between3and26characterslon

Just to be picky, isn't one of the tenets of science that you can not prove anything, you can only fail to disprove it. So it's not for anyone to prove a theory but rather to provide a thorough arguement supported with testable evidence so that others can try to disprove it. My own inaginations have led me to wonder if the Universe is more like a rainbow rather than a tub of soap bubbles. The rainbow analogy seems to work on all levels, and passes the time musing over it, but it is just a musing and not a developed theory.

I understand what 'closed' means and 'without boundary' and I am not forgetting anything. Someone asked what the Universe was expanding into and could not envisage a Universe where the edge wasn't moving away from the centre. I am saying the terms 'edge' and 'outside' are meaningless and was providing an arguement that if you start from the premise there is an edge and outside then, by resonable deduction, you will arrive at the conclusion that there is no edge or outside. It's a thought experiment. EDIT: Having re-read my earlier post I meant to say the middle/edge model of The Universe rather than the closed/finite model. My Bad!

That's my point. What I'm saying is, to anyone who thinks there is an edge, IF and I'll say again IF there was an edge and IF you were to pass beyond this "edge" of the Universe then you would enter a 'place' where there is no space or distance and therefore no distance between you and any part of the outside edge of the Universe. You would, as far as you're concerned, appear to be in the middle (figuratively speaking not literally) of the Universe. It's entirely possible you would appear to be exactly where you are now. It's a logical arguement to refute the notion of an edge to the Universe. It's not something that would or could happen.

It's a bit like the Tardis, it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside but the Universe viewed from the outside (whatever that means) would have no size at all. The Universe is expanding internally. EDIT: Just to be clear I don't think the Universe is a closed and finite space. In the closed and finite model of the Universe the notion of being outside it is meaningless - there is no outside. In the infinite and open Universe the notion of being outside it is also meaningless - you would just be in a part of a much bigger Universe. The closed and finite model contradicts itself IMO in that when you get to the edge you end up in the middle, so how do you know your not already there?

That's quite a bold statement That may well be true. I've just had a quick skim through of the wikki page on steady state theory and one of the things it requires is the production of matter to keep the average density of the Universe constant. I thought the latest emerging theory is that the Universe is infinite in size but, due to the SOL etc..., we are only able to experience 13.7bn years X the SOL X the hubble constant. This is how much of the infinite Universe we can see. Anything beyond this we can not experience. A Galaxy 5bn Ly from us would be able to see objects that are too far away for us to see and we can see objects too far away for them to see. If we were to travel to this other Galaxy we would only be able to do so at a maximum of light speed, so in the 5bn years it would take us to get there the Universe would have expanded and we wouldn't be able to see any more than we can now. Is this not current theory, I'm sure I read it somewhere like in New Scientist or something.

Thanks everyone for your replies, unfortunately you have all underestimated my ignorance in this field. Is it possible to give a very simplistic physical example where integrating or differentiating gives you real results. You will need to lower your standards a bit.... ...nope, a bit lower.... ...lower... ...bit more... ...try here

Centre or middle neither are correct, the point I was making is that either case would imply an edge to the Universe and therefore an outside. However this model of the Universe, by definition, does not have any space outside of it. Even a toroidal Universe would not have any space outside of it, if you were to travel to the outside of a toroidal then every part of the surface of this Universe would be zero distance from you, you would think you were just somewhere in deep space. The logical consequence of this is that everywhere is the centre/middle and there is no edge I was trying to dispell the notion that there is an edge or middle/centre point. So like insane_alien said it's all moot. The torus Universe is a little simplistic I think, perhaps the Universe is a 4 dimensional sphere and its shadow in 3 dimensions looks like a torus where, like in the baloon analogy, the entire volume of the 3 dimensional Universe is represented in 2 dimensions as the surface of the torus. But who knows? However my belief, and current theory, is that the Universe is infinite. So why don't we see infinite stars and amounts of radiation and gravity etc...? Because we wouldn't be here to see it, by this I mean the Universe has ways of making things work and it's the SOL that makes this model of the Universe work. Every point in the Universe is limited as to how much of the Universe it can ever experience, always less and never more, meaning there is an observable edge beyond which we can not see but not a physical edge.

You get back to the centre because the surface area of the outside of the Universe is necessarily zero, for you to be just inside the edge would imply there is still distance from the edge of the Universe to the centre of your head. But the entire surface of the outside of the Universe, which has zero area, would be a point of no dimension right at the centre of your head. As far as you were concerned you would be at the centre of the Universe. This whole arguement means there is no edge or absolute centre to the Universe.

If you stare at a brightly lit white wall or at clouds on an overcast day (not dark heavy clouds but ones that are almost too bright to look at) you can see lots of bright points of light squiggling around. I've also seen it when I've coughed too hard and is where the expression 'seeing stars' when you've been knocked around the head comes from. I've been told by an optician that this is caused by blood cells in the retina reflecting light onto the lens of the eye which is then reflected back onto the retina. A single white point in the corner of your eye can be caused by a slight thickening of the fluid in the eyeball causing slight tugging on the retina. I'm no doctor but I don't think it should cause too much concern but best get it checked out. As for not being able to see the left hand side of your face, and I'm guessing you couldn't see the lefthand side of everything, this is a rare condition and could be migraine or indicative of something more serious. http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/hemianopsia

Could someone explain, in as simple and non technical terms as possible, what integrating and differentiating are. Is there a simple everyday example where these two things are used. I've had a look in various places and they all tell you how to do it but not what it is you are actually doing i.e. the penny hasn't dropped for me yet. Your help would be much appreciated.

Two particles 'i' and 'l' set off together at SOL, they pass position 'd' together and then position 'g' together, exactly as would be expected. When they get to position 'k' particle 'l' gets a kick from somewhere and travels faster than SOL. Particle 'l' is now travelling backwards in time which means when particle 'i' gets to position 'n' 1 second later (t=4), particle 'l' gets to the same position 1 second earlier (t=2). So if you were to travel faster than the SOL then would you not just appear to have been travelling from the opposite direction. t=0 a-----b-----c-----d-----e-----f-----g------h-----i-----j-----k-----l-----m-----o------n-----p-----q-----r-----s-----t-----u-----v-----w-----x-----y-----z i-> l->...............................................................................................................................................................................<l t=1 a-----b-----c-----d-----e-----f-----g------h-----i-----j-----k-----l-----m-----o------n-----p-----q-----r-----s-----t-----u-----v-----w-----x-----y-----z i------------------> l------------------>..............................................................................................................................<l t=2 a-----b-----c-----d-----e-----f-----g------h-----i-----j-----k-----l-----m-----o------n-----p-----q-----r-----s-----t-----u-----v-----w-----x-----y-----z i------------------------------------> l------------------------------------>...................................................................<l t=3 a-----b-----c-----d-----e-----f-----g------h-----i-----j-----k-----l-----m-----o------n-----p-----q-----r-----s-----t-----u-----v-----w-----x-----y-----z i------------------------------------------------------------> l------------------------------------------------------------><l t=4 a-----b-----c-----d-----e-----f-----g------h-----i-----j-----k-----l-----m-----o------n-----p-----q-----r-----s-----t-----u-----v-----w-----x-----y-----z i--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> l------------------------------------<-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------l t=4 might be a bit misleading because at the exact moment you went faster than SOl you would meet yourself coming from the other direction and destroy yourself. Logically then you could think that this describes the spontaneous creation and destruction of sub atomic particles (just saying this could be a logical consequence if the above model is correct, I'm not trying to supersede any current theory)

As the Universe revolves around me then I must be the centre. I would like to try and help to explain the baloon analogy; Let's say you have a length of wire and manipulate it into something representing the outline of a cube. You can see it's a cube because you see it in 3 dimensions. Now, being that it's just a wire frame, you can shine a light on it and cast it's shadow onto a wall. The shadow is only 2 dimensions but you have no doubt that it's a cube albeit a 2 dimensional representation of one. In a similar way to described above the surface of a baloon is a 2d shadow of the 3d Universe, the baloon analogy would indicate a closed and finite Universe and is used to give something familiar and memorable to the layperson to identify with. An open and infinite Universe would be better described as a rubber sheet with the observable Universe being a certain radius from any given point. (on a side note, if the Universe is infinite, then some parts of it could be much older than ours?) To the OP, everywhere is the centre of the Universe. If your friend thinks there is a definite centre then he probably also thinks there is an edge to it as well. So let's say your freind travels to the edge of the Universe, what is on the other side? Well by definition - NOTHING - not even space (or therefore distance) so let's say the edge of the Universe was an opaque membrane and you managed to climb through it what would you see. You would see you are standing on top of an enormous black sphere, however, you need distance to be able to see the sphere and as there is no distance between you and any part of this 'sphere' you would end up right back at the centre thus making everywhere the centre of the Universe. I hope that's of some help. EDITED for grammer and spelling

I'm sorry, I haven't read all the replies so I may be repeating what some one else has already said here but You are assuming your base stations were absolutely at rest to start with and that your rockets are absolutley in motion. Did you consider that your base stations are moving at speed and that the rockets are in effect slowing down? Let's consider that 'your' space (as you described it) is full of imaginary points. These points are moving in random directions and speeds to each other but each point has constant speed and direction itself (uniform rectilinear translation). Now in your imagination you can jump from point to point and as you do you will consider yourself at rest for every point you visit. You will notice that your base stations will be travelling at a different speed and in a different direction for each point you visit. Eventually you may find a point where your base stations are not moving. Exactly the same is true for your rockets (lets say they reach constant speed), relative to most points they are moving but to some points they are stationary. Within a frame of reference rigidly attached to one of the rockets the other rocket will be at rest so there will be no lag. From the point of view of an object moving relative to the rockets there will be a lag such that from your point of view they will be attracted to a point behind where they actually are but you will also see them behind where they actually are and you will in fact see them being attracted exactly towards each others centre. To put it another way, IF there was gravitational lag, these two objects would be continually moving into a weaker gravitational field and so they would diverge.

Just to clarify; the objects are at rest with respect to each other? EDIT: which I have just read is what Janus said.

But what is the turtle standing on

Because the rules you use in mathematics are different to the rules you use in physics or more accuratley they are not always necessarily the same. Is it true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? This question is meaningless. In Euclidian geometry a straight line is uniquely defined as the shortest distance between two points situated upon it. This is one of the axioms, you can not ask if it is true you can only say this is the rule. (There are also many other rules in geometry which have to be obeyed, you have to have (x, y, z) coordinates which are straight lines at right angles to each other which are marked off uniformly at equidistances). i.e. You can not ask whether winning a race is true. You can say the rule is the first person to cross the line is the winner and then ask the question; this person is the winner, true or false? So if in your Euclidian framework of (x, y, z) coordinates (and obeying all the other rules) you draw two points and then connect these two points by the shortest possible distance you have, by definition, a straight line. In physics your framework does not have to be constructed out of straight lines nor do the lines have to be marked off uniformly and equidistantly (though they do still have to be at right angles to each other) Now you have two frameworks a Euclidian one made of straight lines which are marked off uniformly and your physics one made of say randomly curved lines marked off at varying distances. You can now, through maths I can't explain, map your physics framework onto your Euclidian framework. You can now find that two points seperated by a distance on one framework, when mapped onto the other framework, are not seperated by any distance. So is a straight line the shortest distance between two points? If that's the rule then yes. If it's not the rule then no.

If or when you have a couple of hours to spare have a watch of this http://www.youtube.c...h?v=VT50SV3W5K0 I saw it about 3 years ago so can't remember the detail but I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts

Thanks (I know) Leads on to a slightly different question which occured to me. Take "a-b-c-d-e-f" as points in space such that a and f are moving away from each other faster than SOL. A photon of light emitted from a towards f and passing through b must be moving towards b at SOL, as it passes b and continues towards f through c it must be moving towards c at the SOL etc... etc... so even though f is moving away from a at faster than SOL a photon emitted from a towards f is still approaching f at the SOL. If the logic is sound.

When it was believed their was an aether within which everything existed it was concluded that as our planet rotated about its axis, orbited the Sun which in turn orbited the galaxy which is also moving through space, that we should be able to measure our speed relative to this aether. By measuring the SOL in different directions we could work out the aether drift. It was discovered that there was no aether drift and the SOL was the same in all directions. The SOL was measured using interference patterns so the degree of accuracy was very high. If you are on a plane travelling at a constant velocity and you drop something, as far as you are concerned it falls straight to the ground (of the plane). Whatever the velocity of the plane, as long as it is constant, whatever you drop will fall straight to the ground. This means for a body with constant straight line motion and a body at rest the laws of physics are the same i.e. you can not tell the difference between the two. This further implies that nothing is truely at rest, everything is in motion but if its motion is constant and in a straight line it feels like it's at rest. This is known as the 'Principle of Relativity' and is attributed to Galileo. So how can the SOL be constant for every observer if every observer is in motion, All observers are travelling in straight lines in different directions all have different albeit constant speeds all measure the SOL to be the same. Einstein concluded that for the Principle of Relativity and the constant speed of light to hold true something else must give, he realised that this must be time and space. That is to say the faster you go the slower you experience time and the shorter your length becomes in the direction you are moving.

The CMBR is believed to be the light from the big bang, if TBB had a central point then our instruments would measure greater intensity in some directions than in others. As it is the CMBR appears to be uniform in all directions it is measured. This would suggest that there was no central point to TBB. It is not that light goes out in all diresction from a single point but that the light is going in all directions from all concievable points. If the diameter of the universe was zero then any explosion would have occured throughout its entirety. If the explosion was not in space but of space then any "thing" that existed in a zero volume universe would be evenly distributed throughout a universe of volume. One of the problems in physics is that this would mean that everything was distributed evenly throughtout the universe however this is not the case otherwise we wouldn't have planets, stars or galaxies etc... The question of why the universe isn't absolutely uniform hasn't been answered yet. My thoughts are that if two points in space sufficiently far apart are moving away from each other at the SOL and light is radiating from each of these points in all directions then at the extreme the wave fronts of this radiated light are moving away from each other at twice the speed of light. That is if you take "a-b-F-d-e" where "F" is arbitrarily chosen as a central point,"b & d" are points in space moving away from "F" at SOL and "a & e" are light waves radiating away from the points in space then a universe of 13bn years age would have a diameter of 52bn lightyears. This is not far off the estimated 47bn lightyear diameter of the universe.

I think of it like this (and this is just my thoughts on the matter and not any current theory I have heard of) Imagine your universe is a ruler and you can see 5cm in either direction. So lets say you're at the 6cm mark, you can see 1cm and 11cm but not as far as 0cm or 12 cm. Now let's say that there was an observer at the 8cm mark, they too can see 5cm in either direction so they can see 3cm and 13cm but not 2cm or 14cm. So the observers at 6cm and 8cm can see each other but can also see parts of the universe the other can not. If one were to instnantaneously dissapear from where they are and re-appear where the other one is they would all of a sudden be able to see parts of the universe they had not seen before, however there is a finite speed at which they can travel. If they were to travel at this finite speed to where the other one is then in the time it takes to get there the universe will have expanded to such an extent that they will only observe what they could originally. If A is at 6cm, B is at 8cm and C is at 11cm (the limit of A's observable universe) and A and B are 200mn LY appart then it will take at least 200mn years for A to travel to B. In this time the universe will have expanded to such an extent that A will still only be able to observe as far as C. In this sense space can be infinite but every event can only experience a finite amount of it.

Take a line. Put a point on that line. Put another point either side of the first point. You now have something analogous to past, present and future. It's still a line though. Still one dimension.

It does, thanks. A bit anyway. The triple point is at 0.603 atm, but what happens at 1 atm? For instance when we sweat is it not the phase transition from liquid to gas that cools us down? Will a molecule of water evaporate at less than 100oC at 1 atm? Will water experience a sudden drop in temperature when it freezes at 1 atm? I ask because I have more experience of 1 atm than 0.603 atm.

I don't, and that may happen but I don't think it's current theory. Also I'm thinking would that mean when they do appear on the horizon of each other they would be approaching faster than SOL. Ok not simply in another universe, but what I'm saying is that our laws of physics do not describe what you are saying therefore I put it to you that you need different laws of physics when describing a blackhole from the outside than when you describe it from the inside. You can not know the physics inside a blackhole if you are outside it and you can not know the physics outside a blackhole if you are inside it, therefore you can not describe a mechanism whereby a blackhole can be the beggining of a new universe. If you don't know the physics of a universe how do you know if it's a universe at all? Or capable of realizing a blackhole. Because in the model you are describing we would be inside a blackhole which would be a tiny fraction of the mass of the universe it is in, and that universe is a blackhole which is a tiny fraction of the mass of the universe it is in and... If the universe is infinite. Or as in the model you describe if the universe condenses into one blackhole and space expands inside that blackhole to create another universe which in turn condenses into one blackhole in which a universe develops and condenses... you can see where this is going, then what are the consequences? Is energy shared amongst an infinite number of universes and is therefore zero in each? or does the energy of each universe add up making it infinite? No I'm talking about what Lawrence Krauss said. I disagree, I don't think you'd ever reach infinity by multiplying (unless multiplying by infinity or and infinite number of times)

Point taken.