alt Hacker NewsMaybe we could map a discrete GUID to some amount of cubic volume of the universe and say that you 'own' that GUID and cubic volume of space.
Referencing how many possible GUID can exist:
The total number of theoretically possible GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) is 2¹²⁸, which equals exactly 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. This is approximately 3.4 × 10³⁸ (340 undecillion) unique values
a really quick calculation says that if you assigned every cubic area of the universe (ignoring that it's spherical?!) to a single GUID, each GUID would 'own' a cube of space about 680 AU on each side. So there's not really that many GUID.
Replies
exe34 • today at 12:31 PM
This reminds me of xkcd/865.
This is a complete tangent, but how would you identify which cubic volume you own?
Would it:
1. Somehow remain static as stars and planets moved through it?
2. Be relative to some coordinate system that we define?
3. Follow some object like an asteroid or planet?
Option (1) is literally impossible. We tend to think of space on Earth as something you can reliably divide up statically, e.g. you can divide the space inside a box up into cubic segments, and that works fine. But in that case, you've defined a coordinate system relative to the box, which is of course moving through space relative to everything else. You eliminate the motion issue by making everything relative to the box.
We can't meaningfully do anything similar for the space between astronomical objects. Everything is moving relative to everything else, and there's no way to "stick a pin" in space. In a very real sense, there is no such thing as a fixed, static volume of space - space is relational, it's what exists between separated objects, it's not an object that can be divided up statically. All the relevant physical theories - special and general relativity, and quantum physics - confirm this.
For option (2), we can try to define a box - a coordinate system relative to Earth, or the Sun, or the Milky Way galaxy, or the Local Group of galaxies, or the Laniekea supercluster, etc. But those are all moving relative to everything else, so any location we identify with coordinates based on that will similarly be moving. One day you might own a piece of space on one side of the Andromeda galaxy, the next day it would be out in intergalactic space (because at those distances, radial coordinates move fast!)
You might think that perhaps we can define coordinates relative to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame - the reference frame in which the CMB radiation looks uniform and identical in every direction, i.e. not redshifted or blueshifted. In a certain cosmological sense, this is a good candidate for the rest frame of the universe. But the problem is, how do you assign coordinate values to that? You're left with the same basic problem - any point you pick either can't be reliably identified, or is moving along with some chosen object.
Option (3) ends up being the most sensible, for the relational reason I mentioned: we can, in many cases, reliably identify a particular object in space. Now we're back to the "star registry" kinds of scenarios, where you "own" a star. Owning a piece of space can't really work.