What is the fabric of the universe?

Drakkith

Depends on what you mean by "Fabric of reality".

phinds

Is it just my concept of semantics, or would we, as I believe, all be better off if no one EVERY used the term "fabric" in conjunction with spacetime, but rather used "structure" or some similar concept. "Fabric" carries over unfortunate connotations from standard English.

Drakkith

Agreed phinds.

SHISHKABOB

When I read about space-time and gravity, the idea I get is that gravity isn't really a "force" when you look at it from the perspective of space-time. It's just an apparent attractive force between two objects of mass. Objects of mass distort the shape of space-time and this distortion causes us to feel the apparent force of gravity.

That's why I'd say that space-time is the "fabric" of reality, because we are sort of sitting in it and "rolling" around in it like the marbles in the bowl with the orange at the bottom.

Cosmo Novice

Yes I think you are right - just wanted to keep in line with the OP. When I say fabric I mean underlying structure which I think does not carry so many obvious connotations.

So to rephrase, IMO geometry is the underlying structure of the Universe - geometry exists in absolute vacuum, so the vacuum requires geometry, it exists in mass and around mass, geometry even exists in Black Holes (at least in terms of extreme curvature.) All a bit mind bending and also kind of philosophical in quantifying these things. Anyway I am musing now with little positive results so I will cease!

Ryan_wazhere

Once you hit or run through the surface of Outer space, a thing thats never been touched before, doesnt itconsistantly change what it has been doing so far?It sure would explain the speedy satellite thing.......And i agree with Marcus, i think the universe is made up of a bunch of Big peices of Matter, not some small micromollecular material..
Itsonly gonna be enough for us to handle if we can step up and callit ours..Ω

Ryan_wazhere

Do any of you believe in a place outside of the Fabrics of space?
Light,Matter,more or less space,Another universe,another'Galaxy' past the darkness of the Vaccum,so tospeak?
Obviously its to say we would truly be able to take or universe and stick in under a microscope,but come on, give me some Real ideas, i want to explore This,blindly
Today right now, some of you guys gotta think,What is your part in all this
Because its not even what the answers are that matters,it just that we know they could very well exist.We haven't just been obsessing for Eons..Only a few century's,enough for this Species to coincide on what we reallly believe in??
Call me the physics Hippie;)

Drakkith

I'm sorry, I can't understand what you are saying or asking here. It doesn't seem to follow any of the normal terminology of physics.

What is the "Darkness of the Vacuum"?

What? I can't understand anything about what you're trying to get across.

phinds

Drakith +1, this seems to be just strings of words with no meaning in physics.

Chronos

It's just another way of asking if there is anything 'outside' our universe. Logic and semantical issues aside, efforts to determine if the universe is finite or infinite are an active area of interest in cosmology.

rustynail

I don't think I would use ''...something that warps space...'' here. As I understand it, and maybe I am wrong, gravity doesn't warp spacetime. Mass does, and those warps themselves are what we call gravity.

Naty1

Of course there is no specific answer widely agreed upon answer regarding a 'fabric'. Why would one suppose that the 'fabric of the universe' is limited to space and time.


I like Marcus' post #5 and would add that all of the universe we observe, and likely lots more, somehow originated maybe from 'nothing', at a big bang....unless you subscribe to a cyclic universe model. In any case, it doesn't appear that the forces nor energy, for example, should be excluded from consideration of a such a 'fabric'.

Seems as likely as not to me that whatever is in the vacuum may well form the unified basis for all the apparantly distinct phenomena we can't quite figure out yet....like the energy of the vacuum that drives cosmological expansion.

nai1ed

IMO Time doesn't have a beginning. I mean, how can you start time? It must have always existed, and truthfully what is time anyway? I see time as simply the motion of the universe. So if Time is infinite, then that would assume that space is also infinite. Imagine something expanding and growing for eternity, what would that look like? How many dimensions would it cross? It's like that old computer game called "Life", but imagine it continues to grow, and eventually takes on new forms and those forms again grow into something else. The patterns would continue to infinite complexity.

ideal_fluid

The Milky Way's halo is what is referred to as the curvature of spacetime.

Drakkith

Saying time can't have a beginning makes no more or less sense than saying it can.

Not true. See the following article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_way#Halo

ideal_fluid

I'm not referring to the particles of matter which exist in the halo. I'm referring to the halo itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_way#Halo

"the Milky Way Galaxy is embedded with a large amount of hot gas in the halo"

The particles of matter which the hot gas consists of exist "in the halo".

The halo is curved spacetime.

Drakkith

I don't see how you are reaching this conclusion. Space-time curvature exists everywhere, as that is what gravity is. The halo is not made up of curved space-time. It is made up of matter in the form of stars and gas, and probably a large amount of dark matter as well.