What is at the center and edge of the universe??

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


Most people think the universe is infinite. Nobody is sure, but if we are indeed talking about an infinite universe, then there is no center and there is no edge and there is no wall. It just goes on and on and on.

And a common misconception is that when people say space expands, most of us would obviously think that it expands at the edge right? That if you measured it from edge to edge, the edges would be farther apart tomorrow right?

But an infinite universe has no edge. It's not the boundaries getting farther apart. There are no boundaries. It doesn't expand out into anything. No matter how far you go you would never reach an edge or find anything on another side. There is no side to reach. So, it has to expand within itself.

The answer is it expands between the planets and galaxies and any other cosmic object that isn't gravitationally bound together. For example our solar system, the gravity of the sun holds it together. And our galaxy, a black hole or something at the center holds it all together. Also, the atoms in our planet keep it gravitationally bound so that when space expands, the planet doesn't get all stretched out and so on. So everything stays pretty much the same distance from each other.

But if you take two objects in space that aren't gravitationally bound to each other, then the space between them expands and the distance between the two objects literally grows larger.

And it is the space expanding. It is not the two objects moving away from each other. For example if there were three planets lined up and you moved the middle one away from one planet it would have to get closer to the other planet. But that's not what happens. All three planets stay in the same spot, but the distance between all three gets larger. It's literally the empty space between that's getting stretched.

However, there may be some other trick going on, but that's pretty much what appears to be happening and what they say when space expands. They literally mean that the nothing, the empty space between things, is getting bigger. You could say, well the universe isn't expanding. It's just all the objects in the universe are moving away from each other. But when you do the math that way it gets all messed up.

Because not only are the galaxies moving away from each other, the rate at which they're moving is SPEEDING UP and they're moving too fast! Galaxies have a lot of mass. There's no force in the universe that can just speed up two galaxies so they keep getting father apart. Something else must be happening.

Also, the observable universe. It's too far apart! The universe is 13 billion years old, but we know of things that are some 40 or 50 billion light years apart from each other. And that's just what we know about. There may be galaxies trillions of light years away from us.

How is that possible? Even traveling at light speed, if two galaxies originated at the big bang, then the farthest apart they could be is around 26 billion light years. How'd they move so fast? The answer is obviously they didn't. The distance between them got larger and since empty space has no mass, it could do so at a rate much faster than light speed. Especially right after the big bang. And when it did, it stretched everything else out right along with it.

And that's why many people think that is what's happening. But how does nothing get bigger? That's the real question.

Basically what it boils down to is this. They used to think the universe was static and unchanging and it had just always been there. Then they discovered the big bang. And they realized that if that's the case, there's no way the universe could be that big yet. It was only 13 billion years old. So how did everything get so far away? Why is it speeding up? Oh I know! Empty space expands!

So, you can either think, hey they were wrong and there was no big bang and they just made this crap up to fit their equations, or that nothing somehow gets bigger. Strangely, when tested in experiments. It appears that nothing really does get bigger and stuff gets farther apart without moving. So weird.

a big ass black hole and then us.

unless you go there and take pics,


i'm rolling wit dat.

I have always wondered what is on the outside of the universe.

reply to post by tinfoilman


That's an interesting and entertaining proposal but then how would it account for colliding galaxies and the ever present dilemma of what then enables matter to bind and create mass in the first place? There is an unspecified energy enabling the very fabric of space to contain mass and the measured mass is far less than what is observable as simple baryonic matter, which in and of itself fails to explain the very impetus of perpetual motion dawning the very genesis of baryonic matter. All kinds of exotic energy and matter tend to be thrown around in explanations of origin in all theoretic cosmology in terms as; antimatter, dark energy, strong force, weak force, and even massless electromagnetism culminating to the very description of God, or god particle. That's what makes it all work, that mysterious undeterminable force of nature needed to make our measurable calculations greater than zero.

reply to post by Illustronic


Well the idea isn't to say that things don't move. Objects in space move and collide with each other and gravity pulls objects together. So, you have two things happening at the same time. You have objects moving around in space, but you also have the expansion of space too. It's just a hypothetical, that if you had two objects that didn't move in space, their distance could still increase from each other. It's just to illustrate the point. In reality though objects are moving all over and bumping into each other and being pulled apart and all kinds of stuff.

When objects are close enough then gravity overpowers the expansion. When the universe first began at the big bang there was a crap load matter produced and the universe was super dense. When space expanded it all got stretched out with more and more space forming between all the matter, so it keeps getting less and less dense. Matter used to take up the entire universe. It didn't move out closer to the edge. It's just all this space formed in between the matter after the big bang.

What allows mass to bind with itself is gravity. For example take our solar system. The sun's gravity holds it together and almost completely cancels out the effect of expansion between our planets. But not quite 100%. They think that the expansion of space has caused the planets in our solar system to move just a tiny tiny bit away from each other, but the distance is just about immeasurable.

The expansion of space isn't constant though. It's speeding up and in time it's hypothesized that one day the expansion of space might overpower gravity instead. Then the galaxies and solar systems would be stretched apart because the gravity is no longer strong enough.

Eventually the expansion of space could be fast enough to cause the distance between the stars in our observable universe to increase so fast that the light from them wouldn't reach us anymore. The light keeps traveling towards us, but the distance starts increasing faster than light. So, the night sky would become completely black except for the sun and moon maybe. Hypothetically if we were still here when all that happens.

Eventually it would break the bonds of atoms and the planets themselves would come apart because the distance between atoms is expanding too fast. If space keeps expanding after that then eventually the subatomic particles would get stretched apart and you'd have nothing left. You'd basically eventually have no matter left in the universe anymore.

Some people think that this is how the universe will end. Eventually the expansion of space will overpower gravity. But maybe something else is happening. I don't think anyone really knows for sure. That's just the best theory they got right now that makes the math work out and makes sense.