

Well, there's one other option, which is that we're on a sort of a saddle. If space is negatively curved, imagine you have a sheet of paper that's formed sort of like a bowl, right, the opposite of a sphere, and you're in the middle of that bull. You can draw a triangle in that, and it will have angles of less than 180 degrees. Like a really longy head distortion. Yeah. Yeah, not quite a bowl because that's just the inside of a sphere, but something that has a sort of a saddle shape. And so you draw a triangle, you make a measurement, and that tells you.

And so we've done that. We've made those triangles, and we've measured them to very high precision in three-dimensional space. Like, meaning physicists have done this in the sheet of the universe. Yes, exactly. We've done it in two different ways, at least that I can think of off the top of my head. One is that we looked at giant cosmic triangles in space. We've looked at the cosmic microwave background radiation, this leftover photons from the birth of the universe

and drawn these triangles and measured the angles. And they come out to 180 degrees. It seems like space is flat. Pretty flat. Really flat. Yeah. And that's a puzzle. It's really interesting.

A lot of people wonder, like, why is space flat? We've measured it to be flat to within, you know, like 0.1%. and for a long time that was a mystery but why do we think that space could be curved like what would why would what would that be weird

yeah and well that leads perfectly into the second way we've measured the curvature of space which is you might ask what causes space to curve right why would you expect space to be curved or flat or negatively curved and the answer is that the thing that

curved space is matter right you put stuff matter and energy into space and it curves it That's what general relativity tells us, that gravity is, in fact, the curvature of space. So we know that space gets curved, like you put the sun in the center of the solar system, it curves space so that the Earth very naturally moves in a circle around it, right? That's an impact of the curvature of space. Nobody's turning the Earth.

Nobody's like driving the Earth around the Sun, right, but constantly turning. It's moving in what it considers to be a straight line, but space is curved, so it's just moving constantly in an orbit. Right. That's idea that gravity is not like a force pulling the Earth towards the sun, but gravity is more like distorting the space around the sun so that the Earth just kind of naturally goes around it. That's right. That's a great way to think about it. And so matter distorts space and causes curvature of space. And so you can ask, is there enough matter and energy in the universe to curve space or to make it negatively curved or positively curved? And if space is totally empty, if there's no matter in it at all, then it's negatively curved. You have to add energy and matter to make space have zero curvature. And so we've measured this. We've measured. We've measured. the total energy. You mean like space naturally wants to be negatively curved, but if you add stuff to it, then it gets straighter.

That's right. Space with no energy density in it at all would have negative curvature. And so you add stuff to it. In fact, if you add, I think it's six hydrogen atoms worth of energy per square meter, then space has zero curvature. It's between five and six. And so we've measured the amount of stuff that's in the universe, and it all adds up to be just about the right number to make space be not curved, which is, seems like a weird

coincidence, right? It seems like an important clue. Like, why does all the stuff in the universe happen to add up to the number that's just right to make space not be curved? With that, let's take a break. We'll be back in just a short minute. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing with Alex a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told

stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of family secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grazie's Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment

with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters

sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing Vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community.

You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and cold, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in the backlog will be a cold case. identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught.

And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolved. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards.

If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're a

avoiding it, and in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Ophia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're first,

from your spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel. It's how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role

hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Nealbar Net, where we dive into managing flight anxiety.

Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Space seems to be flat. At least space in our part of the universe seems to be flat. It could be that other parts of the universe, it's curved, right? But in our part of the universe, it seems to be flat. And we think that sort of that it may be extends out to, as far as we can see.

Yeah, it seems to follow the same rules. Okay. And so you're absolutely right. That rules out, you know, the potato universe that we're living on the surface of a huge cosmic potato or bubble universe, whatever. It rules out the saddle universe where the universe is negative curvature. Seems like space is flat, which is, you know, we brought up a... So if I go in one direction forever, I'll just keep going.

Not necessarily, right? We know space is flat. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's infinite. It's a natural idea, right? if space is flat then it doesn't curve on itself and so it seems like you could be able to go on forever But we said earlier that you can't just have a wall Can't just have a wall

But since we don't know what space is We don't really know how it works We don't really know how it's connected It's still possible that it could be flat But connected in a weird way So where one edge is connected to the other edge Like you go flat, you're moving through flat space But it just loops on back on itself

It, like, is connected in that way. Like, an asteroids game. You know, you go at the edge of the screen, boom, you appear on the other side. Like, you, like, you teleport to the other side. Yeah, yeah. And not necessarily teleport. Like, that could just be the way space is connected. So that's weird.

That wouldn't feel, you mean, like, an asteroid games are like Pac-Man, where you, like, walk off one side of the screen and suddenly you appear on the other side. Like, that's a possibility. Physicists are like, hey, that could be true. That certainly could be true. Yes, absolutely. But the other possibility is also true, which is maybe it just goes on forever, right? It could be that space goes on forever.

And that's also kind of weird because that's infinite space. Infinite space. Yeah, yeah. And it could be that space is flat, but it just ends. Because we can't see past the observable universe. And so we have intuition and ideas and speculation, and we think, oh, this would be more natural. or that would be more natural, or I wish the universe looked that way,

but at this point, that's all we can do. Yeah, so it's a fascinating concept, infinity, because, as you say, if things go on forever, and then you get infinite number of tribes at everything, then that means that given quantum randomness, you really do get every possibility out there. So that means it's somewhere out there, there's a universe where we're recording a podcast,

and I'm named Jorge and you're named Daniel and another universe where every possible thing you can imagine happens. That's really true. I mean, it's actually happening if there is an infinite universe with infinite space. It could be really far away and we could never get there and prove it.

But if that is reality, then it's really happening right now, which is crazy to think about it. Right, right. We just will never see it. We'll never see it, yeah. Or if we wait long enough, maybe we would. But it's also, so it's on one hand, like really crazy to imagine infinite universe with infinite stuff in it. On the other hand,

it's sort of natural, right? Like, what's the simplest explanation? Is it simpler to imagine an edge, right? Like a limited amount of stuff? Right. I find those ideas to be sort of weird and they sort of call back to, you know, geocentrism, the idea that we're the center, we're an important place in the universe. It's much more natural for me to think the universe just goes on forever and we're just at one dot in a random spot in it. Wow. Otherwise, you have to explain why the universe began here. Like, imagine the scenario, the infinite space but finite stuff scenario. Then you have to ask, why did the Big Bang happen here?

And not 50 billion light years to the left or to the right. In that infinite space, why is that clump matter here where we are? Yeah. So my personal preference, based on no science at all, is the infinite space, infinite stuff universe. Because it sort of puts to rest some of those questions. It doesn't raise... Right, it doesn't raise weird questions

or some inconsistencies. Yeah, yeah. It just asks you to imagine creation of an infinite of stuff in a moment. I mean, that's not too much to ask, right? Yeah. Currently, I don't know

of anybody who has such clever ideas for ways to determine whether the universe is infinite or finite by just looking at stuff around us. So the only way we could do it is direct by looking at the universe, which, of course, we can't. So currently it feels impossible, but, you know, we always have to leave a little bit of an open door there for some future physicist, more clever than us, comes up with a clever way to probe whether the universe is finite or infinite just by looking at clues around us.

You might say that there's plenty of room to grow. There certainly is. There certainly is. Cool. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that discussion. Yeah. And maybe when you look out at night, into the stars, you think about the idea that maybe the universe is infinite, or maybe we're seeing all that there is. And regardless, it's a beautiful, gorgeous universe out there. And if you're into views, the best view out there is the night sky and the top of a mountain where you can see billions of light years across amazing vistas. So however big the universe is, go out and enjoy it. Do you have a question you wish we would cover? Send it to us.

We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, one word, or email us to feedback at danielandhorpe.com. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy-truthers believe in... I guess they would be conspiracy theorists.

That's right. To give you the answers and you still blew it. The Puzzler. Listen on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month,

so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grasias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of time. chisement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect.

Listen to the new season of Dresses Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.

This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use. use unless you think there's a good outcome avoidance is easier ignoring is easier denials easier complex problem solving takes effort listen to the psychology podcast on the iHeart radio app apple

podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is an iHeart podcast