No.
Also no I will not waste my time if you cannot even get this much right.

Good day, sir.

The apparent universality of red and blue shift, as seen from Earth, can be quite a troubling little logic problem. I mean, simply put, just finding the "center" of what could be called infinite (or reasonably enough so, from our perspective) is enough to make ones brain twitch. But then to assume that we would happen to be directly in the middle of this unfathomable point in space? It's all a bit much.

My personal gut feeling is that what this data actually suggests is that we don't truly understand the nature of time/space and it's only our limited grasp of the concept which makes it appear to us that we occupy this rarefied position in the cosmos.

Maybe any and all positions one could occupy in time space would give the same perspective... that the "shape" (structure, nature, composition - whatever applies) of the universe is actually the cause. Or something along those lines.

Just my thoughts anyway.

~Heff

It doesn't seem like anyone has considered an expanding universe that's spatially infinite.

Originally posted by Nostradumbass
Okay one more question. If I were to inflate a balloon, wouldn't the points grow in size with the perspective balloon. So the observer would also grow at a rate where the distance points are still within the same proportional distance?
The expansion would be nothing more than an illusion?

That would be the case if there was not any attraction between the particles that made up the observers. But there is EM force, weak interaction, strong force and gravity. Since the force of expansion depends linearly on distance between particles, and the other forces are inversely proportional to the distance, there is a cutoff distance when attraction overcomes repulsion. This objects are then bound, and expansion has no effect on them. Thats why expansion becomes relevant only in intergalactic distances, when all fundamental forces (EM-weak force, gravity, strong force) become smaller than the force of expansion.

Metric expansion is a key feature of Big Bang cosmology and is modeled mathematically with the FLRW metric. This model is valid in the present era only at relatively large scales (roughly the scale of galactic superclusters and above). At smaller scales matter has clumped together under the influence of gravitational attraction and these clumps do not individually expand, though they continue to recede from one another.

High redshift quasars have been observed in front of low redshift galaxies, as well as having high redshift quasars connected by fillaments to low reshift galaxies. Hundreds of these have been catalogued by Halton Arp.

The mainstream have said these are chance algnments, and even to the point of saying the bridges/fillaments didn't exist. However the evidence for an intrinsic quality to redshift is solid.

This doesn't mean there is no distance velocity relationship, this seems to be just one component of redshift. Along with an intrinsic quality there is also the possiblity of the light interacting with the plasma medium at various densities along it's jouney and losing energy in a tired light scenario. Also chuck in some plasma redshift experiments and it begins to bring into doubt the question of an expanding universe concept and in turn the big bang.

Other methods have also shown some dicrepencies with redshift, the problem it seems is that all of these factors can't be extracted within an certainty to know how much of the redshift is due to velocity/reccession.
And the appearance of expansion is more than likely due to these other redshift phenomena at play.

Maslo has answered the OP's question well enough... but there is one thing I want to reply to...

Originally posted by VariableConstant

I have a very intelligent friend who asked me a good question the other day, as we were debating the currently accepted theory as to the creation of the universe. He talked about black holes, which as far as we know are nothing more that incredibly dense matter that have such a pull that nothing can escape from them, not even light. So if you consider that, according to the bang theory, all matter in the universe, including all the stars, collapsed or otherwise, along with all the planets and everything else, were once concentrated into a "primordial egg."

This ball of matter would contain everything that currently makes up our universe, and would therefore have a mass and density beyond our ability to comprehend. Its gravitational pull would be inescapable. So how could anything ever escape from this central point, regardless of the violence of any explosion?

I'm not an astrophysicist, so maybe someone else would be able to answer this, but it seemed like a pretty good question to me.

Your friend should familiarize himself with cosmology theories that aren't 60 years old.
The current "Big Bang" theory is, in fact, not a Big Bang theory at all. It's called LCDM (Lambda - Cold Dark Matter) Cosmology. "Lambda" refers to the Cosmological Constant of Einstein's field equations, which is responsible for the expansion of the universe and is the mathematical description of what is now called Dark Energy. "Cold Dark Matter" refers to the addition of additional matter-density that is undetectable by traditional means, and is responsible for anomalous galaxy rotation curves.

LCDM says that, in the beginning (so-to-speak), it was very possible that the universe was infinite. In fact, my preferred view is that the universe was an infinite void, containing nothing at all. The difference between this empty universe and our current universe, though, is its level of zero-point energy. This energy is found in Quantum Mechanics, and is the energy contained within a vacuum. That is, in QM, a vacuum is not a region containing absolutely nothing, as we often consider it to be - a vacuum is, in fact, a region having the lowest possible energy level. I tend to liken this to walking on the ground. When you walk along the ground, you are effectively at your lowest possible energy level. But, what happens if you happen upon an abandoned mine shaft and fall through? Suddenly, your once-"lowest possible energy level" has collapsed to an even lower "lowest possible energy level." Essentially, this is what modern cosmology says occurred within that original universal void.

When the vacuum of that initial void spontaneously collapsed to a lower energy level, the potential (zero-point) energy it had been containing was released, and this massive release of energy is what drove that initial sudden period of rapid inflation (during what's called the Inflationary Epoch). Eventually, once the energy had dissipated enough for the inflation to slow significantly, the universe was allowed to cool, and the energy condensed to form particles and, ultimately, matter.

This is the current theory. Now you can bring your friend up-to-speed.

If the Universe is expanding what is the composition of the realm it is expanding into. The claim implies that not even space exists on the other side of the event horizon. Unfathomable. Lets find out what space is composed of first before we assume there is yet another structural realm outside of space. Let's do the same for time before we consider there exists a "never".

Originally posted by Firepac
It doesn't seem like anyone has considered an expanding universe that's spatially infinite.

edit on 3-7-2011 by Firepac because: (no reason given)

The Universe we can observe is but one of an infinite number of them, then? Why not? Who am I to tell God how to conduct Its business? I am but a bug.

The easiest questions are most of the time the most difficult onces to explain. This question is no different.

Certainly, I could talk about the big crunch or the infinate expansion. But let's ask ourselves a little different question;

We see the universe expanding, but what is behind that wall of dark matter that originates from the primordial blast?

If the universe is expanding we can assume that the outward force generated by the primordial 'big bang' is bigger than the resisting force on the other side of the wall. Maybe it is expanding into nothingness and thus creating something?

Ofcourse that is not true. Nothingness can't exists unless absolutely nothing exists including the not existing of our universe. So we must state that at least something exists, somthing that has less matter density per square inch than our universe has as an outside pushing force. That would be, very light maybe even negative towards our own universe.

Let's assume for humor sake that it is negative, this would create a sucktion effect, much like a drain seems to suck water. Essentially it would mean that expension was accelerating. if that were true than eventually we would end up with one molecule evere hundred lightyears and no more planets and stuff.

If it is lighter but not negative than it would ultimately form a barrier, this compressed barrier would be like a wall, potentially between many 'universes'. Possible, but there needs to be an end somewere.

I guess the real limitation here is not so much what is behind the wall, but more how far can we stretch our mind.

Originally posted by Nostradumbass

But for that to be true, you must assume that we are the center of the universe, which seems egocentric. For expansion to be noticed between 2 objects their must be a center focal point which remains static. If there is no center of the universe then expansion between two objects would be impossible. The only way for space to be expanding between galaxies would literally be if every planet/asteroid/point in the universe was the center of the universe.

This is actually correct. Every place in the universe will see itself as the center of the Universe.

Originally posted by Maslo
But that center point does not lie on the surface of the balloon. That means that there is no center or any point of significance in our three dimensional spacetime, because our universe IS the surface of that baloon.

I've always thought of the balloon anology to be rather useless in explaining the Big Bang to the laymen. A better analogy would be to think of our Universe as the surface of a hypersphere. For anyone who wants to know, look up hypercube and hypersphere and you'll know what I'm talking about. Our Universe can be thought of as an expanding hypersphere.