(Thanks for the ping houeto)
Today is a good day to die.
I didn't say for whom.
Posted on 02/10/2011 1:21:07 AM PST by LibWhacker
Our Universe is an enormous place; that’s no secret. What is up for discussion, however, is just how enormous it is. And new research suggests it’s a whopper – over 250 times the size of our observable universe.
Currently, cosmologists believe the Universe takes one of three possible shapes:
But what if the Universe turns out to be closed, and thus has a finite size after all? Cosmologists often refer to the Hubble volume – a volume of space that is similar to our visible Universe. Light from any object outside of the Hubble volume will never reach us because the space between us and it is expanding too quickly. According to the team’s analysis, a closed universe would encompass at least 251 Hubble volumes.
That’s quite a bit larger than you might think. Primordial light from just after the birth of the Universe started traveling across the cosmos about 13.75 billion years ago. Since special relativity states that nothing can move faster than a photon, many people misinterpret this to mean that the observable Universe must be 13.75 billion light years across. In fact, it is much larger. Not only has space been expanding since the big bang, but the rate of expansion has been steadily increasing due to the influence of dark energy. Since special relativity doesn’t factor in the expansion of space itself, cosmologists estimate that the oldest photons have travelled a distance of 45 billion light years since the big bang. That means that our observable Universe is on the order of 90 billion light years wide.
To top it all off, it turns out that the team’s size limit of 251 Hubble volumes is a conservative estimate, based on a geometric model that includes inflation. If astronomers were to instead base the size of the Universe solely on the age and distribution of the objects they observe today, they would find that a closed universe encompasses at least 398 Hubble volumes. That’s nearly 400 times the size of everything we can ever hope to see in the Universe!
Given the reality of our current capabilities for observation, to us even a finite universe appears to go on forever.
Well, it is early for me, but for some reason, the Nesting Doll notion popped into my snow blown and frozen mind: one universe inside another universe, inside another universe, etc. ...
None of these are correct.
The Universe is a Mobius strip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip
“
Universe Could be 250 Times Bigger Than What is Observable
“
To “expand” off that slogan of The Discovery Channel slogan:
“The UNIVERSE is just awesome”
Especially as we learn more and more about it.
How did a non-spherical shape emerge from the big bang?
Orion's B...Be....Belt. ;)
"It's really, really big."
ARGH!, ......!
That was my question as well. Explosions typically go out in all directions. Unless it was a shaped charge.
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the 'milky way'
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
[...over 250 times the size of our observable universe.]
Dammit, just when I figured out the entire universe, they come out with this.
Yakko’s Universe - From Animaniacs
Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it’s worth.
And they’re all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It’s big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It’s a big universe and we’re not.
And we’re part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth’s the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley’s Comet too.
And there’s over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it’s all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It’s sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that’s just a fraction of the way.
‘Cause there’s a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
248.6. I measure it yesterday.
What-Is-At-The-End-Of-The-Universe ping?
How can the universe expand faster than c? Isn’t it the barrier that can’t be broken? I hear the trendy physicists on History Channel theorize that the universe expanded at faster than c - in the moments after The Big Bang. Yet, they don’t even give passing notice to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
If one carries this through to its logical conclusion, what we are seeing is 45 billion years old FROM OUR PROSPECTIVE, yet it is only 15 billion years old, FROM ITS PROSPECTIVE. Something ain’t right.
Now... How do we go out there and see what's there without having to discover physical immortality first?
(Thanks for the ping houeto)
God provided a bit of exercise for our brains.
And no, I don’t remember where we parked, so we’re stuck here for now.
—Douglas Adams
But that is exactly the result that follows from Einstein's theories. The fast moving, and highly accelerated (e.g., under strong gravity) objects "age" at a different (slower) rate when observed by objects at rest. See "The Twin Paradox."
It really strains the brain, trying to fathom time as not immutable.
The idea is that the volume is finite, yet unbounded. There is no way to picture this. But, we can picture a finite two dimensional object, that is unbounded.
If the area of the earth is finite, then what happens when you get to the edge?
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