Space, Infinite or Finite?

[quote]asusvenus wrote:
Treating the universe as being a black hole is quite easy.

As far as I know, information isn’t leaving it.[/quote]

Well, the universe isn’t a black hole, and doesn’t behave like one.

for the universe to go on forever there would have to be a start point.

a “time” when there was nothing.

so if you did get to the “end” of the universe I believe one could find the true center of the universe, yes?

Space and Time are both constructs of the limited human mind. It’s infinite nature is a paradox as we believe everything must have a beginning and an end. We can form as many theories as we want to (and much more intelligent people than I, have done so). But the more I study physics, the more I believe in GOD (more like a divine thought, or energy - not a jealous adolescent “god” who sends punishments on “his people”).

If the Universe is GOD, and GOD is limitless, then by extension the Universe is limitless…

I am not talking about religion here. By “Divine”, I mean creative energy, expansion… To me, GOD is the "is"ness of things… (as opposed to a black hole) GOD is a concept that fits nicely in my little brain to help me understand wonderful questions such as these… Thought = energy = matter = action = destiny…

If I can “control” thought, can I “control” matter? Does the act of observation (focused, critical thought) change the outcome or things? http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

I guess the question that I am asking myself these days is where did the first thought come from?

<<<< eyes roll back forward, “hey guys, what happened? I blacked out for a second there…” >>>> LOL

It’s without a doubt our linear thoughts inhibit us to understand the true nature of the Universe, I wonder if you brought up a smart child in isolation and changed the rules of physics in so that he believed them as fact, would he maybe then be able to comprehend the universe better than us?

Have you guys seen the History Channel special on the theories of parallel universes??? Well, I didnt understand a fucking thing but it was interesting to watch!

It doesnt matter, theres a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

traveling at the speed of light - it would take 10000 years to reach the nearest start alpha centauri. we’re fucking stuck!

in 15,000 years a new ice age will come, so hopefully we’ve found a new world by then.

I’ll try to make this short so it get out of the wall-text of divagation post

I read a book by Isaac Asimov who talked about that and I remember this.


  1. If we where to reach the end of the universe, we could not go into the ‘‘nothingness’’ because we would turn it into universe

  2. Imagine you can go everywhere on a a balloon which is expanding. You can go everywhere in the Area but not into the balloon. every ray of light can just travel on the area. The universe is like that but it is 3 dimension with a fourth that we cant go on (time). It was something like that.

I guess in my ignorance that it has something to do with non-euclidan geometry (where the sum of all angle in a triangle is less than 180). Non euclidian geometry is like when you travel 10 miles south, 10 miles east then 10 miles north then you end up at the same place. Impossible? Not if you were at the north pole.
don’t go thinking I understand something about non-euclidan geometry

I am not delusionnal enough to think I get it. I don’t get it and you don’t get it. You say you study physics, and blablabla…yeah right me too.

[quote]ucallthatbass wrote:
Well space and time are intertwined. The further away you move from earth (really should be the center of the universe) the further back in time you are going. After you get a certain distance away I forget the exact amount, galaxies become very sparse and are considered dead. Something like 420-440 billion light years away you reach a wall of radiation that science has yet to see beyond.

To a certain level the hugeness of the universe resembles the smallness of the atom. Once you get to a certain level of magnification (either zoomed in or out) they begin to look eerily alike.

This wall of radiation to me seems like that of cell wall. Maybe outside this wall are other cells or universes or maybe there is nothing. Sometimes I think about blackholes and how they are either massive destroyers of information (destroys everything that enters it) or transporters of information (wormhole). But, maybe the entire universe exists inside a blackhole with the wall of radiation being the event horizon. Now if the universe actual exists within a blackhole, the immense gravity alters space time so that anything falling in seems to fall infinitely from outside the blackhole. While within the blackhole it falls until it reaches the center, with the event horizon being the beginning of time.

Minds are now blown[/quote]

thats all great, but the observable universe is 14 billion light years away. Thats why the estimate of the age of the universe is 14 billion years - we can’t see any further than that - the light hasnt reached us.

Atoms and the universe have similarities, but theyre both defined by two different laws. Physics main goal is a unification of both theories into one unified theory.

[quote]Webbykun wrote:
It’s without a doubt our linear thoughts inhibit us to understand the true nature of the Universe, I wonder if you brought up a smart child in isolation and changed the rules of physics in so that he believed them as fact, would he maybe then be able to comprehend the universe better than us?[/quote]

what ???

First I was going to say, what if the universe is spherical? Then I read a few paragraphs of this and stopped because of low attention span and that I need to go feed myself. Shape of the universe - Wikipedia

So I’ll continue with my first train of thought. Say you keep traveling to the edge of space, lo and behold, you find yourself at the place you began!!

I was just going to set up my telescope but it’s not dark enough yet so I decided to log in to check something and here’s this thread started…perfect timing!

The universe has been found to be expanding as a result of red-shift. Galaxies and stars etc. are moving further away from each other, indicating that the universe is expanding. The fastest possible attainable speed in the universe is the velocity of electromagnetic radiation (and light). If the universe is expanding at this maximum speed and you’re travelling towards the edge of the universe at this maximum speed, you will never reach it. Should you reach the edge of the universe, as it is still expanding at the speed of EM radiation, in any given moment the universe will have expanded some more, and you will no longer be at its edge.

How far is this edge of the universe? What’s the largest number? No matter how far it is, it will always be possible to add 1 more mile to it, and to do this in perpetuity.

As to the idea of things being outside the universe, it doesn’t make much sense since ‘universe’ means everything. If there was something additional to add, then you wouldn’t have everything.

All of these theories are created by man, and man unfortunately is arrogant and flawed. We all think and would all like to know these answers, but we are only human beings. Since we are at the top of the food chain and posses the highest intelligence on earth we assume and declare it our right to have the ability to do anything. Big questions such as is space finite or infinite, or the proof or disproof of a God is beyond our comprehension.

To add another field of though, throughout the universe we have opposites of poles. Magnetic north and south; electric positive and negative; neutrino and anti-neutrino etc. We have a something and an anti-something. Is it possible to have something without its opposite - a monopole? Is our universe a monopole?

[quote]riverhawk23 wrote:
ucallthatbass…Consider my mind blown, though I understand fully what you are saying. Did you take a class on this shit or is this from Discovery or your own thoughts?[/quote]

I just make this shit up as I go along

[quote]ucallthatbass wrote:
riverhawk23 wrote:
ucallthatbass…Consider my mind blown, though I understand fully what you are saying. Did you take a class on this shit or is this from Discovery or your own thoughts?

I just make this shit up as I go along[/quote]

Bullshit. The physics is strong with this one…I sense it.

I think the concept of reaching the end of the cosmos is pointless because its true size is so much larger then we can even conceive.

[quote]BrownTrout wrote:

Bullshit. The physics is strong with this one…I sense it.

I think the concept of reaching the end of the cosmos is pointless because its true size is so much larger then we can even conceive. [/quote]

Thanks BT, my HS physics teacher worked for NASA for 20 years. I was the youngest person in the class, and would always try to stump me. I bet him that I could ace his first exam, and he said if I could he would give me an A for the entire year, and said I would not have to come to class. I got a 98 on the test, but still went everyday. I like physics and the universe, but admit that I don’t know enough to answer serious questions, I just screw round.

My college physics teacher, killed it for me. He constantly tried to convince the class that even though there are billions of solar systems, earth holds all the life in the universe.

I have nothing else to add to this conversation other than this photo of Jenny McCarthy. I’m pretty sure after looking at it my hormones move faster than the speed of light. Does that qualify as a “red shift?”

My pants are suddenly beginning to shift

Nobody knows. And we aren’t going to find out soon. End thread.

Who knows what the fuck is out there. There’s just so far that you can see. The naked eye has a limit. A telescope has a limit. Satellites have limits. In general, science and technology will someday reach a limit, and I have a feeling that this will happen long before the means of boxing the cosmos are discovered.

Maybe it’s like the scene in M!B, maybe our universe is just an atom in another. Maybe in their time frame we are just a flash of light and then we will be gone, no one will ever know. Thinking about it really highlights the limitations of human comprehension. People thought the atom was the smallest building unit, then we discovered proton…electrons smaller still. Then matter that makes up subatomic particles are discovered. How small can we go? Or for that matter…how large can things get.