Is the universe infinitely small?

Right so I can understand that without an edge this universe is endless in its scope, no matter how far I could measure it simply goes further than the said measure.

Something that I have often thought about is whether this applies the other way around, at which point if I was to continue zooming in with a evermore powerful microscope do I get to the boundary which demarcates ‘the smallest’.

I have a sense that this is what could be called a stupid question :joy: yet here it is haha. I also have a sense that this question only exists because of the concept of a measure itself being the absolute which obscures the actual seeing. As in both big and small become meaningless when talking about infinity so this question might be equally meaningless lol.

That’s the quest of modern physics haha. Supposedly there is a smallest, below which you can’t get smaller… but they said that about the atom (literally meaning “not-divisible”) and then they went further smaller yet.

Supposedly every piece of matter exists as a multiple of a discrete quantity called a ‘quanta’, and there can be nothing smaller than this… but this is a mathematical model, not an actuality per se.

That being said at some point there won’t be enough light with which to use a microscope, so you won’t be able to see smaller things using such a device. We would need to invent other devices. There are things like electron microscopes that purport to see even smaller, but it’s based on the mathematical models and it reconstructs an image using that, it isn’t necessarily ‘seeing’ smaller . . .

Or as Eminem might say:

Yo, listen up, I got a story to tell
About the quest of modern physics, it’s hell
Supposedly there’s a smallest, can’t go lower
But they said that about the atom, then discovered
Smaller yet, ain’t that a bummer

Every piece of matter, a multiple of quanta
But that’s just a mathematical model, not reality, huh?
At some point, light won’t be enough
To use a microscope, we’ll need to invent other stuff
Like electron microscopes, they claim to see small
But it’s just reconstructing an image, not really seeing it all

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But at the same time even though we can never construct a device which will measure infinity, it can be experientially confirmed that the universe is infinite, I guess this body being apperceptively aware is such a device lol!

It is kind of odd looking at it the other way around but its the same concepts, of some boundary which is where things get as big as they can or as small as they can but no such boundary can actually exist.

Is it that once the scales get small enough there is no other structures but space? And space is infinitely small as well as infinitely large? Yet objects do have measurable sizes.

This kinda makes sense actually. Because it is not that there are structures in this universe which are infinitely large, objects do cap out in size before reaching infinity, the universe itself is spatially infinite, not its objects. So I guess it is the same the other way around, if I was to zoom in closer and closer eventually there are no structures which are this small, only infinite space remains.

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The interesting thing that this brings up for me is that infinity is not just referring to something that continues to get bigger and bigger forever. Because that is ascribing a directionality to infinity which as always requires a fixed point of reference, like a line going away from me and continuing to get longer forever, but that is not an accurate description of what infinity is.

Infinity cannot have a direction, it is everywhere all at once, which means small and big are meaningless when referring to it, the concepts of small or big only apply to objects which can be compared against each other. Whereas neither small nor big can be compared against infinity. It is like they are the wrong tools for the job, big/small and infinity exist on different planes in a way.

So going by this… If I take an ant and a planet, neither of them is closer to the size of infinity, kinda cool :grinning:

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