Universal alternatives

[Guest skartag]

Been thinking recently ( a few years now ) and now want to bounce a few ideas, so please be as ruthless as possible.

 

Current thinking that im aware of is that the universe is going to continue to expand and is in fact speeding up. This raises the question as to how exactly how they are measuring the rate of expansion and is it possible that they are missreading the information, could it be infact that the point nearer to the centre of the universe is slowing at a greater rate then the object at the outer edge of the universe giving the illusion that the expansion is speeding up? or that there is a continuing expansion at all?

Another way of looking at what might be happening is to obsreve what happens when you empty a bathtub the dead skin cells on the surface of the water continue to expand from the point that the water is being drained giving the illusion that expansion is taking place when in fact the total volume is being reduced - replace the plughole with a black hole, the skin cells with galaxies and the water for the vacumn of space, this would only work if there is a limit to how far the universe can expand.

 

 

Also they believe there isnt enough material in the universe to create a large enough gravitational pull to bring all the universe to the same point the big bang happened but what if the 'Bang' happened not in a vacumn but in a medium which is fluidic in nature, thus the vacum of space would be a product of the bang and not the medium in which it happened therefore the collapse of the universe would not be dependant on the gravitational pull but on the nature of the medium the 'Bang' happened in.

 

Any comments or reasons why this is wrong most welcome

[Clown]

The universe is not expanding into a vacuum or any medium. The flat space in between galaxies itself expands, and there is no need for an embedding space.

[Kettle]

Originally posted by skartag

when you empty a bathtub the dead skin cells on the surface of the water continue to expand from the point that the water is being drained

 

Eeeeewwwwww!!! Out of all the analogies you had to choose, you decided upon bits of dead skin floating in a scummy bath.

[Kettle]

Drawing upon my own limited understanding of this subject, I can immediately see a few problems.

 

The first being the mistake that just about everyone makes - you seem to be thinking of the universe as maybe a bubble or balloon in that it has an edge, an inside and an outside. In truth, the Universe has no edge but it bends in line with the theory of relatively - so you could travel in one direction and just arrive back at where you started. It's more of a donut than a ball??

 

There is also no centre (or plughole to use your metaphor) that everything is expanding from or contracting into. As Clown said, all galaxies are moving "away" from each other or, rather, the space between them is increasing.

 

I also think that the big bang didnt happen in a vacuum in the true sense of the word - I think it's called a false vacuum but I'm not sure. So try not to think of it as an explosion - it's also not expanding into anything so that really chucks the entire explosion metaphor right out of the window.

 

 

This link might be useful...

http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm

[Sayonara]

When people alledge the universe is "more a donut than a ball", do they mean it literally, or "donut shaped... in every direction" (a hyperdonut, I suppose you'd call it)

 

?

[Clown]

Yes, Homer Simpson's hyperdounut.

 

It's one possible multiply connected shape for the universe, while a hypersphere would be simply connected.

[Kettle]

"Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?"

[Peter Dunn]

The geometric term for a doughnut shape is a torus (plural tori) which comes from ancient Greek (the bottom or plinth of the columns supporting the upper structure of the Parthenon [the Doric building on top of the Acropolis] are this shape).

 

Doughnut, or toric (probably not in the dictionary), shapes are common and occur at every level of scale from the sub-atomic to the super-macrosmic levels.

 

Quantum particles, as revealed by the tunneling electron microscope, are (what I term) circular closed waveforms (doughnuts).

 

The magnetic field around a humble bar magnet is, essentially, toric shaped.

 

This is repeated at higher levels of scale: the magnetospheres of planets and stars; with their characteristic dimples at the poles, are, quite obviously, inversionally (another word you will not find in the dictionary) rotating tori.

 

At the highest level yet seen the plumes of gas and plasma spewing out from the magnetic poles of jet galaxies give stark evidence of monstrously accelerated magnetospheres that seem to conform to this basic cosmic paradigm (a kind of auora borealis/australis in reverse).

 

So, in fractal fashion - where the iterated part reflects the shape of the whole - I think it can safely be inferred that the ultimate shape of the Universe is similar to that of a doughnut.

 

Homer Simpson eat all our hearts out.

 

Thank you and good night.