The Universe

I have a school teacher friend of mine that teaches special ed kids. The other day she was doing a lesson about space, and the Universe.
One of her students asked her a question that completely stumped her, and she just did not have a answer. So I will ask the student question here to see if we can figure out a good answer for her. Here is the question. "Since the universe is still expanding, where does it expand into?"

I'm stumped too.

Won't even try to speculate with philosophy or science, just stumped. S + F

a reply to: Ceeker63

Mind=Blown.

Man, I don't even....

Reminds me of an epiphany I had the other day. As a child, you're always told "Go ask a grown up." Then, one day you realize you're the grown up, and still don't really know whether or not its "ok" to just eat ice cream straight from the tub.

a reply to: Ceeker63

I think that kid is onto something.

There are just so many things we don't know about our universe yet. Makes me sometimes feel like a tiny person of Whoville floating on a speck that rests on a flower, carried by Horton the elephant.

I'm not even sure we could answer that question in 50 years, though who knows with the way we are advancing technology wise, we might.
You never know.

i'll give you my best copy and paste answer

Because of general relativity, spacetime is not a static entity. It is a dynamic and ever-changing fabric within which the locations of all galaxies are woven. Galaxies are not themselves moving very much, but they appear to move to us, because of new, cosmic real estate continually injected, increasing their distance from us.

It is this creation of new spacetime, and the rate at which it is being created, which determines how fast a galaxy appears to be moving away from us.

So what is the universe expanding into? When new spacetime is created, into what do the edges go? The answer depends on whether or not there are edges.

If we live in an infinite universe, then the answer has to be nothing. Adding more fabric to infinity doesn't make more infinity. An infinite universe would have no edges that expand and the question is meaningless. In such a universe, there would be no 'outside'.

On the other hand, if the universe is finite, with a boundary that we have not yet discovered, then the answer may be that we are expanding into something. If that is true however, then the boundary is so far away that we cannot see it and it can therefore never, ever affect us. We have already seen photons that have been travelling since the universe was only 500 million years old. Anything much further away lies beyond our detection forever. Given that our universe is expanding - if we cannot see the boundary now, this expansion guarantees we never will - it will forevermore get further and further away. it will always lie beyond our detection.

www.deepastronomy.com...

Its an old question , one that will never be answered EVER... but we can all play with the answer to the above question, if i said its made of green jello? could you prove me wrong? .. about as much as i can prove me right

as above adding more fabric to space-time if infinite does not produce 'more infinite' .. infinity is infinity.. +1 :p

If its finite i will be waiting with my giant spoon mmm jello

Q

Isnt the universe expanding into ..space? empty space. space is space, where the universe exsist.

I have no idea if this is correct but im going to roll the dice anyway

The universe isnt like a balloon getting blown up, the word means 'everything' infinite in all directions and time.

When we say its expanding, we refer to the matter and energys expanding out from other matter. Spreading out from the big bang at the center, technically the bubble of this matter, the furthest particle one side, to one on the other side is what most of us think of when we hear the word universe.

Simply put, what is the area this matter populates, we simply dont know because we cant go there to look and we arnt advanced enough in science to prove or work out anything else. Plus our perception of dimensions may be hindered by our presence in the 3d+time dimensions.


[okay so not a great write up but thats more or less how i see it]

I thought about the möbius strip being the ether our universe lives in perhaps along with other universes, each from their own big bangs and each ruled by their own laws of physics, time and space. Who knows, hard to explain any theroy of that magnitude really, no wonder the anciants opted to say "God did it".

I was eating all day today while watching the Esa life stream and feel like I am occupiying a lot more of the empty space around me. Though that means I am pushing more O2 atoms Co2 and stuff out of my way. So I'd say the universe expands, puts more pressure on the next door gases, till there is a compression big enough to cause a new universe to bang into live.
Oh see. no wonder people ask me if I am pregnant if I keep eating.... I do create new universes....
don't take me serious, I'm drunk from my philaea party...

A similar question inspired me to reinterpret the expanding universe as us contracting within it. There's really no distinction unless there's something else outside the universe.

Empty space that was there in the beginning?

Also this depends on the space the material/energy we call the universe from the big bang is infinite in all directions or shaped as a 3D curved space? If it is curved space then it will be degrees instead of distance and you can go around 360 degrees in any direction to come back to the same spot.

If we go by holographic idea then everything can be an illusion and we believe reality is in a certain way even if it is just a matrix. Like us playing a WOW character believing we are inside a world that is created by a skilled programmer.

originally posted by: LittleByLittle
Empty space that was there in the beginning?

Also this depends on the space the material/energy we call the universe from the big bang is infinite in all directions or shaped as a 3D curved space? If it is curved space then it will be degrees instead of distance and you can go around 360 degrees in any direction to come back to the same spot.

If we go by holographic idea then everything can be an illusion and we believe reality is in a certain way even if it is just a matrix. Like us playing a WOW character believing we are inside a world that is created by a skilled programmer.

didnt time and space both happen with the big bang? their was NOTHING before.

Really mess with the kids head back it is only fair tell him we are in the matrix and stuck in a never ending loop

a reply to: Ceeker63

Its a good question. I would imagine there are multiple(Possibly infinite for all intents and purposes) universes that make up our multiverse. So possibly our own universe is expanding towards another universe. The question begs however what are these multiple universes contained within and what would happen if indeed our universe were ever to collide with another?

www.youtube.com...

The ending of Men in Black seems rather applicable to said question I imagine its a similar concept just an infinity larger sandbox.

a reply to: Ceeker63

I think "expanding" may not even be the correct term, given that it is merely assumed since the observable objects in the universe appear to be moving away from us. In an infinite universe, what does that mean, really?

originally posted by: Ceeker63
"Since the universe is still expanding, where does it expand into?"

It curves back into itself. But that doesn't stop it from continuing to expand. This, but in multiple dimensions:

Who knows? Maybe there's a distinct amount of space it expands into then it snaps back?

I'll start by saying that I don't believe a single mainstream theory of the geometry or history of the universe in the current mainstream theories. I was a "hard believer" but the more I delved into it the more I realized it's purely a mathematical construct and not a physical one (I'm not going into the details of why and how and I won't try to convince anyone or I'll digress too much and it'll take a few years of posting

.
The reason why these strange unphysical things like black holes, dark matter and energy, inflation, higgs, wimps, machos and possibly the entire particle theory, is to make the framework actually useful to explain observation and this is the work of scientists, so until we get a paradigm shift the Big Bang and the standard model are the "accepted" theories.

Space and time weren't created or at least there is no consensus about this. Theories stop few billionth of a second of instant zero, the so called singularity, after which there is a sudden expansion of space into.. itself, but in general into-what is not even considered scientifically. It's a matter of geometry, it's like saying distances increase "by themselves" with time. There was no outside of the universe and scientists don't consider anything outside the Hubble radius because we will never receive signals from "outside". This Outside is supposed to be the same as the inside (cosmological principle) and the question wheter the universe is finite or not is not answered or at least there is no consensus.

After an initial expansion at about a rate of 60sh fold the speed of light (inflation), the density decreased to a point where temperature let baryogenesys begin, then about 380.000 years after the BB the universe was cool enough that proton and electrons were able to bind and form neutral H, thus the light was able to escape. This is what's called the Surface of last scattering, or what we think it's the map coming from the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) with a redshift of 1100 (redshift Z is a measure of distance at cosmological scales).

The universe progresses with expansion (so the distance between two points continually increases), but close objects are cool enough that gravity prevents them from getting larger, and only distances between objects increases. As of 1992 surveys of supernova in distant galaxies seem to confirm that the expansion is accelerating (dark energy) and this acceleration is the famous blunder of Einstein's theory, that he solved by introducing a constant factor in his equations of GR.

So this expansion is nothing but an increase in the distance between two non interacting coordinates fixed in respect to the CMB not an increase in volume into an outside empty volume, but for the theory of relativity we can't have any information from outside a range of about 46 billion light years, that corresponds to the 14sh billion years of expansions. It's like saying that 14 by ago the point we now see at a distance of about 46 Gly was emitting a photon in our direction, and that photon reached us today.
To view animations of how this process worked search for "Hubble Distance" on google and you should find plenty of informations.

The holographic universe, despite not being the accepted model, has some supporters and states (in a few layman words) that time is just our way to put an order into events. In the holo-reality everything has and will happen at the same time, but we cannot perceive it.
Other theories try to deal with traces of previous events in the CMB to understand if there was a "bounce", ie if the universe was developed and then collapsed before time 0 and the singularity just marks the point where THIS universe restarted expansion.

However, if you want to continue believe BB theory NEVER check things like the history of the bandaid fixes to the theory (Dark matter for missing mass, inflation for homogeneity and curvature, dark energy for the inconsistent data from distant galaxies)

Feel free to correct me if any of you find any inconsistency, I'm not an authority on the subject, I'm just curious from a very long time.

I'm more worried about when it reaches maximum expansion then bursts or if it's expanding into other universes what if one of them bursts first...

a reply to: Soloprotocol

Or maybe we intersect with other universes and this is what we perceive as aliens, ghosts and the like.

If you think of reality it self and the thing we call dark matter. You'll find that space is endless and if we want aswers then ask those who visits but never makes contact.