A thought provocing question.

[scorch]

Ok, apparently the universe keeps expanding, which means that at the moment it is a certain size, and tommorrow it will be a bit bigger.


So what happens if we get into a space ship and keep travelling one way, to the end of the universe? do we just bounce of the walls or what? also, there is 'nothing' in space, what is there in the area where the univere expands into? 'nothing notthing'?

 

[BlueMonday]

I came up with an answer to this question when I first joined this forum. I call it The Theory of Atomic Reality

I've never touched on the subject of universal expansion. Interesting enough, that's how astronomers know about the existence of dark energy. However long ago it was, they discovered that the universe was expanding, but was slowing down in it's expansion. The guessed that the slow down was due only to gravity, and that eventually the expansion would eventually become a contraction back toward the gravitational center of the universe. However, a few years ago some scientists were doing observations on the far flung galaxies and it turned out that they weren't slowing down anymore, they were expanding at greater speed. They had been expanding but decelerating, but now were expanding but accelerating away from the gravitational center. That led them to deduce that there had to be some other unseen force that was pulling mass against the pull of gravity. And no little mass at that either; we're talking about hundreds of thousands of galaxies worth of mass.

 

[BigBirdZ28]

There was an episode of startrek that dealt with this, matter simply ceased to exist.

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

As I recall, there is a theory of universal curvature, which means that you can never find the "end" of the universe, but can ride the curve back to point of origin.

I doubt I'll ever know the truth of it, one way or another.

 

[G-Man]

I think there's simply nothing at the end of the universe just like there isn't anything between stars. The universe is actualy only the stars and their atmosphere. It's kinda like the beggining of a CIV game. You have the cities and the areas between them are considered yours but you don't have anything on them. Your civilization is expanding and there's no limit. The question is are there any other civs out there? Is there any other universe? We know there are different stars, suns ans galaxies because we can see them and they're close to each other as they all come from the same origin. But different universes will be too far to see (or maybe you CAN see them at the end of the universe with nothing whatsoever to blobk the light?) and too far to reach. They can be so far away that you'll have to travel for billions of years in the speed of light and still you won't be anywhere near them. I guess we'll never know.

 

[santo67]

Of course there are other 'civs' out there. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth. There has to be. Even if the odds of life rising to intellignece to sentience to civilizations were infinitely small, there's plenty of Universe out there for it to happen more than once.

 

[IceBlaZe]

What makes you think that?
Mankind is a mistake of nature, what makes you think a mistake will happen again?
Our nature is perfect, harmonous, except for the existence of human kind.
Any intelligent enough creature, ironically enough, will understand he can take advantage of his enviroment.
What makes you think another nature will create another mistake as man kind?

 

[MCdread]

The accepted theory regards the space where we move in as a 3 dimensional surface in a quadri-dimensional universe. So, if you move towards one specific direction you will end up in the same place. If this sounds tricky, imagine that we are 2 dimensional creatures. The space where we move is then the surface of a 3D sphere. It's more less what happens in the surface of the earth.
When people say that the universe is expanding, what that means is that the radius of that 4 dim. sphere is increasing, thus it's surface increases too. So, imagine that the earth's radius is increasing. If you are in the equator and move to the east, for example, you will still arrive to the spot where you began, but the distance you have to cover is constantly increasing.
Offcourse, it's not that simple, because there is a lot of matter in the universe (some of which we can't detect), and according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, matter deforms the curvature of space. In the limit, you have a black hole, that leads you to God knows where.
I can't go much deeper, because I never had a course on Cosmology, but I hope this helps.

 

[santo67]

Originally posted by IceBlaZe
What makes you think that?
Mankind is a mistake of nature, what makes you think a mistake will happen again?
Our nature is perfect, harmonous, except for the existence of human kind.
Any intelligent enough creature, ironically enough, will understand he can take advantage of his enviroment.
What makes you think another nature will create another mistake as man kind?

What makes me think it will happen again is that it happened once. That means that there is a probability that it could happen again. Whether it happens a lot, or not very often, I can't say. But, the Universe is so mind numbingly huge that, even if the odds incredibly tiny that nature will make the same 'mistake' twice, it's a pretty good bet that it has happened before and will happen yet again.

 

[Beam]

Originally posted by MCdread
The accepted theory regards the space where we move in as a 3 dimensional surface in a quadri-dimensional universe. So, if you move towards one specific direction you will end up in the same place. If this sounds tricky, imagine that we are 2 dimensional creatures. The space where we move is then the surface of a 3D sphere. It's more less what happens in the surface of the earth.
When people say that the universe is expanding, what that means is that the radius of that 4 dim. sphere is increasing, thus it's surface increases too. So, imagine that the earth's radius is increasing. If you are in the equator and move to the east, for example, you will still arrive to the spot where you began, but the distance you have to cover is constantly increasing.
Offcourse, it's not that simple, because there is a lot of matter in the universe (some of which we can't detect), and according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, matter deforms the curvature of space. In the limit, you have a black hole, that leads you to God knows where.
I can't go much deeper, because I never had a course on Cosmology, but I hope this helps.

Quote of the great Stephen Hawking: the universe is finite but has no borders.

Compare with that MCdreads example of the surface of a 3D sphere which is a representation of that quote.

Paralel universes are the real challenge if you would want to "leave" the surface of our universe!

 

[scorch]

BM, thats one cool theory, our science teacher said something along those lines, basically than microspace and macrospace look pretty much the same. Everything revolves around each other.

One question, millions of atoms make an object right? Say a table.
Millions of solar systems make.... Do they make a gigantic table or what/

 

[santo67]

Our entire Universe exists within the tip of a ball-point pen sitting on some alien executive's desk, in our 'Parent' Universe. Right there in that little spherical ball on the end. Don't think of our Universe as the beginning or the end. The cycle of ball-point pen Universes extends forever in both directioins. Parallel or 'Sibling' Universes to us are from other ball point pens in our 'Parent' Universe. And, of course, we have our own 'Offspring' Universes within the tips of all the ball-point pens in our Universe. And so on and so forth ad infinitum.

 

[Padma]

I am reminded of an old poem, based on this very subject. I forget the author:

Big fleas have little fleas
that on their backs do ride 'em.
And little fleas have littler ones,
and on, ad infinitum.

Maybe I'll post more seriously tomorrow, when I'm more awake.

 

[santo67]

What are you talking about? I was being serious.

 

[BlueMonday]

Originally posted by scorch
...One question, millions of atoms make an object right? Say a table.
Millions of solar systems make.... Do they make a gigantic table or what/

I don't pretend to know all the answers. It's just something I came up with back when I had time to do stuff like think freely or smokem the peace pipe. That's was the yesterday, I wish I could still come up with stuff like that.

Anyway, if The Theory of Atomic Reality is reality then we could very well be any form of matter in the upper universe. A tiny piece of silicon transmitting ones and zeroes; one radioactive isotope floating around in the upper atmosphere after a nuclear holocaust; the piece of sh!t stuck to the end of a gay man's penis; or a tiny little hydrogen atom that was just created in the depths of a new born star and that will be reacted again in less than a trillionth of a second. The universe as we know may not even be a whole atom. It may be as big as a proton or as massively small as the quarks which make up the proton.

In any case, it doesn't really matter what we are. We'll never know; we'll never be able to see it for ourselves. Since I've created this theory, I've learned not to bother with the reality of reality, but instead to measure what I know from the six inches in front of my face.

The world doesn't just disappear when I close my eyes. If I fall asleep I wake up in the same place, and when I blink I haven't moved measureably from the before time. What I can feel and touch is the only reality I need. The world doesn't go away when we want it to, does it?

 

[History_Buff]

First off you didnt invent this theory. You may hae come to it on your own, but many before you have thought up the samething.

As for the infinite universe stuff, we can assume that no-one in our life time will come anywhere close to the answer. However, more and more of the whole "start off for one place end up where you started lot" is starting to make sense. And yet, it all comes back to civ. I do believe it was in SMAC where Lular H'minee tried to explain that there are "worlds within worlds", and Judaa Marr who said the "shortest distance between two points is zero."

Mind you, if anyone ever solves this problem about the shortest distances thing, someone will probably use it to start warping warheads all over the place and destroy the whole world. Go figure.

But this is just me rambling about something I'm not sure I understand, and am reminded of something that may never have existed at all.

 

[Morgasshk]

Oh for the time to make a big huge post on this subject - woe is me that I'm at work!

Has to be other life and intelligent at that - Too many factors point to this, sheer size the main deciding one. Even though it may be a life so alien to ours that we may not recognize it as such

Again, has anyone read any E.E. "doc" Smith books? Lensman series or Skylark of Space books? They go in depth into this...

I think its too much of a boggling argument and will more than likely give anyone an aneurysm to think of it too much! I vote we concentrate all efforts and minds into building spaceships of technology and quality to get us out there and see for ourselves! (Please in our lifetime! Hey, everyone wants to be an astronaut...!)

Later people...

Morgasshk.

 

[BlueMonday]

Originally posted by History_Buff
First off you didnt invent this theory. You may hae come to it on your own, but many before you have thought up the samething.

Frankly, I find your demeanor insulting. I came up with the theory on my own, therefore I invented it. I didn't read it in a book, I didn't hear someone talk about it, I was just sitting around thinking and it came to me.

 

[allhailIndia]

As far as modern research suggests, the universe will keep expanding into nothingness

The latest theory suggest that nothing will slow down the current rate of expansion and trillions of years later, all that will exist in the universe will be random atoms just flying about. As for travelling into space, I believe that it will be thousands of years before mankind can even hope to have crossed our galaxy

 

[Ozz]

Originally posted by santo67
Of course there are other 'civs' out there. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth. There has to be. Even if the odds of life rising to intellignece to sentience to civilizations were infinitely small, there's plenty of Universe out there for it to happen more than once.

I not convinced we have evidence that it has even
happened once. Human intelligence is debatable.