Is The Universe Round?

Discussion in 'Science' started by The Rhetoric of Life, Apr 17, 2019.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Today it looks like the universe will simply continue to expand. All stars will die. Matter will gradually deconstruct and essentially evaporate.
     
  2. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    I just don't buy that the universe has a wall or an edge in shape, but it's like a globe where, you'd end up back where you started from if headed into any direction.
    Does space move?
    If it doesn't you could start from Earth and end up back where you started from, but Earth and our sun have long gone and perhaps so has the Milky Way?
    Or, if space somehow moves with gravity along the shape of the universe, will you end up back near Earth again?

    Like a dot painted on a vase's surface and being able to travel along the vase until you saw your dot again, and this vase is being rotated on a cycle and you're still attached to the vase as you travel around it.
    Is space like a painted vase? Can space move with gravity?
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  3. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    That's my understanding, too. As physicists look back in time there is a point where our physics just doesn't work. Also, there are problems with black holes, I think.
     
  4. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    I've heard the universe referred to as being a frequency 'in shape'.
    And there are many frequencies and we're not the only universe going in some sort of multiverse deal.

    Which gets me looking at constant variables and the law of entropy and then we have to look at time as well as space and frequencies and probabilities so unique it's a multiverse multi time line deal and you can go back in time and kill your grandfather before he makes the parent who made you and still be born in your timeline to do it (in theory) if you ever found them in the past-shaped universe.

    We have to remember, time-space is one and gravity effects everything.
    So when looking at the shape of the universe, we have to look at time like it's something we can traverse.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  5. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    I find that aspect hard to follow. A “boost in acceleration” would acount for a change in rate but would also imply that the change in rate was occurring regardless, and the acceleration is changing, perhaps as we speak. . It there is any acceleration what so ever, it necessitates a change in rate.

    When you read the articles you referenced, it refers to an accelerat(ed) expansion which implies one observed rate change via one acceleration.
    Regardless, the subsequent articles you referenced seem to support the idea that the expansion rate is comstant, but greater then previously thought.

    Either that, or NASA needs a new proof reader.
     
  6. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    That is a nonsensical statement. Throw it away.
     
  7. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    I don't understand why people insist on having opinions where it is nothing but a wild ass guess.

    I've studied this stuff formerly and informally since I was 12 or 13 years old, when I started reading college physics books.

    I almost never give an opinion. There is very little place for opinions in science. I just state what the experts tell us. They have done the work. They have the expertise. And they know better than anyone what is most likely.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  8. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    They are saying that the rate is increasing. That's what acceleration is. Like in a car, when one accelerates, the speedometer starts indicating faster and faster speed. Acceleration refers to how fast the speedometer is increasing. Likewise, the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate - it's accelerating. Galaxies are moving apart at a faster and faster rate.

    The guy who discovered that acceleration got a Nobel prize for his discovery.
     
  9. TrackerSam

    TrackerSam Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The experts are trying to use the laws of physics to explain an event that happened before there were any such laws.
     
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  10. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    Firstly, we don't know that. The big bang might have been a transformation and not really a beginning. Some String theorist show evidence that the 4D universe we know today originated with an 11-dimensional hypersurface - an 11D universe. There was a catastrophic event during which the universe mutated into what we see today. And that mutation is what we call the big bang. Where did the other dimensions go? We observe their effects as the forces of nature - gravity, EM, the strong and the weak nuclear forces.

    There is uncertainty up to the first few millionths of a second. That's it. But that isn't even the topic. We were talking about the shape of the universe. You completely changed the subject.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2019
  11. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    The interesting thing about THAT is this: If the universe is truly timeless, if it has always existed, the the idea that it existed forever, and then suddenly transformed into what we see today, and will stay that way forever, is illogical. If it happened once, then it must cycle between different states. Who knows? Maybe it has existed as 4D + 7, like today, and 11D, as well as 10D+1, or 8D+3... I've never heard it discussed or read about such a theory to predict this, but it couldn't exist forever and then undergo one unique but dramatic change. That violates the laws of large numbers.

    So perhaps one day, in one big poof, the forces of nature will disappear, everything will cease to exist as we know it, and we will pop back into an 11D hypersurface.

    Of course the mutliverse people argue that the universe bubbled up from the cosmic foam, in a timeless and infinite multiverse of universes.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2019
  12. TrackerSam

    TrackerSam Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No I didn't. The laws of physics would determine the shape of the big bang would they not? The big bang spread matter across
    the universe expanded by a factor of more than 10 to the 50th power in a time-scale of less than 10 to negative 30th power seconds, much faster than the speed of light.
     
  13. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    That has nothing to do with determining the shape. We determine that empirically.

    https://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html
     
  14. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Part of this problem is that at most, we could only see half of the Universe.

    Because of the speed of light, we can actually "see" nothing on the other side of the event. It is farther away than the distance it takes for light to travel to us from the time of the event. So we can only see at most a small piece of what was created in our own neighborhood.

    And every few years, our understanding of the "observable Universe" is constantly expanding.

    I used to have a College Astronomy book from the early 1930's. And it still listed the "Andromeda Nebula" in it (and it was on the cover), and it discussed in one chapter the radical theory of Edwin Hubble that it was another Galaxy, a "mini universe" in itself. This should give an idea how much our understanding has grown in less than 100 years.

    Less than 100 years ago, there was 1 galaxy. Today there are millions. And thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope and the "Deep Field" images we are finding many more than we ever expected.

    Starting in 1995 they started to train the telescope in "empty" patches of space, to see what it could find. And with many long exposures, they were shocked at the number of galaxies they found. When the images were released in 1996, over 3,000 additional galaxies had been recognized.

    [​IMG]

    This is just a single image from that still ongoing project. Every single source of light is an entire galaxy (except for a couple of stars from our own galaxy caught in the image). The oldest appear to be around 12 billion light years. In other words, galaxies that were born a little over a billion and a half years after the Big Bang.
     
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  15. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Sort of.

    An example is that physicists noticed that if there are other nearby universes (like multiverse ideas suggest) even in other dimensions, there should be circles found in the cosmos where these universes intersect - like two soap bubbles. So, they set out looking for such circles in a very serious way.

    This was a cool way to dodge the problems of our physics failing at the big bang, yet still looking for evidence from "beyond".

    After serious searching such circles were not found and the search has been terminated. So, it didn't end up supporting multiverse ideas, but it does show how one can find creative ways to look for evidence, dodging problems even as serious as the breakdown of our physics at the big bang.
     
  16. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    'we this', and 'we that' and 'we the other' - you're really into this aren't you. But galaxies aren't born, they simply exist.
     
  17. HereWeGoAgain

    HereWeGoAgain Banned

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    [​IMG]
     
  18. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    :rolleyes:
     
  19. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    I've started watching Cosmos recently.
     
  20. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    I personally agree with Stephen King, The entire Multiverse is in a drop of water on a blade of grass in a vacant lot. And the lot is being mowed Tuesday.
     
  21. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And they die, and are ripped apart, and are sucked into other galaxies.

    And they did not always exist as they are now.
     
  22. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Physicists have an evidence based history of our cosmos that goes back before galaxies could exist.

    Let's remember that the cosmic microwave background radiation (that you can now pick up with a radio) is a light echo from the point in time where light first could escape the massive gravity of our early universe as it existed in a stupendously dense state.

    There was nothing even slightly like a galaxy at that time. Even current physics wasn't in its current state.

    There had to be substantial expansion of our universe before galaxies could begin to form. Since then, matter has gathered into galaxies and galaxies have merged, etc.
     
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  23. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Didn't they? I trust you have some evidence to back up that confident assertion? Or are you just guessing?
     
  24. cerberus

    cerberus Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Is there nothing you won't believe Will? Seriously?? [​IMG]
     
  25. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Sure.

    There are lots of things for which we have evidence. As we have more evidence, different kinds of evidence in agreement, evidence developed by a wider range of people (making conspiracy impossible), etc., supporting explanations that are otherwise unassailable, our acceptance of such explanations should go up.

    There are explanations for which we have no evidence, have single source evidence, etc. Explanations with no better base should be doubted.

    "Believe" is a weird word. I use other words, because the minute I say "believe" someone thinks I'm stuck in some religious quagmire, while we must be open to evidence based argument on everything.
     
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