Does the Universe have a Boundary ?

[Fluxman]

This is true for our time.

 

[samssf]

While reading this thread (and some others discussing the balloon analogy), I thought of an idea/analogy of my own that I'm hoping someone can either quickly destroy or perhaps elaborate on...

Lets use a basketball rather than a balloon... Now let's assume the basketball is expanding... is it possible that the expansion of the basketball is time / creates time, and that as the basketball expands that more information is wrapped up within the dimensions along the surface of the basketball, and therefore our expanding universe is our universe progressing through time? Every state would be a specific size basketball with the previous state being a smaller basketball?

Light would move along the surface of the basketball while the basketball simultaneously expands. Traveling faster than the speed of light wouldn't allow you to "go back in time" since the basketball has already expanded.

Now imagine the basketball actually is a balloon and is not a perfect sphere... some parts might be expanding faster than other parts, warping it, and making it appear as though the universe is expanding toward the "great attractor"?

Regardless of my thoughts above, one question I have is this: If the universe is boundless... can an EM wave be thought of as a wave moving out in two dimensions along the surface of a balloon? And if so, would that not cause problems with measurements from LIGO, etc? Or is that not the case because not enough time has elapsed since the big bang?

I also read that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. If that is true, would that explain why the above situation would never occur?

 

[typhis]

One thing I would like to add is that as humans some things to us are just not comprehend able such as believing in an infinite boundary to our universe.

Also here is one idea i came up with just while reading this thread. I do not think much of it but ill say it anyway. According to multi-verse universes can be with another. Let's say for example that a universe within our own is in an empty water balloon. As you fill the balloon up with water(That what we could call light or matter) the boundaries expand
until they cannot anymore. Since in different universes time can be different a millisecond to the one filling up the balloon could be a trillion years to us. Thats all I thought of so far.

 

[dotapin]

Your Holiness, the mainstream majority of working cosmologists have never committed to the idea that there are only a finite number of particles

the standard LCDM model essentially comes in two flavors, the flat (normally assumed to be spatial infinite and beginning with an infinite bigbang)
and the positive curved (the finite one you understand). They didn't decide yet which is closer to Nature.

a certain number of science journalists and popularizers have LIED to the public and imprinted people with the idea that cosmologists say the bigbang occurred at a point and involving only finite number of particles. they have to lie because they want to SELL and they can't sell if the public can't picture what they are saying.

anyway that's all done now and no use crying about it. We still don't know which is right. MAYBE IT IS FINITE.
The lie is when some journalist gives people the idea that cosmologists have made up their mind in favor of finite. They have not yet made up their mind.

finite could turn out to be right, eventually, so in some sense the journalists and the public would be exonorated.

THats u mean using balloon to describe the universe big bang therory is not appropriate??