Real deep question, I know. But it will give me some real deep answers and those are always great fun to read. I thought about it while reading the another space related topic here and that article that they have landed a satellite on an asteroid.

Now you might say: Hey, the universe is infinite!

Well, what's infinite, in the terms of space?

A great big black hole!

quote:Originally posted by Waterman:
A great big black hole!

Ok, a big black hole, THAT SUCKS THE WHOLE UNIVERSE INTO IT!!! I better start packing my things.

Man, I love this kind of stuf - i remember talking to my physics teacher about it and me and my friends just not being able to get our heads round the idea of infinity!
The thing is, the universe is constantly expanding right? So therefore, surely there must be something for it to expand into, so there must be something at the end of space - but what??! It's just something that is so beyond our capacity to understand - which is why it's so much fun debating it - any answer can be considered!

A toll booth.

Seriously though, I would have to promote the theory of "dead space". In correlation with the Big Bang theory, the universe as we know it all exploded from a single point. This explosion is still going on, scattering matter ever further into the brink. At the edge of the universe (the area of Space which contains matter) is an expanding field of matter, on the other side of which is "dead space" where there is no matter present.

quote:Originally posted by Triton:
What's at the end of the universe?

A big wall with green letters that say "The End"

quote:Originally posted by Happy Phantom:

...
So therefore, surely there must be something for it to expand into, so there must be something at the end of space - but what??!
...

Hey, that's just what I thought about, too!!!
I just didn't posted it because, I thought it would look to "strange".

Think for it awhile, what is beyond the point of the universe's extending limit. It can't be just something black (a natural thought), because then it's black and black is something! It gets you mad.

quote:Originally posted by Klashe:
A big wall with green letters that say "The End"

Must have been a lot of work to put that wall up around all the universe.

quote:Originally posted by Triton:
Real deep question, I know. But it will give me some real deep answers and those are always great fun to read. I thought about it while reading the another space related topic here and that article that they have landed a satellite on an asteroid.

Now you might say: Hey, the universe is infinite!

Well, what's infinite, in the terms of space?

Seriously though, there are vast spaces in between galaxies that are just a sea of black. No light gets to them because the nearest star is a quadrillion light years away. I believe that the end of the universe is like this blackness.

But then I say that that isn't the end, because the blackness streches onto infinity. So then maybe I think that the universe is infinite.

Then I confuse myself and start playing Counterstrike.

quote:Originally posted by Triton:

Must have been a lot of work to put that wall up around all the universe.

Not really, God hired cheap labor.

How about a M$ EULA ?

quote:Originally posted by Waterman:
How about a M$ EULA ?

OR even BETTER:

A Blue Screen of Death!

Maybe that's why our universe is black. Some guy is holding it inside its wrapper, debating on whether or not he can promise to use it for "non-infringing purposes." With that wrapper around us, there couldn't be any light coming in.

Now to be serious, I think I subscribe to the dead space theory as well.

Or this type of agreement. http://wearcam.org/seatsale/poster/poster_agree_terms.htm

It can't be just something black (a natural thought), because then it's black and black is something! It gets you mad.

[/B][/QUOTE]

I know!! It ties your brain in knots! My brother is here reading this too and we were saying that instead of infinite, maybe you just go "round + round" so that whereever you start from, if you travel far enough in one direction, you'll end up back where yopu started ::deep breath:: BUT, then the universe would be a sphere ::shake head free of all known physics laws:: BUT what is outside the sphere - aaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!
It's all just tooooo complicated

quote:Originally posted by Happy Phantom:

I know!! It ties your brain in knots! My brother is here reading this too and we were saying that instead of infinite, maybe you just go "round + round" so that whereever you start from, if you travel far enough in one direction, you'll end up back where yopu started ::deep breath:: BUT, then the universe would be a sphere ::shake head free of all known physics laws:: BUT what is outside the sphere - aaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!
It's all just tooooo complicated

When I find out, I'll let you know.
I plan on living forever and when the end of everything comes I'll be sure to take a picture of what's left for you.

the god is sitting there watching us.

quote:Originally posted by Klashe:
Seriously though, there are vast spaces in between galaxies that are just a sea of black. No light gets to them because the nearest star is a quadrillion light years away. I believe that the end of the universe is like this blackness.

But then I say that that isn't the end, because the blackness streches onto infinity. So then maybe I think that the universe is infinite.

Then I confuse myself and start playing Counterstrike.

That's EXACTLY what I do. I like to think about it for a while, but very quickly I get bored and wana do something else.
Occasionally during lunch, Mr Roboto and some of my other friends and I will talk about that stuff (because they're in astronomy class), and sometimes it's really interesting.

So now for my input:
I believe that somehow (maybe Physics don't really apply in the vast reaches pf space ), everything goes on forever, and we wil never kno the vastness of the universe, because we wil never be able to get to see all of it because it's never-ending......see what I'm getting at?? As little kid I thought the Pluto was the end of the universe, but now I know that there are countless other galaxies and THINGS out there, and with that much stuff, there MUST be another planet like us that has intelligent life.

Wouldn't that be cool if we could somehow fly across the galaxy and find a planet that had people just like us>?? hehe...maybe I'd finally find a girl that likes me .

But anyway....that's enough for me. now I get bored, but this is a good topic!!

KP

This just suddenly reminded me about a programme i was watching the other night. Some scientist chappy said that in our galaxy alone there were more planets than there were grains of sand on any beach on our planet - doesn't that just blow your mind! It really brings home just how tiny small we all are!

It's either what James said. . .
Or it's something that ties Happy Phantom's brain in knots!

Not sure right now, though- Maybe both.

quote:Originally posted by Happy Phantom:
I know!! It ties your brain in knots! My brother is here reading this too and we were saying that instead of infinite, maybe you just go "round + round" so that whereever you start from, if you travel far enough in one direction, you'll end up back where yopu started ::deep breath:: BUT, then the universe would be a sphere ::shake head free of all known physics laws:: BUT what is outside the sphere - aaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!
It's all just tooooo complicated

I have actually read that type of theory before, where they used a balloon as an anology.
We (our universe) exists in three dimentions. Think of this as the outer skin of a balloon. To be able to go towards the center of the balloon would be entering the 4th dimention, like a wormhole to expedite travel.

I am buying into the infinite universe, where a big bang occurs and pushes the old universe farther into massless void. Picture rings of universes, the outer ones filled with black holes and brown dwarfs and the inner ones bright with globular clusters and primodeal nebulae.

And someone said black is something, but it is the total absence of color, so isn't it essentially nothing?

I say we devise a means to get there and find out!! Even if we never get there, it'll be a h3ll of ride!!

WW

There is a kind of duality with the universe. There is that of fact and that of perception. I believe that the universe curves in upon itself into a closed surface approximating a sphere. This is supported by a lot of recent experimental evidence. Now it isn't a true sphere. The experiments have shown that it probably quite lumpy and mishapen. This is where the influence of human perception comes in. Our initial low resolution looks at the universe pointed towards a uniform flat universe. The size of the universe is so large it makes things appear as they are not. For the time being and human intents and purposes the universe is infinite because of the time scale involved in travel in it.

The universe itself is infinite, and will go on to infinity. Now the question is, what infinity is... One theory is that infinity is an entropy death meaning everything will have the equal randomization, thus making everything have the same kinetic energy. As the sun gives off radiation, it slowly becomes colder, and as the earth absorbs heat, it becomes hotter, eventually, everything will be the same temperature. This is the end, if everything is the same temperature, there would be no energy available that can actually do "work" because all work requires movement of energy from hot to cold. All the energy in the universe would be there, it's just that none of it would be usable. That's the end folks!

Have you people ever read up on the Big Bang Theory?

Here are the main points of this theory as outlined in Steven Hawking's book and a few papers by other physicists I have read recently:
1)The universe is NOT infinite. It is unimaginably huge, but there is a limit to its size. The three dimensions that we perceive stretch out for extremely long distances and then curve back on themselves. Since we can't see that far away, it appears to us that these three dimensions are each straight, and at 90 degrees to each other. Big Bang Theory (and new insights from String Theory) say that there are actually 7 or 8 other dimensions, in addition to the 3 that we know, that are so small we cannot measure them.

2)As far as we know, outside of the universe, there is nothing. It's not even black, it's so nothingish.

3)Currently, according to the equations of Big Bang Theory, the universe is not expanding, but contracting. Redshift in galaxies appears to show that it is expanding, but that is because we assume that redshift is caused by motion of galaxies. There are many other viable explanations for redshift, and the equations say that the universe is contracting, so that's what I believe.

4)When the universe expands or contracts, galaxies do not actually move farther and farther away from each other. What happens is all of space gets bigger. Imagine you were a balloon and you were in a black vacuum space with other balloons, and all balloons remain perfectly spherical no matter how much they are blown up. If you were blown up more, than the other balloons would appear smaller to you. But if you and all the balloons were blown up equally at the same time, then you would not be able to tell the difference.

This is a big part of relativity. If you are hovering above Jupiter and you are six feet tall, then you would still be six feet tall if you were on the surface of Jupiter (assuming you could stand on the surface, i know it's a gas planet, but oh well). But six feet tall on the surface is not the same as six feet tall in space above the surface. Because the gravitational field as you get closer and closer to the center of the planet causes all the space around it to shrink. But you could use the same measuring tape on the surface and in space and both times you would measure six feet. So, relative to your height in space, your height on the surface is shorter but because the actual space right on the surface is smaller than the space above the surface, the space that the measuring tape occupies on the surface is smaller as well which is why it still measures you as six feet tall.

So essentially, it's not that the universe is expanding and everything is MOVING toward the outer limits. In reality, EVERYTHING is getting bigger. To us it appears that other galaxies are moving away from us, in effect putting more space between them and us. But actually it's the same amount of space, the space itself is expanding (or rather, contracting, according to Big Bang Theory).

quote:Originally posted by Malone:
As far as we know, outside of the universe, there is nothing. It's not even black, it's so nothingish.

ROTFLMAO. "Nothingish"

quote:So essentially, it's not that the universe is expanding and everything is MOVING toward the outer limits. In reality, EVERYTHING is getting bigger. To us it appears that other galaxies are moving away from us, in effect putting more space between them and us. But actually it's the same amount of space, the space itself is expanding (or rather, contracting, according to Big Bang Theory).

Actually, the universe itself is getting bigger, and everything in it is also getting bigger. Think of it this way, get a flat balloon, and put dots on it with a sharpy, then fill it with air, as you can see, the dots get better, and the ballon get's bigger too. That's kinda like the universe, as it expands, everything in it expands also. Oh, by the way, the 4th dimension is time, refer to time-motion theory.