this is my first post so i thought i would make it a big one and share my views on the universe.
i beleive that the universe is not expanding but it is infinite. because it is infinite that means that there are an infinite number of planets which also means there are an infinite number of posibilitys! e.g there wil be an infinite number of planets exactly the same as our plannet somewhere in the universe. do you follow? is this such a hard concept to beleive? i would be interested 2 know if anybody can prove this concept wrong.

k... i'll just go with what Hawking tells me.

I understand what you mean... but I'll stick to the finite universe for now...

I am nearly infinitely tired. So, limits do exist.
Maybe the Universe has cycles, and is limited from that perspective, if the cycles will eventually terminate. It must have scale that is definable,
scale which allows it to cycle- creation/transformation/re-creation, etc.
Measurable scale- not infinite. Infinity seems a concept, which is not provable...
Yet, religion says God is finite/infinite/Alpha/Omega...

Even large scale physics would not operate in an infinite system.
There are discreet numbers, albeit a large number set, to the
Universe. The physics of stars are in relation to their mass- not
some infinite amount. And planets need a certain mass to retain
an atmosphere. And galaxies are receeding- the Universe
is expanding, and accelerating while you read this.
Don't worry- you are only moving at 10 million mph...
You won't notice any slight increase!

An infinitely large system would imply infinite forces.
In the 'beginning', or during certain stages of the Universe,
there may have been attractions/repulsions/reactions
based upon some number/force gaining an upper hand
on another, and increasing its ratio, and changing
the symmetry or shape/scale/distances.

The alterations/changes imply limitations being overcome,
but not infinitely so. An infinite reaction implies an infinite
acceleration in the opposite direction. A runaway Universe.

Only my intelligence is infinite- in not knowing
anything much at all.

Ray------------------------------------------------------>

some things are infinite, take a stone for example, you can break it down into the finest piece of sand but you can never acctualy get rid of it.

there was annother theory that all plannets are moving away from us, but how can that be? what is attracting/reppling them away from us? and why arnt we moving with them?

Dark Energy is the force that is causing the acceleration of the universe. We can actually measure the doppler red-shift and 'see' the stretching/expansion of the universe.

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Dark Energy is the force that is causing the acceleration of the universe. We can actually measure the doppler red-shift and 'see' the stretching/expansion of the universe.
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what is dark energy and the doppler red-shift? is this to do with the light spectrum showing us how far plannets are away from us?

Dark Energy is a hidden anti-gravity force which is believed to be pushing galaxies apart at an ever increasing rate
THIS LINK further explains Dark Energy and Dark Matter

Edwin Hubble observed that the characteristic colors, or spectral lines, emitted by the stars in the galaxies do not have exactly the same wavelengths observed in the laboratory; rather they are systematically shifted to longer wavelengths, toward the red end of the spectrum.
Such “red shifts” could occur because other galaxies are moving away from our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The change in the wavelength of light that results from the relative motion of the source and the receiver of the light is an example of the Doppler effect
THIS LINK explains in further detail

thanks for that homer , it has cleared a few things up for me. has dark matter been proved to exsist? how do u know so much about it?

Dark Matter is simply matter that, although has been detected by the observational characteristics of galaxy clusters, hasn't been seen by either direct or indirect light.
Whether it has been proven or not depends on your definition of proof. The visible matter in the universe can't manipulate the galaxies in ways the galaxies are being manipulated. This means there is something else, undetected, out there. We call this dark matter, and it is these observations that are the proof.

Nobody knows for certain exactly what it is, and it could be a variety of things. There are two main possibilities for what dark matter is:
1. Normal matter which has eluded our gaze, such as planetary material and brown dwarfs.
2. Exotic material such as Neutrinos. If neutrinos have mass, then this could be the missing mass.

i see now!

I hope this makes sense.

To be specific-
in the 1950s, one theortician made fun of another, calling his rival's
concept of a violent start to the Universe that 'big bang theory!"
Intended as an insult, it backfired. It was an easy term,
for the press in England to remember- so every one talked about
the "Big Bang', from then on. The astronomer became famous, and his idea
made a lot of sense, besides. It has some surprises, though.

First, it described a point of 'quantum' energy, becoming imbalaced,
leading to a sudden, an nearly instaneous explosion/inflation. At first,
there were 'forces'. These set up waves of rythmic pulses- not unlike
music vibrations, with regular timing. Or even like 'the wave' at a
soccer game. The forces, I do not know if they were electromagnetic,
maybe...it has been a while since I heard this...

The forces, having tremendous heat, had these internal waves,
and at some point, they generated photons- light waves/particles.
But the photons were so dense, all they could do was 'the wave'.
The expansion, though, caused temperature variations, and a drop in
the temp caused it to momentarily collapse. At that point, a rebound effect
happened- more expansion energy.

But since the whole process was still tightly packed, and photons could not
move about, it was called 'Dark Energy' expansive force. It was 'DARK'.
After expanding some more, it cooled, momentarily, especially at the
perimeter. The forces were being changed into 'quark particles',
as they cooled. It is called the 'quark soup' era.
Various quarks (6 in all?) saddled-up to each other, and made larger particles- protons/neutrons/electrons. Then helium ions were joined, from two protons.
At some point, the left overs made hydrogen, and that left gaps
where quarks once roamed- like people in a room who crowd into the middle,
free space appears at the perimeter. It was only as big as a grapefruit, at that
point in time.

The photons escaped. That is when God said-'let there be light!'.
The universe became freely illuminated. And, the 'Dark Energy', a kind of
expansive force, but even like a vaccuum pulling at the edge of the
Universe- outward- it had a repulsive, expansive qualtity, yet, a negative
pressure on the 'outside', pulling the Universe at the same time, outward,
a vaccuum energy...

It inflated some more, and then it cooled down, somewhat.
There was generated a new form of matter- Dark Matter.
It cooled and condensed everything else. Everything 'condensed', more like
a three dimensional spider web. They called it the 'Lyman Forest' era.
Dark Energy lost some energy, and Dark Matter contracted things,
like gravity would when there is enough mass...

Along the 3-D web, the 'Lyman Forest', there were places where the web
intersected, called 'nodes'. They were the strongest points, literally.
At this juncture, the Universe had seething, hot hydrogen (mostly)
and some helium. Giant gas clouds, forming the web, the forest.
They crashed into each other, and some were destroyed, materially;
however, the nodes withstood the bulk of the shocks.
Those joints survived the violent collisions that were happening as the web
contracted tighter and tighter. They became giant gas clouds.

But then, Dark Matter lost its effect, its ability to draw the clouds into
the forest pattern. At that time, so the theory goes (I think!), Dark Energy
took over. It began expanding things, inflating rapidy. The gas clouds
then moved into cooler space, and lost some temperature. That allowed
the violent gas to contract, at places within the clouds. It formed the first
stars- perhaps giant, hugh stars.

Dark Energy was still in control. Some of the gas in the clouds cooled during
the expansion, enough to alow electrons to couple up with hydrogen
and helium ions. These new atoms made the clouds less 'transparent'.
Any photons, like ultraviolet energy, or infrared photons, or even plain
visible light energy- it was all interacting with the atoms in the gas clouds
in such a way that it was like an opaque gas soup.

The qiant hugh stars collapsed from their own immensity and made giant
super-novae. That released a lot of enery into the clouds. In addition,
the supernovae (plural) were so big, the explosions imploded space inside
at their core, at made black holes. Gaint black holes. So energetic, they
could suck up nearby star material. If they captured a star, and it orbited
them, the black hole could cause a whirlpool of infalling gas, from the star
nearby. The process led to giant laser type jets of energy, caused when some of the whirlpool escaped in high x-ray jets. These, like the inital massive
star supernovae, heated the gas in the clouds, to 10s of millions of degrees F.

All that energy hit many gas atoms, and ionized them, stripping off electrons.
The result was that light photons began to travel more freely, in the hot
expanding gas. This is what astronomers see at the furthest distance.
The earliest visible light, that was produced by early forming galaxies,
and their star cycles of life/death/supernova energy explosions. Light that eventually spread out, through a sea of once again, hot ionzed, 'transparent'
gas clouds. Thanks to supernovae, and giant quasars with jets of energy.

Things went along with Dark Energy, expanding, for about 10 billion years.
Then, Dark Matter, or something, gained a little more mass/gravity,
and slowed the expansion. Things actually contracted a bit, in places,
but not for long. Dark Energy got another second wind. It once again took
over, and the effect led to an acceleration, this time. It may be, that as the
Universe gets 'spread out', there is less density/Dark Matter clumps/gravity
strength. Like a rising hot cake in an oven, pockets of internal thinness
allow for faster expansion in the Universe. Only it is not an oven,
heating and expanding our 'cake'. It is the push/pull of the vaccuum
that results from expanding. More vaccuum, more vaccuuous space,
generates more Dark Energy repulsive force- hense, we accelerate
as we expand, for now... for nearly 3.8 billion years, since the 10 bliion year
anniversary of the 'creation' of the Universe, we are moving ever faster
to some unknown destiny. A destiny billions of year in the future.

Depending on how it plays out, everything could run out of energy, even
Dark Energy. We could just peter-out- so far in the future, you could not
imagine- 5 quintillion years. Protons (longest living particles) would then decay.

Or, Dark Energy could reverse course, and implode the Universe.
Again, far into the distant future. It may or may not be a bad implosion,
reversal, whatever...if the process involved multiple universes.

Multiple universes, some persons speculate, could work out their
problems, together. At super-critical junctures, they could exchange
excess energy; at some threshold, they could move energy between them.
That would allow then to cycle-
expansion/matter creation; contraction/ matter undoing; by using the
'neutral territory' between the universes to bleed off super-critical excesses.
The giving up of super-critical energy would bring the universes closer,
as they could not 'stand-off' so easy, having surrendered energy to
some other realm/space between them. They then collide, and this
gravitational interaction causes not so much a 'Big Bang', as a gravitiational
superwave/reaction/Bang. This collision/interaction heats them up,
enough to induce the changes that result in re-generation of quarks/ions/
photons/atoms, and the Universes recyle, once again...PERHAPS.

That is the universe-as-membrane theory. Our Universe is 'brane', for short.
It has at least one other universe/brane to cycle off of, in that THEORY.

Do me a favor, and do not quote me on this, as I do not know enough about it.
But, it is something like that.

Dark Energy expands/pushes/pulls like a piston draws a vaccuum, and a
force is built up, a pulling force of the universal vaacuum.

Dark Matter is a component (perhaps massive neutrinos that evolve from
lesser neutrinos) that clumps galaxies together, with its 'nesting' effect,
its gravity on even 'regular' matter/protons/neutrons/electrons/photons,
holding whole clusters of galaxies in large groups- a powerful effect.

Of course, the Universe has plenty of 'regular' inter-stellar gas/clouds.
That also has alot of internal gravity, too, and that holds individual
galaxies together, from within, and to some extent, holds neighboring
galaxies closer together. But- not like Dark Matter. There seems to be a lot
of dark matter. A very large amount. Maybe even more than 'regular' matter.

Yet, Dark Energy rules. Ther is at least twice, or three times as much of
it, as anything else, in terms of sheer energy potential.

Someday, though, that may change...and things collapse, and star all over.

So they say...

The 'Standard Model' for the Big Bang/Inflation/Stars and Planets
is very popular, and very supported, scientifically.

Built up graphic I labored at to convey the 'branes' concept of the
cycling Universe. The flow of energy or gravity waves goes from one
to the other, imparting energy, and generating changes in the structure
of space and time, that creates wrinkles, that make 'perturbations',
or real changes that lead to energy/matter/ universe internal expansion.

It can last 2 or 3 trillion years a complete cycle.
I do not know what happens in the other universe, while ours gets going...

Oh, my appologies. While I was scribbling my reply, Homer answered,
and quite clearly and concisely so. I posted, and did not notice...
Perhaps the graphics will be of some use.

Thanks

I don't believe that for a moment that matter can go on for infinite. However I do beleive space is infinite so far as you will never reach the end. You cannot ask the question, "where is the Universe?" The Universe creates it's own "where". Therefore, infinite only goes as far as the Universe stretches.

Supposing you could come to the end of the Universe and found yourself up against a barrier. You would then think that the Universe did not go on forever and was not at all infinite. What I say is, that since there is nothing of our reality beyond our known Universe, then it is impossible to go beyond the end of the Universe. There is no forever or infinitey beyond the barrier of the Universe. The end of the Universe is infinitey.

Of course I am not suggesting that the Universe has a boundry. What ever the answer is, it will not be understood by what we have experienced within this small corner we call Earth. The answer to whether the Universe is infinite or not will not be understood by our limited intelligence. It will be a very wierd Universe to understand if we were presented with the answers we all want.

I believe in what has been said in the past that the Universe bends back onto it's self and you would return from where you started from. The type of "bend" will be nothing like what we understand at all.

This all sounds weird but if the Universe is infinite, it cannot exist this way without employing some physics that we simply have never experienced before. If things were as simple as what we experience day to day here on Earth, then we would not be here at all. Time, space and matter would not exist.

Hugebrain

ima go with the universe is indeed finite and that if you were to travel in a "straight" line in space you would eventually come back to where you start, similar to how it is on earth, it will appear that you are traveling straight when in deed you are going around the circumference, i believe we would never be able to reach the "barrier" because the barrier is on a different dimension, a dimension we as humans can not observe at the current time as we are not built in a way to do so, quite possible that the reason "aliens" (if the exist) can travel far distances to our planet is becuase they can observe and interact with these other dimensions which appear nonexistant to us which as a matter of fact are not so long of a distance if you take the other dimension as a route, think of it like this, whats the shortest distance between 2 points, a straight line of course, but thats what we as humans percieve, percieving other dimensions might actually give us an even shorter distance between those two points

Dark Matter is at best hypothetical. As you claimed, dark matter is possibilities and nowhere near being taken serious by most of the scientific community.

NOVA aired a noteworthy series on dark matter a while back. As far as Neutrinos having mass, the series went into great depth about this very point. It ended up that Neutrinos DO NOT have mass. A scientist who contemplated that dark matter may be neutrinos admitted that before this could be considered, it had to be proved if neutrinos had mass or not. If not, then neutrinos could not be dark matter.

In short, the scientist altered a complicated computer model that is already in existence. The model portrays the Big Bang and the formation of the galaxies and all other known phenomena. It is considered by most cosmologists to be as accurate as can be under the circumstances. The model does fall short as to why certain celestial events occur, which could be answered by inserting dark matter into the equation . . . so to speak.

The scientist who was interviewed on NOVA -- I forget his name but he won a Nobel prize for actually being the first to capture a neutrino, but neither he or anyone else was able to determine if this neutrino had mass or not -- altered the computer model by giving neutrinos mass. When the model program was run however, an entirely different universe came to be. This Nobel prize winning scientist then admitted that neutrinos do not have mass and could not be dark matter . . . if in fact dark matter really does exist.

Ironically, near the end, Stephen Hawking was interviewed about the subject of dark matter. I don't mind saying that what he said -- by use of his synthesized voice -- shocked me. This is not an exact quote but a close paraphrase. Hawking said, "we know dark matter exists, but I sincerely doubt that man will ever be able to prove its existence." This is not much different from saying, "I know God exists, but I also know I can never prove it." Come on Stephen, get with the program. Making unscientific statements such as that is not only unprofessional, but very misleading as well. I admire Stephen Hawking for continuing on even though he has such a disabling infliction and for the most part, his books have been very informative. But I suspect that unknown to Stephen, because of his disability, those in his scientific discipline are using him as more or less a poster child - counting on the fact that his statements will go unchallenged, whether he's stating facts, theory or simple speculation.

On another NOVA series, well after the dark matter one, Astronomers were interviewed who had been struggling with the "absence of known matter in the universe" phenomena for a decade or more. But instead of claiming that dark matter was the answer, they quite convincingly showed that shortly after the BIg Bang, matter and antimatter came into contact with each other and all the antimatter was annihilated as well as a large portion of matter. (as you may know, antimatter does not exist naturally. It must be created using particle accelerators.) The program also explained how these same Astronomers discovered the Super Black Hole that resides near the center of the Milky Way and then showed that all the galaxies that they could detect so far also contained a Super Black Hole as well. The presence of the immense gravitational influence of a Super Black Hole in galaxies is what was needed to explain how the galaxies formed so quickly, how they are bound together and other questionable galactic characteristics. The NOVA series interviewed the Astronomers about how this Super Black Hole could have formed before the rest of the galaxy's stars. They had a believable answer, but it is too long and complicated to get into now. The Galactic Super Black Holes also explain were another huge quantity of the so called missing matter went -- inside the galactic Super Black Holes.

Of course, these NOVA programs do not claim to present gospel by any means, but they did a good job of using the "scientific method" to answer questions rather than rock and roll scientists speculating about this and that. I've watched some of their shows dealing with Quantum Physics and in my opinion it was a waste of time. All the quantum physicists speculated on this, claimed that mathematically something else was possible and on and on. Near the end, one honest quantum physicists admitted that many traditional scientists believe quantum physics is a dead end and he went on to say that this could very well be possible. Even Hawking admits that quantum physics cannot be proved empirically which is not the case with Relativity -- having withstood over 65 years of empirical testing and getting an A+.

string theory ties einsteins special relativity and quantum physics together , it also includes all of the forces (strong, weak, magnetic, and gravity) meaning that if string theory holds true so will quantum physics, and as of yet no other theory has explained gravity, making string theory a very possible theory