my god its huge!

[ving]

Universe Measured: We're 156 Billion Light-years Wide!

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html

this is an interesting article for those that want to read it. It talks about the expandig universe, cosmology, the big bag and how they came about the number (ie 156 billion LY). It kinda proves that the universe is indeed finite.

Its not a topic that i know alot about unfortunately and after reading it it made me think that if the universe is indeed finite then what exists outside the universe? I thought that the term or name universe meant it was all encompassing and so therefore nothing could extist outside the universe, which goes against what the article says because by my definition the universe is infinite... its just that outside the big bangs ever expanding "blast radius" is emptiness (which I still included in the area know as the universe).

anyhow, if anyone can set me straight it'd be nice.
thnx
DH:confuse3:

[[1ponders]]

Maybe ving you could think of the totallity as the "Cosmic All" as there are theoretically an infinite number of different universes, with each universe having up to 11 dimensions (at last theoretical count anyway.)

As far as what is outside our universe - nothing - no space, no vacuum, no matter, no time, no nothing. The same nothing that our universe appeared into at the start. The big bang was the creation of time and space. So you could think of our universe as one bubble amidst uncountedable other bubbles floating in an inpenatrable nothing. Inpenatrable at this time anyway, as its estimated that it would require nearly the entire energy output of our universe to penetrate the nothing to reach another universe. However there may be shortcuts to other universes through rapidly spinning electrically charged black holes. Thay don't actully look like holes but more like donuts. Theoretically if we could withstand the intense gravitational forces approaching such a black hole we could, again theoretically, pass through the donut into another universe, even a negative universe.

Is this theoretically understandable? :P

[ving]

um, ok. that was straight forward enough... I dont know about black doughnuts being protals to other universes though. sounds a bit far fetched.

and something that is really beyond my comprehension, something I cant grasp at at all is the idea of "nothing". the idea of there being a "nothing" just seems imposible to me. It has to be something! there has to be something interconnecting the universes. some sort of matter. I'd be quite happy to call it "empty space".

oh and to show my ignorance, I wasnt even aware there were other universes :ashamed:

[[1ponders]]

If you think of pages in a book ving, then the space between the pages is like gap between universes, the "nothing". Universes appear to be almost touching in one or more "other" dimensions yet at the same time "infinately" distant in our 4 diminsional (time,space)view.

Yes the idea of "nothing" is hard to comprehend, especially with our socialized comtempory view being "without substance" ie a vacuum. However vacuums have energy (albeit negative energy or dark energy as it is now being proposed) therefore vacuum can't be "nothing". Also our concept of "space" vacuum exists in a time frame, our time frame, and with time being part of our 4 experiential dimensions again it can't be "nothing".

So what did we "big bang" into and what is surrounding our universe? REAL nothing, to our perception not even an abscence of something, as that would imply that there was something there to begin with. No time, no space, it could be empty or it could be solid, in some other dimensional reality. We just can't physically know it.

Maybe its some hyperdimensional bag and we're just marble rattling round inside, eg MIB

Its pretty deep stuff ving but really interesting.

[Vermin]

On the subject of black holes; I was reading an article in a back issue of New Scientist that says they may not be so black. A more descriptive name would be "fuzzballs".

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18524836.500


It's only early days of application of string theory to this subject but the results so far are quite promising. Not sure what implications it has for the donut type holes.

[ving]

Gah! my head is going to explode trying thing about this "nothing". I just cant do it. for nothing to not even be an abscence of anything then it sugests that it is something... and the idea of no time, well my mind boggles at it.

surely time would exist in er... nothing(probably not by our standareds tho). its like the old saying "if a tree falls in a forrest and no1s around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" of course it does. time must still exist even when there appears to be nothing else around surely for time isnt really anything tangible.
oh, i dont know...

anyhow, thanks for answering the unanswerable :)
as no one was around when it all occured I guess most of the study in this is guess work anyhow :)

ps, thanks for keeping it dumbed down too. too much lingo I my head would have exploded

[rumples riot]

Interesting notion, entirely possible, and it makes sense that we are only looking at something that happened in the past and that given the passage of time since that light left the target, the objects has expanded further into space. So theoretically, the universe could be a lot larger and equal the 158 billion light years.

Never even occurred to me that this would be the case, and makes a lot of sense.

[ballaratdragons]

As I said last time this subject came up:

None of us knows the answer and I am not going to burst a bunch of brain cells trying to work it out. I'm just going to do what my signature says: "Look up and smile".

Trying to work it out takes the fun out of it. Well, it does for me anyway!

[gaa_ian]

Here we delve into the relm of Philosophy ...
Its times like this i rely on the wisdom of Monty Python ..
"And pray that there is intelligent life somewhere out in space, because there is bugger all down here on Earth"
The more we learn, we discover how much we don't know.
But you have to love the journey :D

[janoskiss]

Bite the bullet, burst a few brain cells and do a course in general relativity. (the benefit of the connections you'll build between your remaining 10+ billion braincells will far outweigh the loss of the few burst braincells... hehe) Otherwise stop asking silly questions like "what was before the big bang?" and "what is outside the universe?" and "what's inside a non-existent empty box?" and so on ...

:P :P :P

PS. an appreciation of all the physics and mathematics in the world will not help answer the big questions but will help stop people asking the wrong questions. Just my <2cents worth to anyone who really wants to know how it all might work... Hope no one takes nothing personally. Especially cos nothing can't exist. :P

[ving]

dont worry guys, I didnt burst any brain cells over this.
It just cleared out the dust :)

[atalas]

Mr Ving,
If the universe is 15 billion years old ,how can it be 156 billion lightyears wide?:confused:

Louie

[janoskiss]

:welcome: Louie!

The answer to the 15 (well 13.7 as best we know) vs 156 billion lightyear question is in the article linked in the first msg on this thread.

[ballaratdragons]

Just look up and smile! :)

Even the experts argue! Let them.

And that's not arrogance or ignorance!
I am an Amateur Astronomer, not an Amateur Astrophysicist.

[acropolite]

It's mostly theory, remember the world was flat once! I like to get my brain around things I can see, touch or calculate. 156 billion light years is one big number. Work out the distance in Kms to our nearest star (other than the sun) then work out how long it would take to drive there (Presuming we had a hyperspace bypass of course!!) . That's mind boggling enough for me. Still, great thinkers come up with great (and correct) theories, look at Einstein and Newton. As for nothing outside our universe, I doubt it; if you can detect 156 Billion light years worth of stuff I reckon it's highly unlikely that it just stops and ends in nothing; maybe we have just reached the limits of detectability.