What's At The End Of The Universe

[Harte]

Harte, you wouldn't happen to have a link or two I could check out perhaps?

Here's a search from Google:

Googlesearch of "Expanding Universe."

The fourth hit from the top on that page is pretty good, but not as flashy as some of the others.

I'm very interested in knowing more about this. I may have misread, but If I understand correctly, you are saying that the "space" is attached to the matter/energy that is expanding outward as in they are "one and the same"? Correct me if I got that wrong, however that's pretty cool if I do say so myself.

Sort of. Actually, it's only space that is expanding, not the matter/energy per se. By that I mean that the matter and energy is in fact expanding, but only because it has to exist in a universe where the space is expanding.

The two analogies most often used are the dots drawn on a balloon analogy and the raisins in the raisin bread analogy.

In the first, the galaxies are dots drawn on a balloon. Only the surface of the balloon represents the universe, not the balloon's interior. When you blow the balloon up, as it gets larger, the dots (galaxies) on the surface (space itself) get farther and farther apart. If you pick one dot and measure the speeds at which the other dots are receding from that dot, at an expansion rate that remains constant (blowing air into the balloon at a constant rate, IOW) you will see that the dots farthest from your chosen dot of reference are moving away from the reference dot faster than the dots that started out nearby to it.

In the raisin/raisin bread analogy, the raisins are the galaxies and the bread is space. I think you can see where that one is going. Just add yeast, right?

By the way, the expansion of the universe does not result in galaxies expanding, or other things, like planets expanding. This is because the force that the expansion of the universe puts on any particular area of the universe is easily overcome in areas occupied by mass. The gravitaional attrraction of the Earth, for example, towards it's core is far, far greater than the force applied to the Earth due to the expansion of the universe. This is why it is only space that is expanding, while the material portion of the universe is just carried along with it.

For people that don't believe that it is space itself that is expanding, one of the reasons they originally theorized this is that no matter which direction you look, distant galaxies are all moving directly away from us. Unless the Earth is where the Big Bang originated, this one simple observation demonstrates why it must be that space is itself expanding, and not matter/energy merely expanding into empty space out there somewhere. Of course, there are many other reasons that substantiate space expanding other than this, but this is one that best exemplifies the idea while being the least complicated.

Harte

[War Eagle]

Sorry, but that's just not the case. Space is itself expanding. It is the expansion of space itself that causes the galaxies to get further and further apart from each other. Space is four dimensional (spacetime.) Space is not expanding into anything that we can conceive of. It's certainly not expanding into more space. If you must visualize the universe expanding into something, then you're gonna have to somehow imagine the geometry of higher dimensions.

Rebel,

The Pluto thing is only the result of the refining and updating of the definition of what a planet actually is. Nobody was ever "wrong" on this. Going by the original definition, Pluto was a planet. Now it's not. That's all.

Nobody has claimed to "know" anything of the sort. But, like everything else in Cosmology, there are various theories about it.

You know, I love your link, and I love the fact that you included it. Bravo.

But if you had read what is at the link, you would have seen that the universe actually is expanding faster than light:

Source is the last link you gave.

Einstein showed us that all motion in space is relative. There are visible galaxies in the night sky that are actually moving away from us at speeds faster than light. To them, we are the ones moving away. To their nearby neighboring galaxies, they do not appear to be moving nearly as fast as we see them move.

The last link you gave, the one I quoted from, tells you exactly why farther galaxies have a higher velocity realtive to our position of observation than galaxies which are nearer to us.

Harte

Apologies on the late reply Harte, had my pc in for a major tune up & service.

My mistake on the post not the link though...

What i actually meant to say and didn't was that science had us believing that the universe was expanding 'as fast as' the speed of light 'not faster', hence the reason for me posting the link that states that they now claim that it's actually 'expanding faster' than the speed of light.

When it comes to trying to prove science wrong i sometimes get a little ahead of myself with excitement.

As you stated on 'the refining & updating of Pluto'...you kind of lost me there.

They either got it right or got it wrong, theres no in between especially if it was taught to us in schools & in text books or whatever etc for many years and then only for them to 're-discover' generations later they had it wrong.

Lets face it here, if we were to all make our own theories on the the cosmos and somehow have them published, most of us would probably be labeled a little loopy or even space out on something...but not official science though.

Lastly on cosmology(science)basing itself on 'theories'...Don't you think it better they get their theories based on facts before dishing it out to the world and placing it in magazines and text books etc?

Just my thoughts on it anyway Harte...

[Radian]

Lastly on cosmology(science)basing itself on 'theories'...Don't you think it better they get their theories based on facts before dishing it out to the world and placing it in magazines and text books etc?

Just my thoughts on it anyway Harte...

Hey, I like your thoughts!

[Essene]

If space is expanding and our observation of the end of the universe is 47 billion light years away, our perception of the so called end of the universe is a gabillion years ago and has expanded since at a rate stated of one light year per all those years and may really be a gazillion light years further out today in so called real time. If this is the case what is the universe expanding into? Is there folds of space, of space time? I was given this link by one of the posters in this forum someplace (I dont remember at this time who it was) and it may help in this perplexing question. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabi-Yau_manifold

There is no end of the universe. It's current expansion is happening everywhere simultaneously. To state that the universe 'expanded from a centre/cosmic egg' is misleading, because here never was a centre/cosmic egg for it to expand from, or rather the centre/cosmic egg was everywhere at once.

From our perspective, using radio-astronomy, it appears the universe expanded from a central point some few billions of years ago and is now a certain size based on the rate of universal expansion. However, go to any other point of the universe (it would have to be relativistically far away from here) and you would find the universe expanding from another centre based on the radio-astronomical observations from there.

The size of the universe is defined for us by the speed of light and the rate of expansion. You could go to the current edge of the observable universe and it would still be the same size in all directions.

How about the start of our own

[QuickSilver2005]

Harte-

Awesome, very good explanation of the process. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

Memphis, TN?

I'm around an hour southeast of you at Ripley MS.

[Picturesque Orion]

Harte, I am sorry to be so stubborn but the universe and space if you wanna add it has to be somewhere to exist, everything has to be somewhere to exist, that is what exist is, and this place you say that the universe expanded to when the big bang is somewhere, it's ok if you dont agree with me that this somewhere is space but if it is not space than space itself has to be somewhere to then. And this somewhere is unlimited coz its nothing. Just think on it, before the big bang, you say that the universe and including space was compressed in one, well.......... where do you think they where? Well they where in complete emptyness, and in one spot of emptyness wass this huge mass of matter, because this huge mass of matter had to be somewhere for it to be there....... for it to exist, well this somewhere is what I mean by Space.

[Harte]

My mistake on the post not the link though...

What i actually meant to say and didn't was that science had us believing that the universe was expanding 'as fast as' the speed of light 'not faster', hence the reason for me posting the link that states that they now claim that it's actually 'expanding faster' than the speed of light.

Rebel,

Your statement about what science "had us believeing" is unfamiliar to me. Science never "had me believing" this.

The idea that the universe is expanding faster than light is a relative one anyway (no pun intended.) There are portions of the universe moving away from us at this speed based on our observations. If we were in those areas instead of here, it would be the part of the universe where the Earth is located that would be moving away that fast. Anywhere between here and there and the observation would show that neither portion of the universe is moving away from that position that fast.

There is no "center" of the universe, so there is no reference point against which to measure the absolute velocity of anything. In fact, this means that there is truly no such thing as absolute velocity. What I'm getting at here is that it's really meaningless to say that the "Universe is expanding faster than light" when clearly it depends on the position of the observer which portions are actually traveling at great speed.

The velocity cosmologists attribute to the expansion is cumulative, just like it would be in the balloon or raisin bread examples. IOW, no single dot on the ballon is traveling any faster than any other dot, as far as the expansion goes. But from the perspective of one dot that we take to be standing still - like we do the solar system - the further dots appear to us to be moving away at a faster rate. This is because there is more "space" (balloon surface) to expand between our reference dot and the far dot.

As you stated on 'the refining & updating of Pluto'...you kind of lost me there.

They either got it right or got it wrong, theres no in between especially if it was taught to us in schools & in text books or whatever etc for many years and then only for them to 're-discover' generations later they had it wrong.

You can word it anyway you want, but what actually happened is that astronomers decided that Pluto was not a planet. They did not "discover" that Pluto was not a planet. They changed what the term "planet" means.

Lastly on cosmology(science)basing itself on 'theories'...Don't you think it better they get their theories based on facts before dishing it out to the world and placing it in magazines and text books etc?

No, I don't think this. And neither do you, apparently, since you posted this message using an electronic device that operates on theory alone.

By this logic, scientists should never publish any theory, and without theories, there is no science.

Absolute fact exists only as data. Attempts to explain data are what's known as theories. Once a theory is proposed (published,) scientists manipulate the new theory to see if it can be made to make predictions that, if born out, would provide evidence for the veracity, or at least the usefulness, of the new theory. If predictions do arise from the new theory, and if what the predictions predicted can be shown to be experimentally verified, then the theory is (usually) accepted. Until, that is, another theory comes along that explains the data and provides verified predictions that were absent from the first theory.

That doesn't mean that the theory actually explains the data. It does mean that the theory provides a workable and useful model for what's happening in the real world that resulted in the collection of the original data (facts.)

Harte-

Awesome, very good explanation of the process. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

Memphis, TN?

I'm around an hour southeast of you at Ripley MS.

Thanks for the compliment QuickSilver2005.

I'm actually in Southaven.

Harte, I am sorry to be so stubborn but the universe and space if you wanna add it has to be somewhere to exist, everything has to be somewhere to exist, that is what exist is, and this place you say that the universe expanded to when the big bang is somewhere, it's ok if you dont agree with me that this somewhere is space but if it is not space than space itself has to be somewhere to then.

Ghostkol,

Stubborn is good. And I actually agree with you. I think we are really discussing what boils down to semantics here. Remember, I said that if you must insist on imagining what the universe is expanding into, then you're gonna have to imagine higher-dimensions. That's a rather tall order.

Our four-dimensional spacetime has it's origins in the Big Bang. That does not preclude a "place" in some higher-dimensional manifold of some sort for the cosmic egg to exist in prior to the bang.

Current extensions of string theory (collectively called "M-Theory") provide for exactly this sort of thing.

Harte

[Raptor]

I read through the first twenty posts of this thread and began typing a reply to lots of different ones, then after checking out a few more I saw that you said pretty much everything that was on my mind. Nice posts.

[Picturesque Orion]

To tell you the truth, I actually dont believe in the big bang theory at all, maybe I am wrong but I find it very poorly scientific. How and why could all this matter and energy blast? What was the reason for it to explode? And was alll this matter and energy always there? Or was there something before it? What created all this matter and energy? It had to come from somewhere, or from something... or it had to be created coz when you come to think of it, it is just matter.

This is why I believe the big bang theory is incorrect, it is filled with questions that when you read them, the theory suddenly sounds like a stupidity. Don't get me wrong, I believe all this theories have a good base of facts and scientific data but the big bang theory is too insecure and it sounds more insecure when you ask yourself this questions.

If I were to believe that the big bang theory is true then I would believe that the universe is expanding due to the energy released by the huge blast. But then I would have to say that the universe was all expanding from one place like an explosion behaves but as you said here, that is absurd. Because then there would actually be a center of the universe and I dont think that is true.

The balloon explenation is pretty good, but I quite don't understand.... if the galaxies are the dots then what is inside of the balloon? What would be the air that is in the balloon in the universe?

[signal7]

I found a video on the net that was about the universe. It showed a pic the Hubel Telescope took of the universe 47 billion lightyears away. The end of the uiverse. Yes the universe is 47 billion light years in radius. I always thought there was no end. Now that I know there is an end I wonder, what is at the end? If we flew past the end where would we be? Would we be back at the begining?

That's visible spectra. If you look at a newer study in the phenomenon of gamma energies, it's quite a bit larger. Not sure by how much exactly, but it's been termed the "expanse".

These radiations come from some source, and are either amplified or deamplified. When applying the correct algorithm to, you can estimate the distance between the points, given your relative distance from the closest.

The most interesting right now being star "hatcheries". Where these energies can even be cast backwards towards us, from an outlying point.

When applying these perceptible phenomenon, right now, as is my argument, no one really knows how expansive the universe is, or can be. Some estimate no end (infinite), others say in the 100's of trillions. Quite fascinating.

[Essene]

Then maybe the link in my previous post may work where its a never ending twist and turns into different dimensions and time the universe is expanding into, This has a picture of this theory. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1...Calabi-Yau.jpeg

Rebel,

Your statement about what science "had us believeing" is unfamiliar to me. Science never "had me believing" this.

The idea that the universe is expanding faster than light is a relative one anyway (no pun intended.) There are portions of the universe moving away from us at this speed based on our observations. If we were in those areas instead of here, it would be the part of the universe where the Earth is located that would be moving away that fast. Anywhere between here and there and the observation would show that neither portion of the universe is moving away from that position that fast.

There is no "center" of the universe, so there is no reference point against which to measure the absolute velocity of anything. In fact, this means that there is truly no such thing as absolute velocity. What I'm getting at here is that it's really meaningless to say that the "Universe is expanding faster than light" when clearly it depends on the position of the observer which portions are actually traveling at great speed.

The velocity cosmologists attribute to the expansion is cumulative, just like it would be in the balloon or raisin bread examples. IOW, no single dot on the ballon is traveling any faster than any other dot, as far as the expansion goes. But from the perspective of one dot that we take to be standing still - like we do the solar system - the further dots appear to us to be moving away at a faster rate. This is because there is more "space" (balloon surface) to expand between our reference dot and the far dot.

You can word it anyway you want, but what actually happened is that astronomers decided that Pluto was not a planet. They did not "discover" that Pluto was not a planet. They changed what the term "planet" means.

No, I don't think this. And neither do you, apparently, since you posted this message using an electronic device that operates on theory alone.

By this logic, scientists should never publish any theory, and without theories, there is no science.

Absolute fact exists only as data. Attempts to explain data are what's known as theories. Once a theory is proposed (published,) scientists manipulate the new theory to see if it can be made to make predictions that, if born out, would provide evidence for the veracity, or at least the usefulness, of the new theory. If predictions do arise from the new theory, and if what the predictions predicted can be shown to be experimentally verified, then the theory is (usually) accepted. Until, that is, another theory comes along that explains the data and provides verified predictions that were absent from the first theory.

That doesn't mean that the theory actually explains the data. It does mean that the theory provides a workable and useful model for what's happening in the real world that resulted in the collection of the original data (facts.)

Thanks for the compliment QuickSilver2005.

I'm actually in Southaven.

Ghostkol,

Stubborn is good. And I actually agree with you. I think we are really discussing what boils down to semantics here. Remember, I said that if you must insist on imagining what the universe is expanding into, then you're gonna have to imagine higher-dimensions. That's a rather tall order.

Our four-dimensional spacetime has it's origins in the Big Bang. That does not preclude a "place" in some higher-dimensional manifold of some sort for the cosmic egg to exist in prior to the bang.

Current extensions of string theory (collectively called "M-Theory") provide for exactly this sort of thing.

Harte

[War Eagle]

Rebel,

Your statement about what science "had us believeing" is unfamiliar to me. Science never "had me believing" this.

You may be right Harte, just a little confusion about it all on my part i guess?

Not really my topic of discussion but always interesting topic never the less, we live and learn...

Thanks for the replys.

Later...

Expanding Confusion

The Universe, Expanding Beyond All Understanding

A cool link i found on the so called theory, if i could use that word lol! on the center of the universe...

Confusion over the center of the universe?

[Harte]

To tell you the truth, I actually dont believe in the big bang theory at all, maybe I am wrong but I find it very poorly scientific. How and why could all this matter and energy blast? What was the reason for it to explode? And was alll this matter and energy always there? Or was there something before it? What created all this matter and energy? It had to come from somewhere, or from something... or it had to be created coz when you come to think of it, it is just matter.

If I were to believe that the big bang theory is true then I would believe that the universe is expanding due to the energy released by the huge blast. But then I would have to say that the universe was all expanding from one place like an explosion behaves but as you said here, that is absurd. Because then there would actually be a center of the universe and I dont think that is true.

Ghostkol,

Believe whatever you want. You still have to explain why all the galaxies we see in the sky are moving away from us, no matter what direction we look in, and why the further away a galaxy is from ours, the faster it appears to be receding from us.

Imagine it as a videotape, then ask what happens if you run the tape backwards.

The physical fact of galactic receding is only part of evidence for the Big Bang. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is probably the single strongest piece of evidence for the Big Bang. It is the actual energy of the original bang. Of course it's still out there, where would it go? It started in the cosmic egg, which is what the universe before the Big Bang is sometimes referred to.(BTW, the phrase "before the Big Bang" shouldn't really be used here, since the Big Bang created not only the universe we live in, but also the time for it to exist in, since space and time are two aspects of the same thing - spacetime.)

We are still in the cosmic egg, it's just bigger now. Because it's bigger, the energy of the Big Bang is diluted, yet this very same energy can be detected, again in every single direction you look in in space. The detected values associated with this energy - wavelength, frequency, etc. - exactly match the values predicted by the Big Bang theory which were predicted before the radiation had ever been detected.

Not only that, looking very, very closely at the extremely fine variations of the background radiation between one targeted direction and the next reveals a flabbergasting observation about the universe. It appears that the matter in the universe is concentrated in certain areas, and absent in others, and these areas are actually connected over extremely vast distances, staggeringly vast distances, by strands of matter made up of galaxies. Like an unimaginably huge three-dimensional spiderweb.

Believe or disbelieve the Big Bang. It is the best theory we have right now. It explains almost all the observations we have made. Of course, it is the fate of every theory to be proven wrong eventually. But usually, there remains in new theories remnants of the older theories. Like the way Relativity contains Newton's "laws of motion" within it as a special case that is approximately correct to an extremely fine degree at velocities less than around half the speed of light.

The balloon explenation is pretty good, but I quite don't understand.... if the galaxies are the dots then what is inside of the balloon? What would be the air that is in the balloon in the universe?

Since the surface of the ballon is our universe, and it is also a two-dimensional curved plane, the inside of the balloon, as well as the outside (the area around the balloon that the balloon is expanding "into") would be a higher dimension. In this case, The Third Dimension!!! (cue scary music)

I don't care who you are, that's funny.

And that's why I prefer the balloon analogy to the raisin bread one - because the "higher dimensions" part remains intact in the analogy and not just the "galaxies moving apart" part. With raisin bread, this part of the analogy fails because you have 3-d bread expanding into 3-d space. You have to "pretend" that the area around the bread (that the bread is expanding into) is of some other dimension. With the balloon's planar surface, it's obviously another dimension. It's the same reason that even if Snoopy was alive in the comics page, he couldn't possibly see your big old eyes looking at him.

Harte

[Harte]

You may be right Harte, just a little confusion about it all on my part i guess?

Not really my topic of discussion but always interesting topic never the less, we live and learn...

Thanks for the replys.

Later...

Expanding Confusion

The Universe, Expanding Beyond All Understanding

A cool link i found on the so called theory, if i could use that word lol! on the center of the universe...

Confusion over the center of the universe?

REBEL,

Excellent excellent links.

Ghostkol - click on those. They explain most of this better than me.

Harte

[The Unseen]

I found a video on the net that was about the universe. It showed a pic the Hubel Telescope took of the universe 47 billion lightyears away. The end of the uiverse. Yes the universe is 47 billion light years in radius. I always thought there was no end. Now that I know there is an end I wonder, what is at the end? If we flew past the end where would we be? Would we be back at the begining?

"OBLIVION"

[Picturesque Orion]

Ahh ok , believe it or not harte the balloon explenation cleared most of it for me.

Just one thing, if every galaxy is moving away from us, then how come the Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards us? Destined to collide with The Milky Way. Howcome we get galxies colliding if they are all moving away from each other? If the balloon is expanding the dots move away from each other then how are we getting some of the dots colliding and uniting?

[Harte]

Ahh ok , believe it or not harte the balloon explenation cleared most of it for me.

Just one thing, if every galaxy is moving away from us, then how come the Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards us? Destined to collide with The Milky Way. Howcome we get galxies colliding if they are all moving away from each other? If the balloon is expanding the dots move away from each other then how are we getting some of the dots colliding and uniting?

The Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way galaxy are both part of what astronomers call the "local group." This group of galaxies are near enough to each other that they are influenced by each other's gravitational fields.

Remember the thing about space itself expanding. That includes the space occupied at any given instant by the planet Earth. If it weren't for the gravitational attraction that the mass of the Earth has for the center of the Earth, the Earth itself would be expanding right along with the universe.

BTW, it also includes the space occupied by you, but the electrochemical bonds in the molecular structures of your body's cellular walls prevents you from expanding, because these forces are greater than that exerted by the universe's expansion.

The force that the expansion of the universe exerts in any given area is small enough to be overcome by relatively weak gravitation. The mutual gravitational attraction of the "local group" more than overcomes the force exerted by universal expansion. But the group itself is moving away from all other galxies, corrected for local motion among other galactic "groups" and/or clusters.

Harte

[StarMountainKid]

And we must remember the Big Bang theory is not a theory of what created the BB itself. It's a theory of how the universe evolves after the BB happened.

The earliest period of time of the universe, from t=0 to 10^-43 sec is the Planck epoch. The physics of the Planck epoch is not well understood, as during this time gravity was united with the other fundamental forces, and a theory of quantum gravity will be needed to explore this first tiny fraction of a second at the beginning of the universe. Even if we come to some understanding of the physics of the Planck epoch, it will still tell us nothing of what happened at t=0

Perhaps string theory or M-theory will be able to explain what created the BB itself.

[SameerPrehistorica]

always i wanted to know this answer.but no scientists had found it yet.there is no end.........

how u r saying

[spiral_flare]

I always thought the universe was everything that exists right now, every planet, star, etc. At the end of the universe, there's just space that goes on forever.

Ok maybe what I just said doesn't make sense, but here's a picture of the universe:

The universe is the cylinder looking thing expanding, there's black all around it, what could that be? It should be space

but then again, the picture is the big bang theory which not many people believe in so it's very possible that the universe looks nothing like that.

on the other hand, even if it did look different from the picture, i still think that there is space. i don't think space has an end, it goes on forever. it just makes sense to me. because if it ended, then what's after it ends? nothing? that would be impossible because technically, nothing is....well...nothing, its definition is something that doesn't exist. therefore, nothing doesn't exist. there's no such thing as nothing, that's why it's called nothing

Edited June 19, 2007 by spiral_flare

[Harte]

The universe is the cylinder looking thing expanding, there's black all around it, what could that be? It should be space

but then again, the picture is the big bang theory which not many people believe in so it's very possible that the universe looks nothing like that.

on the other hand, even if it did look different from the picture, i still think that there is space. i don't think space has an end, it goes on forever. it just makes sense to me. because if it ended, then what's after it ends? nothing? that would be impossible because technically, nothing is....well...nothing, its definition is something that doesn't exist. therefore, nothing doesn't exist. there's no such thing as nothing, that's why it's called nothing

Sigh.

Harte

[Picturesque Orion]

Sigh.

Harte

Thanks for that pic spiral flare! That pic demostrates just what I have been saying through this whole thread harte, that pic says it all, the big bang expanded all the matter through the emptyness that we call space, in that pic it is all the black sorrounding the expanding matter, of caurse space is infinite because there is nothing after it, as I said all this matter has to be somewhere no? Well of caurse it is, it is in complete emptyness wich we call space.

If we then say that space is limited then we have to say that it is somewhere too, because everything that is limited has to be somewhere. But I still say that we already know this huge unlimited amount of emptyness, and we call it space in wich expands matter, wich originates by a huge blast of matter, a huge explosion wich expanded all this matter into the emptyness, as I said everything limited has to be somewhere to exist.

The Universe is the matter and energy, the rest wich is complete emptyness is Space.

Edited June 19, 2007 by Ghostkol

[Harte]

Thanks for that pic spiral flare! That pic demostrates just what I have been saying through this whole thread harte, that pic says it all, the big bang expanded all the matter through the emptyness that we call space, in that pic it is all the black sorrounding the expanding matter, of caurse space is infinite because there is nothing after it, as I said all this matter has to be somewhere no? Well of caurse it is, it is in complete emptyness wich we call space.

The Universe is the matter and energy, the rest wich is complete emptyness is Space.

This is incorrect and I've shown you why. If you can't accept it, that's not my fault. But you should realize that you are claiming to know more than all the astrophyicists and cosmologists on Earth put together. If this is true, would you care to present us with your credentials for making such a claim? Have you published your theory in any peer-reviewed scientific journals yet? If not, why not? If so, why haven't you linked them here?

The pic simply does not show what you claim. How would you propose to illustrate graphically the expansion of the universe since the big bang?

The pic is a fancy updating of a Feynman diagram, apparently. It's just a graphical representation. If the surrounding area had been shown as purple polka dots instead of black, would you claim that the universe is really polka-dotted?

Harte

[spiral_flare]

Harte, to be honest, I don't understand what you're trying to say ONE BIT! I know I'm slow, I just can't help it. All I know, is that you disagree with us and you're saying that you're right, I just don't know what you're right about, since I don't know what you're talking about. But if you're saying that we're wrong to say that space goes on forever...well then you're wrong. It does, because it only makes sense. If that's not what you're trying to say, then sorry for ever mentioning it. Putting a sad smiley face and a sigh doesn't really help. It makes me look like a complete idiot.

Well ok, since the "black part" around the universe isn't actually what is "outside the universe" then what is? It cannot be "nothing", I know that for sure. Of course now, if in the illustration there were purple polka dots instead of blackness, then they have to be something, otherwise they wouldn't be there. So that's not really a good example for backing up whatever you're trying to say.

I have read all the posts in this thread, everyone seems to be creating their own theories that don't really explain anything. But I must say, I agree with Ghostkol. Do we know what the universe actually looks like? No. Do we even know what the universe is? No. I don't know why I'm wasting my time here. Bye.

Edited June 20, 2007 by spiral_flare

[Startraveler]

Well ok, since the "black part" around the universe isn't actually what is "outside the universe" then what is? It cannot be "nothing", I know that for sure.

You're asking for answers when only suggestions exist. There's an unfortunate tendency sometimes to mix what we know (or at least probably know) with things about which we have barely a clue, sometimes in the same breath or sentence. There are further complications in that one seemingly simple (but deep, nonetheless) question can have multiple answers depending on how technical a level one desires to go to. What's outside the universe? Well, you can set up a nice tautology such that the word "universe" itself encompasses all things and thus logically cannot have any sort of outside. But it's probably wiser to take a physical perspective. Here you run into the question of just what constitutes "the universe." If we're looking for some clearly delineated border between "universe" and "outside the universe" it would help to know exactly what we're talking about. Usually when we're talking about the universe we're talking about the visible universe--that is, the cosmos that we see. But due to certain physical constraints on how much we can see at the present time, that's not likely to be all that there is. But is there something beyond that? You could go down a hundred different roads that consider that question but they're all speculation (to varying degrees). Certain incarnations of inflationary cosmology--which is a sort of companion to and outgrowth of standard big bang cosmology (which, unless there's something drastically wrong with our understanding of physics, is pretty iron-clad science)--paint a picture of a much larger, likely infinite, cosmos beyond the visible universe with which we're familiar. Everything above our heads, everything in view of our most powerful telescopes, everything we've traditionally referred to when we spoke of "the universe" becomes merely a bubble in a much larger Universe (note the capital U). "Outside the universe" becomes a staggeringly desolate landscape, punctuated with false vacuums and inflating patches of new mini-universes like our own.

I should make a clarification here. We've moved from big bang cosmology to its big brother, inflationary cosmology (you can see that the period of inflation is marked on your diagram, by the way). The former is pretty well substantiated, being merely the result of looking at the universe and taking careful note of what we're seeing. It's the sort of framework that could have its observational roots in 1920s technology. Inflationary cosmology is a much more theoretical sort of construct (in fact, it's actually a fairly large family of different possible cosmologies) and is less than 30 years old. But it makes some predictions that have found observational support in results recently released from a space observatory known as WMAP. Even so, you can see that it's on the next rung up the speculative ladder. There are other ideas that are way, way up that ladder, ideas involving higher dimensional membranes and so on. Those are the sorts of thing that will warp your conception of what "outside" even means.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that science is a work in progress. Inevitably there are blind alleys and wrong turns. There are theories with varying degrees of observational support. Your simple question goes to the very forefront of what theoretical cosmology is trying to wrap its head around. There are no answers right now and there may never be any decently confirmed ones. I love cosmology but I won't deny that, as it exists today, it's based on a very successful theoretical framework that ultimately is not correct and it relies on a few key assumptions that are just as likely to be correct as they are to be wrong. So it's tough going. Try not to get frustrated because most of the answers are unavailable right now.

Edited June 20, 2007 by Startraveler