Impossible to answer?

[devonin]

Re: Impossible to answer?

If the universe is infinitely large, there is always more room for expansion because matter can never come up against any sort of hard barrier. And even if it did come up against a hard barrier, the question becomes "what is on the other side of the barrier" and no matter how you try to answer that question, it becomes turtles all the way down.

The logical basis for "An infinite universe" is simply the idea that even if the answer is 'nothing' the question is automatically begged either "How much nothing?" or "What's on the other side of -that-?"

[SM0K3D_0UT]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Everythingness in nothingness.
EX: The zero and the whole, the nothingness and the all, the emptiness and the absolute are two names of the same thing. They are interchangeable; they mean the same. The zero is also the whole. The emptiness is also the wholeness. The nothingness is also the everythingness.


"expanding" isn't really the best word to describe what is happening to the universe, although that is the word that is often used - a word choice which I think leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion regarding what is already a difficult topic! A more accurate word for what the universe is doing might be "stretching".

The difference between "expanding" and "stretching", for me at least, is that an "expanding universe" conjures up an image where there is a bunch of galaxies floating through space, all of which started at some center point and are now moving away from that point at very fast speeds. Therefore, the collection of galaxies (which we call the "universe") is expanding, and it is certainly fair to ask what it is expanding into

[devonin]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Well that makes just about no sense at all. Care to elaborate how mutually exclusive concepts are actually synonyms?

[korny]

Re: Impossible to answer?

While your theory sounds seemingly simple enough and logical to a degree richard, with no way to fully understand the expansion of our universe, it is unclear as to how you can determine what it is expanding into, or what it's expansion is even doing if that makes sense. To expatiate into true nothingness is just as illogical, as it is logical. Basically, we just don't know and can't ever hope to comprehend it, regardless of whether you believe “we let our earthly experiences overpower our common sense.”

[SM0K3D_0UT]

Re: Impossible to answer?

The collection of galaxies that make up the universe is moving through space; therefore, the universe is expanding into even more space than it already encompassed. In our new picture, though, the galaxies are just raisins spread throughout the dough - their presence is largely irrelevant to the question of the universe's expansion. What we really care about is the dough, and whether or not it has a boundary.

If the dough does have a boundary, then it is legitimate to ask what is beyond the boundary that the dough expands "into". But for our universe, that is a very complicated question to ask. The boundary at the edge of the dough represents the "edge" of space. By definition, we exist within space and have no way to leave it. So we don't think there is any way to observe or measure what is beyond, unless it had some effect on us that we currently don't know about. It would be really weird to imagine reaching the "end" of space. What would it look like, for example? These are questions that we have no way to give a scientific answer to, so the simple answer is that we don't know! All we do know is that based on our current understanding of theoretical cosmology, the universe does not have a boundary - it is either infinite or it wraps around itself in some way. Observations seem to agree with these predictions in the sense that if the universe does have a boundary, we know that the boundary is so far away from us that we can't currently see it and it doesn't have any effect on us.

[SM0K3D_0UT]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Sorry for double post, I didn't want to make the last reply too long, but this will finish what I have to say.

If the universe is indeed infinite, then the simple answer to the original question is that the universe doesn't have anything to expand into. Thinking about infinity is always complicated, but a good analogy can be made with simple math. Imagine you have a list of numbers: 1,2,3,etc., all the way up to infinity. Then you multiply every number in this list by 2, so that you now have 2,4,6,etc., all the way up to infinity. The distance between adjacent number in your list has "stretched" (it is now 2 instead of 1), but can you really say that the total extent of all your numbers has "expanded"? You started off with numbers that went up to infinity, and you finished with numbers that went up to infinity. So the total size is the same! If these numbers represent the distances between galaxies in an infinite universe, then it is a good analogy for why the universe does not necessarily expand even though it stretches.

Finally, I should point out that not everything in the universe is "stretching" or "expanding" in the way that the spaces between faraway galaxies stretch. For example, you and I aren't expanding, the Earth isn't expanding, the sun isn't expanding, even the entire Milky Way galaxy isn't expanding. That's because on these relatively small scales, the effect of the universe's stretching is completely overwhelmed by other forces (i.e. the galaxy's gravity, the sun's gravity, the Earth's gravity, and the atomic forces which hold people's bodies together). It is only when we look across far enough distances in the universe that the effect of the universe's stretching becomes noticeable above the effects of local gravity and other forces which tend to hold things together. (That is why, in the analogy of the tape measure I discussed above, the tape measure that you keep in your pocket does not get stretched, while the one that goes between two galaxies does get stretched. I bet some people were wondering about that!)

[richhhhhard]

Re: Impossible to answer?

This is a silly argument. You are all basically saying the same thing as me, you just don't like the idea of "nothing." Smok3d_0ut you just said there was no "nothing" and then that there is no "boundary" to space. Matter is not infinite, there is a set amount, so if there is no boundary to space but there IS a boundary to matter than WHAT is in the infinite space?
And if there IS a boundary then what is it made out of? Like Devonin said, what is on the other side?
Space is just space, if you don't like calling it nothing than call it something else, it means the same thing.

[Reach]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Well, the answer is not currently known.

As a quick note prior to my point, some information on the Big Bang to clear up issues that most people confuse: There was no matter before the Big Bang. There was only energy. Matter and space were created during the Big Bang. Also, the Big Bang was not an explosion per say. Rather, it was an expansion or stretching of the energy that existed at that point. Nothing went 'flying outwards' per say, rather the energy that was there stretched itself.

However, the universe *does not* need anything to expand into to be able to expand. If the energy that existed prior to the Big Bang defined the system that represented all of existence, and that system expanded (Which is what happened), there is in fact...nothing outside of the expanding universe. Rather, the Big Bang took everything that exists and expanded it, or stretched it.

It's a bit like taking an elastic band. Imagine the elastic band represents all of existence. The Big Bang is equivalent to taking that elastic band and pulling on it, stretching it outwards.

To address this further...

And if there IS a boundary then what is it made out of? Like Devonin said, what is on the other side?

The boundary would be made of the edges of the foundation of the universe - much like in my elastic band analogy, the boundary of the universe would just be the edges of the elastic band.

And again, this doesn't necessarily imply there is anything on the other side.

[Izzy]

Re: Impossible to answer?

In so many posts you always say that we can't understand or grasp the idea. It really isn't that hard to use your imagination a little reach. I'm sure you can do it, we can all do it to.

[Reach]

Re: Impossible to answer?

In so many posts you always say that we can't understand or grasp the idea. It really isn't that hard to use your imagination a little reach. I'm sure you can do it, we can all do it to.

I'm just saying it's not necessarily easy for any human being to imagine this because everything inside of the universe, when it expands, expands into something. It's not an insult to anyone's imagination, at least not purposely. :P

I mostly bring it up to address the preconceived bias we have to assume that everything expands into something else, but my point was that ...that isn't necessarily the case.

However, now I'm self conscious of my potentially poor wording and am going to edit my post

[alloyus]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Haven't any of you played Asteroids? When you reach the end of the universe, you come out the other side *facepalm*

[Izzy]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Haven't any of you played Asteroids? When you reach the end of the universe, you come out the other side *facepalm*

I always thought it would be cool if you could somehow go infinitely straight in anything direction and be able to end up in the same position.

[richhhhhard]

Re: Impossible to answer?

Sorry if this is mean, but that is flat out ridiculous. What do you think energy is?
Energy can't exist without matter. Matter did not magically appear because of a "big bang" though that may be the beginning of the universe as we know it now. That may be a nice way for people to wrap their heads around a concept that is otherwise hard to grasp. There was NO beginning. A beginning implies that there will be an end and there can be no end when matter cannot be destroyed. All it can do is change and that is all it has ever been doing. This is the same reason that I do not think time exists. To say that matter began at the big bang raises the question, well where did it come from? how did the big bang create it? At some point you have to see that it just was and will always be in some form or another.

[insanefreddy926]

Re: Impossible to answer?

I always thought it would be cool if you could somehow go infinitely straight in anything direction and be able to end up in the same position.

The universe could be thought of as a "four-dimensional" sphere. We used to think the earth was flat. That there was an "edge" of the world. It is actually a sphere, with no edge. So the universe may be a four dimensional analogue. There may be no edge at all, thus if you traveled in a straight line far enough, you would wind up where you started.

Also, energy and matter are the same thing. E = mc^2. I'm not sure how exactly the energy from the early universe became matter, but it probably condensed somehow into electrons, quarks, other "indivisible" particles.... And then those interacted to form atoms.

[richhhhhard]

Re: Impossible to answer?

The universe could be thought of as a "four-dimensional" sphere. We used to think the earth was flat. That there was an "edge" of the world. It is actually a sphere, with no edge. So the universe may be a four dimensional analogue. There may be no edge at all, thus if you traveled in a straight line far enough, you would wind up where you started.

Also, energy and matter are the same thing. E = mc^2. I'm not sure how exactly the energy from the early universe became matter, but it probably condensed somehow into electrons, quarks, other "indivisible" particles.... And then those interacted to form atoms.

I hope I live to see the day that all of these theories are proven wrong. The Earth is composed of matter, that we thought it was flat and found out it was round doesn't say anything about the universe other than we are often wrong about what we believe is true.

Also energy and matter are *NOT* the same thing. If the equation was e=m, that would be true. Energy is component of matter. This is how I don't see how energy supposedly existed before matter was "created" by the big bang. Let's see, Let's plug in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000*10^9999999999999=mc^2. Now let's create matter. m=0, cause without matter mass is 0, c=2.99*10^5 so we have-

1,000,000,000,000,000,000*10^9999999999999=0*2.99*10^5

Oh wait, that equals 0. Whoops!

Also what you are saying is that energy condensed into "indivisible" particles matter meaning that they are divisible into energy.
If energy and matter are the same thing as you and Reach have both claimed, matter did exist before the big bang, but whatever.