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To: Prodigal Son
Which, in itself, is impossible. How much bigger would the universe be after 30 billion years?

Just notionally. At one time in cosmology, there was an idea that the universe would collapse after reaching some finite expansion. The end was either ultimate collapse and hot death, or infinite expansion and cold death. In the former case, timed right, the traveling would bring you to a singularity (which you or your dust would have wound up at anyway). Of course you would have to travel at the speed of light to last so long.

Since we now see acceleration in expansion, which would mean you are right, circumnavigation of the universe is in fact, impossible, and generally superlatively impractical. I wasn't going to try it!

28 posted on 09/03/2009 9:41:37 PM PDT by GregoryFul
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To: GregoryFul

Aye, this butts into one of the problems of theoretical physics. Lots of things are possible when we use light speed. If we can travel at light speed we can accomplish all the what ifs. But, it would seem that’s not going to be possible for us in our present format.

Perhaps if we reach a stage that the post-humanists fantasize about and are able to digitize the human mind and upload it to a computer... It would then be possible for the human mind to travel at light speed- as a digitized signal. If it had a receiver at the end of its journey and a computer to install itself in, it would be like sending a program through the air. My modem is wireless...

But there are probably loads of problems with that as well.

For all intents and purposes, we will never make it to the edge of the universe.


29 posted on 09/03/2009 9:47:36 PM PDT by Prodigal Son
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