What is at the edge of the universe?

[SereneHarmony]

Hi guys,

Have been wondering about this question for some while now:

If the Universe (or 'all that is') is expanding, then what is it expanding into?


Personal development - mental map for self improvement

[WageMage]

Alas, I should really read up on my long-forgotten physics before taking a stab at this - this is going to be slightly wishy-washy from a strict scientific POV, but... here goes:

There's an underlying structure to the universe that supports it, a ... geometry of sorts, a scaffolding into which the "building blocks" (time, space, matter, energy, the infrastructure in which the laws of physics "plug in", so to speak) - and it's this infrastructure that's expanding - and accomodating all the matter/energy that's been thrown out at the big bang and keeps heading out.

So it's not really growing INTO anything, since space itself needs such an infrastructure to exist IN - and thinking in straight lines just doesn't hold at this scale: curved space "flattening out" is another way of seeing it... consider the universe as a crumpled up piece of paper... now start "blowing into it" so it gets smoother and smoother, the cuves and eddies flatter adn flatter - like a balloon, only it's not building up pressure, on the contrary, it's just "evening out".

Now the big question becomes: "Fine, but is the expansion rate accelerating or deccelerating?" If it's deccelerating, eventually it'll reach a "maximum size", whereupon it will contract again... and there may be a "big crunch" - and we could have a big-bang-->big-crunch-->big-bang-->big-crunch-->big-bang... etc. cycle going on. OR... if it's accelerating, then everything will become flatter and flatter, matter and energy becoming increasingly less dense, until it just... attenuates out, protons decay, and everything just kind of... gets sucked into singularities which in turn evaporate and leave... well... nothing.

But really... this is like... sunday-school-supplement-for-the-retarded stuff, and but a missrepresentation and gross oversimplification of one among several current working conjectures. You want to ask a physicist, which alas, I'm not (if I had another lifetime... I'd hit that - ars longa, vita brevis).

Still, I hope I could illustrate a little - and perhaps interest you enough for you to go and research that stuff - let me know what you found out

[theknightwhosaysni-NI]

Well I'm not a physicist either, but here's how I see it :

Imagine there is only one point in the universe, space wouldn't exist. How could we tell if this point is moving or not? We couldn't. There would be no space or universe, just a point.
We couldn't tell : "one minute the point is here, the next minute it's there". It would just be a point, spaceless and timeless.

If this point splits into two different points, then the expansion of the universe has started. However, the only space that exist is the distance bewteen these two points. We can just tell the position of a point relatively to the other.
Outside the referential of the two points, there is just nothing. There is no outside. So the universe is created by the increasing distance between the two points. There is no expansion INTO something, just creation fom nothing.

Does it make sense?

[m0vingon]

I just happened to be watching an episode of Nova last night in which astronomers stated that there is a logical argument for the existence of additional universes beyond the borders of this one.

NOVA Online | Runaway Universe | How Big is the Universe?

[Joeschmoe]

Funny that they should say that, because "other universes" at the "edge" of ours is a meaningless concept. They would by definition be outside of our time and space. We will never be able to observe them. By definition there is no outside of our universe.

[SereneHarmony]

Thanks guys, I'm trying to get my head round the idea of an infinite universe!

[infinitethoughts]

Originally Posted by SereneHarmony

Thanks guys, I'm trying to get my head round the idea of an infinite universe!

I hope soon you will understand that you are infinite also.


Once you see this then, infinity is easier to understand.

[Trezker]

There's strawberry cake at the end of the universe!