Expanding Universe Confusion.

Okay i admit i am no physicist by any stretch of the imagination, but something crossed my mind recently, started to imagine our expanding universe, space stretching and the galaxies pushing further and further out, then i hit a brick wall....

What exactly is the universe expanding into?

Doesn't you require space for anything to expand, im not sure how something can expand into nothing. Hmm perhaps should try and think too far into this one

Any Theories?

Does there need to be physical "space" to move into?

What if the space is actually infinite?

We may have found the edge of the "universe", but since the "least" that can exist in any place (as far as we know) is space/vacuum/nothing, what's to say there is no end to it? And the "universe" is the stuff we can see/map/chart? We cannot measure "space" itself.

I think an equally interesting question, is if the universe is expanding, where is it expanding from, and how?

Do you want to go insane ??...Well,..just lay on the lawn and look up at a clear nite sky and try to invision the end of the universe..It is impossible to figure out,,That is why they made up words like infinity,,,and infinent..(spell).,...and space..just that word is forever...Simply,..there is no end to space...if anything it probley comes back on itself..where you started...go figure..

What about empty space. You ever thought about that?

Space is a measurement of nothing, its describes a distance between objects and in this case it simply describes what is between those objects, nothing.

So space doesn't stretch since its a word to describe nothing, and the universe is expanding into space.

Thats one way of putting it anyway.

Greetings all, I know this sounds like a crap answer but believe it or not it's rather a null question- asking what the universe is expanding into- what I mean is, one might as well ask where the end of a sphere is!

I think the misunderstanding has come about because Cosmologists neglect to mention the fact they work with higher dimensional topologies (structures that exist is more than three dimensions). I guess you could imagine a torus evolving into a sphere and back again, expansion locally but not globally. Hmmm, perhaps that wasn't a good example!!!!

Just thinking about it makes my head hurt...

As for where it is expanding from, well thats probably more difficult than what it is expanding into, I did see a documentary on M-Theory but that was too much head scratching on my part. My understanding was that big bang cosmology told us of the expansion of space, i just wanted to know if there were any theories out there in the scientific world that speculated as to was space was expanding into, what is on the other side of the universe so to speak, I watched a programme on M-Theory a while back which provides quite a thought provoking approach to it, i'll provide a link if anyone would like to watch it.

video.google.co.uk...

It's just expanding

It's not expanding into anything. It's not expanding into 'empty space' either.

The universe is everything there is. There is nothing outside it: no space, no time.

It's just expanding. No sense in asking what it's expanding into. Yes, I know it 'stands to reason' and all that, but commonsense isn't what you need to be applying here.

I think the expanding universe is just a case of scientists trying to make observations fit into a predetermined model, and ignore the observations which dont match their expectations.

This article talks more about the red shift.

We really dont know enough to make these claims. We dont know jack about the universe.


[edit on 26-9-2007 by Copernicus]

the universe is NOT expanding. it's the matter in the universe that's moving inside it. and that's my belief.

since 'nothing' can't resist the expansion it sounds perfectly fine for our universe to expand into .. nothing.. lol

But since our universe contains everything we observe and exist within including the laws of physics as we know them, to try and explain and comprehend what is beyond the 'border' is well, beyond us I think.

You can envision if you will a sheet of paper, within that sheet of paper is our universe. this sheet of paper is getting bigger and it's insides stretches out (that's why no matter where you are in the universe everything seems to move further away over time)

now in this 'space' in which our sheet o' universe flutters around are many more sheets. One proposal within string theory says the big bang which ushered in matter and energy into our sheet-o'-verse was the result of one sheet (or universe) touching ours. which was at that point pretty much empty. An enormous amount of energy and matter flowed into our universe at the moment of touch which we call the big bang. (conservation of energy, the energy (including the matter) in the big bang had to come from somewhere).
But then we are talking dimensions.. 17 if not more.. and I don't mean dimension as in parallel universes but just more then the 4 we are used to and can comprehend.
It's like if you were 2 dimensional you could not comprehend a 4 dimensional existance as we know it, if we would traverse and pass by that hypothetical 2 dimensional being it would see a slice of you infinitely thin which changes shape as you traverse further and then dissappears as you move past the point of it's 2 dimensional realm.
This might account for some strange things because a being which exists in and comprehends say 6 dimensional existance might move an inch (figuratively, there's no unit of measure for dimensions we can't well access) which would appear to our limited selves as something appearing and disappearing in a split second. etc.. It didn't dissappear but it might be standing next to you in a dimension we can't see or touch, not up/down left/right past/present/future. but another set added to the 4 we know.

actually I don't concider us completely 4 dimensional. we can only really traverse 3, we're stuck in a linear motion in the fourth. Maybe we just need to comprehend and we can travel through the fourth as easily as the other 3 maybe we will never be able to.
(the fourth being time.)

(and I guess we will never be able to, because where then are the timetravellers from the future? the future stretches out billions of years and in all that time noone invented timetravel and came back to say september 27th, 2007 or any date leading up to today?)

But then again is what we call time even a real dimension? recent studies showed time collapses and ceases to exist if you just delve far enough into submolecular scales. (something I've always thought but okay)

[edit on 27/9/2007 by David2012]