To: PatrickHenry
Cosmologists sometimes state that the universe used to be the size of a grapefruit, but what they mean is that the part of the universe we can now see--our observable universe--used to be the size of a grapefruit.
Observers living in the Andromeda galaxy and beyond have their own observable universes that are different from but overlap with ours. Andromedans can see galaxies we cannot, simply by virtue of being slightly closer to them, and vice versa. Their observable universe also used to be the size of a grapefruit. Thus, we can conceive of the early universe as a pile of overlapping grapefruits that stretches infinitely in all directions.
Correspondingly, the idea that the big bang was "small" is misleading. The totality of space could be infinite. Shrink an infinite space by an arbitrary amount, and it is still infinite.
So the universe was infinite prior to the big bang, and is infinite now, only more so....
I gues the big bang just got bigger.
139 posted on
02/25/2005 11:55:32 AM PST by
NonLinear
("If not instantaneous, then extraordinarily fast" - Galileo re. speed of light. circa 1600)
To: NonLinear
Sounds like they are back arguing for the eternal universe.
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