I'm not entirely sure what this list is. Maybe because nobody is entirely sure of it. Can anyone be?
Now, sure, you can dig deep into explanations, theories and hypotheses, but, for a moment, stop and think to yourself: is it truly that, or is it just a plot hole and so let's laugh about it and move on with our lives?
Whatever the case may be, folks online have been discussing the biggest of reality's plot holes that, if you ponder hard enough, will eventually drive you to madness. Probably. Kinda. Don't quote me on it.
More Info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
Most mainstream religions aim to teach values about human decency. Yet they are mostly used to discriminate other people...
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.” - Jean-Luc Picard
That we only know people as they appear to be to us, not as they really are to themselves.
When you wake up, you forget your dreams. But when you are dreaming, you forget reality, so which one is the truth?
Well since reality wakes in the same place everyday and your dreams send you off somewhere different every night I'm inclined to day reality is real
The Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun, and the Sun is 400 times further from the Earth than the Moon is. This is what allows solar eclipse' to occur.
That's what allows a "Total" eclipse to occur. If the moon were smaller or further away, it would be a transit; nearer or larger, it would be an occultation.
Consciousness. We go to sleep or pass out and it's just suddenly daytime? No, where's the wait!? I want 8 hours of lucid dreaming, damn it, I don't wanna wake up immediately!
It's like hitting the "skip cutscene" button or spamming A to jump through dialogue, it feels like someone's skipping something important.
that's a part of my difficulty to go to sleep, i don't wanna be tomorrow so soon
How did they get that car into the middle of the mall.
I sold cars years ago. They get them into buildings and showrooms by driving them through a big door or glass wall that unlocks.. It's nerve wracking when there's a few centimeters of clearance on either side and the vehicle is expensive and fragile.
Inner voice and sight? I can hear it but not with my ears. I can see it but not with my eyes? I don't understand how this works.
What was before the big bang? Before that? And that? And that?and so on. Whats beyond nothing?
There was no time before the Big Bang so this means that there isn’t really a “before”
But, Antoine Lavoisier said "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed" so, there is something "before"
Load More Replies...
Before the big bang, was the 'gentle fizz' of the lit fuse. Before that, the 'shhhhhT' of the match being struck. Before that, the rattle of the match box...
I'm happier thinking it's all a loop. How did it begin? How will it end? Will that change the nanosecond of time in which I exist? Probably not. But it encourages my faith. If matter can't be created nor destroyed, then something greater than the laws of physics is involved. My belief, but not my soapbox.
My favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, said something like, "Here is a tree in the garden. Are you leaves on its branches or a bunch of birds who settled on a dead old tree from somewhere else? Imagine some aliens in a saucer flew past the Earth millions of years ago and said, 'Eh, just a bunch of rocks.' Maybe a few million years later, they came back and said, 'Excuse me. We thought it was just a bunch of rocks but it's peopling. At long last, it has done something intelligent.' But we are thinking in a way that separates the intelligence from the rocks. Where there are rocks, watch out. Watch out! Because the rocks are going eventually to come alive."
Load More Replies...
I don't know about before, but I'm definitely booking a table for the restaurant at the end of the universe.
See thats why the Big Bang Theory is BS... it's impossible that something came out of nothing!
No one is saying that it came out of nothing.
Load More Replies...
What makes you so certain it's unknowable? There's so much we know now that was previously thought to be impossible
Load More Replies...
Well, the short version is: we don't know. The longer version is: we don't know YET. You never know when the next breakthrough will happen.
The "big bang" was a local event, the best scopes looking at the darkest bits of space found more galaxies implying the universe is infinitely filled with stuff, light pollution from nearby stuff limits our sight range (otherwise they wouldn't need to focus on the darkest bits to see further).
What if our universe is another living body, and we are all just organisms inside it? The Big Bang was when that body came to life (conception) and the ever-expanding universe is that body growing to adulthood. Eventually, that body will die off and our universe as we know it will cease to exist. Yet it won't be the only universe...
There's a theory that there were more big bangs and more useful matter existing before the current cycle. The more cycles of big bangs the Universe experiences, the more massive supermassive blackholes get because they do live through big bangs and they actually were present in previous cycles. The theory is supported by the fact how blackholes and supermassive blackholes are placed. Galaxies look like they were formed around blackholes spirally (and in other peculiar ways), like blackholes existed before the matter around them even was in a form of ionized hydrogen. Creepy, right?
The Big Bang was preceded by the Big Contraction which preceded an earlier big bang and big contraction ...infinitely into the past and the future.
I saw an explanation that goes thus…. You are heading north, meet someone and ask for directions towards the North Pole, they point you in the right direction, you travel further north, meet another person, again they point you further north, and so on until you are at the North Pole, you meet someone there and ask for directions north and they explain there is no further north, you can’t be ‘norther’. You have reached the Big Bang point, no more travelling will get you closer or further. There doesn’t have to be more.
Toy can eventually travel south by going farther north, but you can never go Easter by going wester.
Load More Replies...
It’s like trying to think of how space goes on forever. But there must be an edge to it right? If yes then what’s on the other side? If no…. how can something just go on…. Forever??
The universe is finite, but boundless. Because space/time is curved, you (very eventually) end up where you started.
Load More Replies...
"you're not thinking fourth dimensionally" - "Right, right I have a problem with that" :)
....and how can the Universe end? If it did... then there would be something on the other side of it and therefore it doesn't "end". This thought makes my brain hurt.
The "Horrendous Space Kablooie" came first. Google it. Yay, Calvin & Hobbes!
It's important to remember that the Big Bang Theory is still a theory in fact if anything the Cern collider disproved it.
Time is a local variable to a universe, so there was no "before" the Big Bang. However, it is nonetheless the case that: (1) Something banged, (2) within a framework in which universes CAN bang into existence, (3) which must have existed independently of the nonexistence of our universe pre-bang. Something banged, but we don't know how and we don't know why. Personally, I think the universe was created when a Great Cosmic Pink Polka-Dotted Unicorn farted it into existence.
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." - Douglas Adams
Time began at the big bang. There was no "before". This is like asking where a circular path ends.
There was another multi-verse before the big bang. It banged out and another came into existence...it will keep on repeating...Life never ends...
We aren't certain that big bang happened, there is a new theory proposed that universe has always existed. But the best thing about these questions are that you can try to help the scientific community find answers to them. And what if ut happens that we don't know? Is it the end of the world? No! We need to learn how to live without knowing the answers to everything
Einstein teaches us that space and time are not separate. Before the big bang, space and time (spacetime) did not exist. There is no "before" the big bang because the concept of "before" requires (space)time, and (space)time didn't exist before the big bang.
What makes you think there was ever a nothing? A cycle can be so lengthy that the relatively brief existence of the human race hasn't been long enough for us to discern a pattern.
But god ain't real (a fact, not really a debatable thing like an opinion), so your comment really doesn't make sense. It would be like I said "the world turtle, duh"
Load More Replies...
If everything is the result of something else, then everything, including reality, is impossible.
Interestingly, we're seeing that at the quantum level, cause and effect are not so linear
Load More Replies...
Some believe God created the universe with a Big Bang (newer theory) rather than simply speaking Creation into existence (as most Christians and Jews believe) . Before that, nothing and no one but God, those angels in His Heaven, those fallen angels condemned to Hell for rebellion against Him, and the formless, watery earth existed.
Yeah, "some believe" sadly. But the truth is that these supernatural "gods" dont exist, creationism isn't really possible and makes no sense
Load More Replies...
"What was before Big Bang" is a similar question to "What is north of the North Pole".
Human consciousness. Like at some point in time you just go from being an unconscious ball of semi functional flesh to conscious human being. Like I'm sorry, what?
From my experience with many people,I’m not convinced this applies to everyone (myself not excepted)
The Planck Unit exists. In theoretical maths, we can divide a number infinitely. In reality, there's a smallest possible "something" that you can divide to, the Planck Unit. Remember relativity, a unit of space is equivalent to a unit of time. They're not two different things, rather two different ways of measuring one thing. This means there's a smallest possible distance to traverse, and a smallest unit of time to do so...the universe is NOT analog! It has a FRAME RATE AND A PIXEL RESOLUTION.
That s**t is bananas...
my brain can barely process telling the difference between a 9 and a 6.
Me walking in a room and completely forgetting what i went into that room for.
I have four children, one just graduated high school, one just graduated college. One is already done with his first year of middle school. My youngest just turned 9 and a half years old, closing in on 10. She is actually wearing an old dance outfit that originally belonged to the oldest. I told her "hey, that used to be your sister's."
What am I getting at? Time can move so slowly at times, especially when you are waiting for something to happen. But then you get to be middle aged like I am now and you look back and it just seems like it went by in a flash.
Let me give an example that might be more universal. I work in education. We just had the absolutely weirdest, most bonkers and difficult school year probably of my entire career. Lots of tedious, difficult, and mind numbing work to pull it off. But then almost like a flash, looking back, it's over. It's time for summer again. And summer, where I live anyway, the summer goes fastest of all.
Time and how it feels passing versus how it feels looking back is a huge plot hole or a "glitch in the matrix" if you will.
And when I was younger people tried to explain how fast it went, like with fatherhood or my career and things. I could not believe them when they told me, but they were right. Luckily I took some pictures and built up some memories that will last because otherwise it would all be a blur.
Sometimes an hour takes forever to get through. Then you blink, and suddenly ten years have gone by.
Death. The thought of it, the unsureness of what happens next, for most people that's where life's plot armour dies.
There's either nothingness or eternity, no 3rd option, and thinking about this f#cks me up REAL bad. I hope I'll gain some higher level of consciousness after death so I'll be able to comprehend it better.
Who made the terms of agreement so long.
How many terms of agreement have we agreed to without ever reading them?
I’ve found it increasingly infuriating that doubling down on a lie, no matter how egregious seems to work 80-90% of the time.
That is also why liars need to be held accountable. especially if they are in positions of power/authority
Time.
You think that time is a measurement of existence. If I stand there looking at my watch for a while, I can go "yup 5 minutes of existence passed."
But in space thats a lie. Me going 5 minutes passed but my buddy in a space ship will go "Actually that was only 1 minute of existence."
Thats like putting a ruler under water and the light refracting distorts the ruler so now it measures differently. It makes no sense!
I think they may have discovered a piece of the mysterious dark matter.
How construction cranes suddenly just appear on their construction site.
They build a foundation/base and then other cranes start adding onto the foundation until you get these construction cranes
If an entity were to stop time for millenniums, there would be no possible way of anyone knowing (unless any visible change but that’s just being picky).
Lot's of historical figures seem to have had straight up plot armour.
What is reality? Am I a figment of your imagination, or a figment of mine?
Argh!!! It's really frustrating trying to word the response correctly, because it's so hard to explain! Generally, when suffering from a delusion, it feels so real that nothing could shake that belief, so much so, that it's easier to be convinced that something real is a delusion than that the delusion isn't real. So technically, if I am delusional, and I could be convinced that you are a delusion, you are most definitely real and not a figment of my imagination. Those few that are self aware delusional, still believe that it's real, but have the internal battle of acting according to what they think is most normal.
According to what we understand of matter & energy transfer, there should be no matter in the universe. And yet there is TONS of matter in the universe. Literally what the f**k happened? Someone deux ex machina'd the universe itself.
There should either be no matter because there should be an equal amount of matter & antimatter or the matter should be clouds of evenly distributed hydrogen & helium yet a bit of fluctuation here and there has enabled our universe to be the way that it is
That you are, in this reality, the reader, the character/narrator, and the writer all in the same pocket of time.
That I’ve never seen my neighbors bring in groceries into their homes.
Oh all of history is pretty b******t when you pay attention but maybe that's just because in any sensible timeline humans have nuked themselves to extinction.
and history is written by the winners. I often wonder what the world would have been if the native Americans (north or south) hadn’t lost
"Everything that humans like, either [ends] them or it's a sin" Just think about it. Why can't we find healthy food as tasty as a street hot dog? Why did we create a god that condemns things that we like to do? Why it seems that we evolved especifically to suffer? Something is wrong here.
We like high salt & sugar content in our food because back when we were hunter-gatherers, those things weren’t common to come across so you needed to take as much of them as possible to survive
What happens when we get as fast as we are going to get?
You know... the current world record for the men's 100m sprint is 9.58 seconds (Usain Bolt) ... but you would imagine that there will come a day when a man beats that... then another and another... but eventually we will be as fast as we can get (because you can't go backwards), so then what?
Whenever I hear a physicist say "All of those things you learned about Newton's laws are actually false and just approximations for these other things that make no sense."
They’re not false, they just only work on a macroscopic scale. If you want to know where a thrown ball will land, or how to fly a probe to Europa, you’ll do just fine with Newton. But if you want to know about quantum events or black hole event horizons, then F=ma just isn’t going to cut it.
Note: this post originally had 31 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Trying and generally failing. You know that thing when you're with people who are high and they think they're being really profound, but they mostly sound silly? Reading this thread started to feel like being the designated driver; listening to Deep Thoughts From People Under the Influence.
Load More Replies...
Here’s something odd about our universe. Let’s try to visualize space time in 2 dimensions for now. If we add too much matter then spacetime would curve positively (meaning it would be like a sphere) but if it doesn’t have enough then it will curve negatively (it would sort of look like a saddle). Our universe for some reason has just enough mass that spacetime is flat, it’s not curved in any way. It’s flat. Isn’t it weird how our universe conviniently has enough mass that it’s flat?
Cars have two seats, three at a squeeze, and fit on a normal size road nicely. Buses have four seats AND an isle, and also fit on a normal size road nicely. what is this plot hole/glitch in the matrix?? every time I think about it I get more confused.
Trying and generally failing. You know that thing when you're with people who are high and they think they're being really profound, but they mostly sound silly? Reading this thread started to feel like being the designated driver; listening to Deep Thoughts From People Under the Influence.
Load More Replies... Here’s something odd about our universe. Let’s try to visualize space time in 2 dimensions for now. If we add too much matter then spacetime would curve positively (meaning it would be like a sphere) but if it doesn’t have enough then it will curve negatively (it would sort of look like a saddle). Our universe for some reason has just enough mass that spacetime is flat, it’s not curved in any way. It’s flat. Isn’t it weird how our universe conviniently has enough mass that it’s flat?
Cars have two seats, three at a squeeze, and fit on a normal size road nicely. Buses have four seats AND an isle, and also fit on a normal size road nicely. what is this plot hole/glitch in the matrix?? every time I think about it I get more confused.
