i was just wondering a few things

1. if someone falls into a black hole do they always think they are the first person to fall in because others that have fallen in haven't come back to say that they fell in a black hole?

2. my teacher told me that space has a limit. it stops. if someone says they think there is something outside that limit .....other worlds and such how can there be someone who crushes their view (i think its a skeptic) by saying its not true and they shuldnt believe lies.
no one has been that far and i doubt they will get that far in my lifetime so no one at all really knows whats out there. an example would be we are just a marble, and there are other marbles we cant reach (if that makes sense)

i just thought it would be nice to get some views

I think that there is a limit to the number of existing galaxies but not to space itself.

i'd give your teacher a few views like...stop just thinking about whats inside the box and start think about whats outside of the bloody damn thing...modern skeptical thinking...but then she's probably only aloud to teach on current understandings...well even thats changing...technology will eventually change and current thinking will with that to...so there's an endless boundary of knowledge...we can grasp...nothing is everything...and in current apparent understanding everything started from nothing!!!!

Good question, finite or infinite universe? Let's see what Al (Albert Einstein) had to say about this:



So, the universe is very likely finite...but yet without bounds. Yeah, I know, I can't wrap my mind around it either!

No more than anyone who was put to the guillotine ever wondered if they were the first just because no one had come back to say it hadn't worked..



Well, it isn't so much a matter of scientists (not skeptics) telling people not to believe lies, but more a matter of understanding what is being said, for one, and being able to distinguish between possibilities and probability for the other.

Current understanding of space is that it has limits, but it doesn't stop. In other words, there isn't an "outside", so asking what is there is pointless. There is no border that one could get to, to look beyond. Whether that concept of space is correct or not, the main issue here is that the concept is not being understood. When a scientists says that a person shouldn't think there is something 'beyond', he isn't saying that the person is beliving lies, but rather that they are misunderstanding the theory.

One can also talk about Hollywood concepts of science as much as they like, but when all is said and done, if something does not have evidence to support it, whether it be imperical or logical, then it isn't a scientific theory, but rather merely speculation. There is nothing inherently wrong with speculation, but it should never be mistaken as the equal of a scientific theory.

MR Moderator...you are only going on current beliefs of what you are told is that this is simply a THEORY.....using many other theories would make that an understatment with string and braine in mind the universe as a whole does not have any constraints as it is envitably tied to another and continues to move like cellular growth in its own environment..space is what...what we see in the universe or what we don't see...in the box visualization is just a capped way of thinking as this is how science like a religious movement, want you to see it...constraints....luck there isn't the death penalties anymore for having optimistic views on current UNDERSTANDING"as you may already read...

i feel that science needs an open plan of views and to stop fearing the inevitable of proving and dis-proving on THEORIES...why we are still stuck on this big bang thinking..is absurd it must be integrated...ASAP...i its just soooooooo! last week

any way keep up the good work....

throw your letters at me! M=Melancholy

This has to be the single most difficult to comprehend post I have read in a while, but I will try and respond.

Yes, I am currently going on what we have as scientific theories, for the simple reason that scientific theories are backed by evidence, and therefore have a reasonably good chance of being correct, as opposed to speculation, which is not backed by any existing evidence, and therefore has a very low chance of being correct.



And if you could actually support that claim, it would be very interesting to follow up on, however I suspect that you cannot, and I simply have no interest in blindly believing anything I am told; there has to be some way for me to check out the validity of the information, such as what is provided by scientific theories.



I find it horrible ironic that the same scientific system that encouraged scintists to contemplate 11 different dimensions, the beginnings of the universe as we know it, the creations of stars, galaxies, and even of the boundaries of creation, is being called constrained and "in the box". There is nothing wrong with speculation, as I have said, but speculation is not the same as science. Speculation is a matter of faith. Science is a matter of support.



As you have so adeptly indicated, if science was left in the hands of people without the experience of it, it would rapidly degenerate into pop culture preferences ("so last week", indeed!) Incidentally, the Big Bang is only one of many theories, so I have no idea why you think science is fixated on that one theory and only that one theory.



Thank you, and on behalf of the scientifc world, we will. Getting accussed of never thinking up new ideas or advancing the understanding of the natural world is not going to stop scientists from doing precisely that.

Very well said! In fact, I think it might be a good idea to slap a sticky on your paragraph so that all can read it.

Now, onto this:



Science has an "open plan", that plan includes finding evidence and submitting all hypotheses to falsifiability. Here's a link that gives a quick overview on the scientific method.

Remember anyone who has a "new idea" is under the onus to support their idea. Nice paragraph from the above link:

To question 1), being anywhere near a black hole means you woul'd have to be traveling the speed of light if not faster to survive. Even if a person coul'd travel that fast, your body woul'd expand from the pressure, or in otherwords explode. Well, that is the technical answer that eliminates anyone from entering the black hole as it is- if they did enter.

Tooth and Claw

Ok. My $0.02 worth.

1) According to Stephen Hawking stuff CAN come out of a black hole, or at least escape from the proximity of its event horizon. Also it is now postulated, I'm sure I've read it has been proved mathematically (also by Hawking among others), that information is not destroyed when any matter is crushed in a black hole. So theoretically you could know if someone else has gone in if you could somehow analyse this information.

2) Much current thinking along the lines of the 'infinity' of space is now that the three spatial dimensions of up, down and across are not straight line dimensions but are curved. Essentially if you travelled in a straight line far enough you would eventually end up back where you started. In this respect there can be no outside as you couldn't get there if it existed! Also you won't reach an edge but just keep going round and round forever. This does not preclude a multi-verse as has been stated elsewhere, it's just that each universe inside the multi-verse is its own closed system with no access to any of the others (unless it had different physics and therefore its space wasn't curved).

thanks for all the replies

i wasnt meaning to make arguements or anyhitng its just when teachers tell you something like this and you have tests on it you have to believe what they say.

then when i read other threads it says something completly differeent to what i have been told.

i never really thought about the answers to the questions it was just a question that popped up in my head and i thought id ask.

thanks

tooh_and_claw

hey sorry i just wanted to know the truth im only relaying what sicience teachers push into our heads.

Well, I personally don't believe in such things as truth, but the the facts as we know them indicate that space is finite (it has limits), but it has no boundaries (there is no "edge"). That is what current evidence indicates. Here is the thing, though; we don't know everything there is to know. As new data is discovered, as our understanding increases, the theories we have now could change, could get stronger, or could simply be replaced. It all depends on where the evidence leads us. The evidence is the key.

im a bit lost i have a limit but no edge.......but if it has no edge it keeps going which means it has no limit

it ok something im just no meant ot understand

It's allright, it's a little difficult to wrap your head around at first, but once you do, it's clear.

Think of the universe kind of like the inside of a basketball. Nothing outside of the basketball exists. The basketball is finite, it has limits, and yet there are no boundaries. Don't think of the interior wall as the "edge" of the universe, but rather as the mathematical volume of it. In actuality (according to what we know), if you were to go "through" the interior wall (again, it isn't a boundary, but just for the sake of explanation), you would find yourself in the exact opposite of the inside of the basketball. You would still be inside the interior of the basketball, but just "looped" around to the other side. In that sense, there are no boundaries. If you took off in any given direction, you would eventually find yourself back where you started, because of the "loop" effect when you hit the metaphorical inside wall of our universal basketball.

Man, I don't think I cleared that up at all!.

NASA has a great site were you can ask their scientists questions and they will answer them. I like to play stump the scientist with it. I had a lively discussion with one on plasma based life forms and life forms in white dwarfs. Gods I love science. I have found grade school science teachers are often clueless. Better to do your own research and have fun with it. So many theories so little time.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/cosmology.html

Cosmology it a blast...

aquatus1, you are the man when it comes to reason on this site.

kobie, you are the inspiration of free thought .... Ahh modern physics, we agree on so much....

Argue on.....

how would it be possible for empty space to have a limit? is there sort of a "wall" thats located on the edge of space? if thats so, then what would this "wall" be made up of? i think there is a limited amount of matter to occupy the space, but unlimited space in the universe.

Empty space has a limit, but no wall. Think of a glass of drinking water. The water is "space". You are concentrating too much on the glass, and not the water. The glass is only there for our metaphorical benefit. Remove the glass, and we still have a limited amount of water, but now we no longer have a "wall". This water is our "space". Space is measured by its volume, not by the container around it. When we talk about the limits of space, we aren't talking about a location, an "edge" where we put our measuring tape. We are talking about the universe as a whole, as an entire unit. Don't think of it in 3-dimentional terms, as a given "blob" of "space", but rather as a definition. No matter where in this universe that you are, you will always be in the center of the universe, because the universe is measured by its volume, not by any distance from one point to another.