What Is Beyond The Observable Universe?

[Arian]

You guys, here are a few points
1. Space is not Infinite.
2.There is a high, high high probabiltiy of life
THe point is, if we can't see it, somebody else probaby can.
The universe is also looped, this means that if you go infinitly in one direction you will come back to one place again and again.BUt this can never happen because the universe expands way faster then the speed of light, but you can't go faster then the speed of light.
Its like the Earth exapnding really fast to a point that you can't actually ever go around it.

 

[matt.o]

You guys, here are a few points
1. Space is not Infinite.

How do you know? Which measurements prove this?

2.There is a high, high high probabiltiy of life

Obviously, we are here. But what is the probability of life in other solar systems? Have you worked this out?

The universe is also looped, this means that if you go infinitly in one direction you will come back to one place again and again.BUt this can never happen because the universe expands way faster then the speed of light, but you can't go faster then the speed of light.
Its like the Earth exapnding really fast to a point that you can't actually ever go around it.

Again, how do you know the universe is "looped"?

You have stated things as fact that are far from fact.

 

[kmarinas86]

You guys, here are a few points
1. Space is not Infinite.
2.There is a high, high high probabiltiy of life
THe point is, if we can't see it, somebody else probaby can.
The universe is also looped, this means that if you go infinitly in one direction you will come back to one place again and again.BUt this can never happen because the universe expands way faster then the speed of light, but you can't go faster then the speed of light.
Its like the Earth exapnding really fast to a point that you can't actually ever go around it.

When you think like you finally know the truth, your research suffers.

 

[Garth]

Hi Arian and welcome to these Forums!

You may think your post has been replied to rather brusquely. If you had put your points of view as a series of questions then you would have received some thoughtful and helpful answers. They may have led to an interesting discusssion, however there are others here who do know the subject in depth and rash or false assertions are countered quickly.

Keep asking questions and you will learn.

Garth

 

[Silverbackman]

Regarding the shape of the universe, most evidence shows that it is flat (at least the curvature).

 

[CosmologyHobbyist]

Is there any chance that the big bang was a quantum event? If so, wouldn't that require quantum field to pre-exist the universe? If that is the case, doesn't quantum field provide possibility for pre-BB space and time? Is quantum-event BB still a valid theory, or is it gone for some reason?

 

[Garth]

Is there any chance that the big bang was a quantum event? If so, wouldn't that require quantum field to pre-exist the universe? If that is the case, doesn't quantum field provide possibility for pre-BB space and time? Is quantum-event BB still a valid theory, or is it gone for some reason?

Yes!

[But we have to wait for a tested quantum gravity theory to be sure.]

Garth

 

[Flatland]

String Theory actually claims to explain what happened before the BB.

 

[Chronos]

String Theory actually claims to explain what happened before the BB.

Re-review what matt.o had to say. I think you are hopelessly deluded. String theory predicts . . . not a damn thing. Feel free to to contradict that assertion with . . . a testable prediction. I love those things.

 

[wolram]

I think some one has just put a paper in about the (bouncing) universe,so
if he is correct there never was a begining, and it may be possible to see
beyond the BB, the paper may be in arxives by now.

 

[Balence]

Its impossible to know exactly. We can speculate their are more stars and galaxies out there, and other things we would expect to find in the known universe. Its possible that if you went so far into the universe that you may find a place that is a duplicate, seeing as odds make no difference when looking at infinity.

 

[callistoite]

I have a simple answer.

We don't know "yet"

 

[Tapeworm69]

Okay. There is obviously no answer to this question... YET!
I think philosophically we have to assume both that there is both, something "beyond" our universe and that there also is nothing. You must assume both, seeing as you know neither to be true or false. Get it?

 

[Sorry!]

Ok I have been trying to bend my mind around the whole there is nothing outside our universe (as in we can not know ever) But on the first page I read an analogy of a Sphere what's outside a sphere.. can anyone explain this to me?>

 

[squidsoft]

Suppose we lived in sum world:

\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^s}

and we asked, "what is outside of sum world?". We know if we go far enough, sum world reaches a singularity (it diverges). But is there anything beyond that singularity? Is there something larger that encompasses sum world and reduces down to it when certain conditions are met? Of course the answer is yes: zeta world. How is zeta world different than sum world? We certainly can't use the same "methods" (convergent sums) of sum world to describe zeta world. The two worlds are qualitatively different but zeta world contains sum world and can completely describe sum world using zeta methods (a contour integral). How did we get to zeta methods? How can we get to those methods which can describe our Universe as well as the larger world for which ours is only a particular instantiation?

 

[callistoite]

Well.. c'mon guys. let's take it easy..
Forget about we being the tiny little human beings on this small planet that we call "earth".
Suppose we are BIG in size. about 10s of billions of times Bigger than the observable universe, that we even have to use microscopic equipments to actually see a galaxy floating in the empty space, it will take billions of light years for an earthling to travel from your toe to head. an earthling will be much much smaller than an "atom" - if we call it that way - on your body.

In that size, if you look around, what can you see?
Okay, just for a change, shall we not talk about philosophy and add a little bit of creative, sci-fiction like thought?

 

[DaveC426913]

If, instead of being here in the Milky Way, we are actually 11 billion light years away in a different galaxy, we're still going to see a universe that is homogenous in every direction. We're not going to look one way and see a giant black void. If we did, it would be because the universe is not homogenous at large scales, that there is and edge and there is a centre.

So, what's beyond our observable universe is more, similar universe.

We can't ever see it, but we can deduce it.

 

[_____A-L-E-X_____]

I wonder how the recent "discovery" of dark flow plays into all this-- what if what's just beyond the visible universe can gravitationally affect that which is just within?

 

[ray b]

there be dragons

at least that's what the old maps said
about the areas as yet unexplored

 

[Hal King]

That's the wonderful thing about cosmology -- fantastic possibilities and predictions -- most of which can never be proved wrong!

Just for the fun of it, I calculated -- using the current model I'm playing with -- how much the observable universe makes of the total amount that 'must' exist NOW due to the Cosmological Principle.

Answer was: 39.349307% meaning the other 60.650693% we can't see -- but by the Cosmological Principle should be more of the same. By this model it turns out that this percentage doesn't change -- but the universe just keeps getting bigger.

In order to get a limit I had to ASSUME that the photons did NOT travel backward in time on their way to us -- regrettable.

There were several other assumptions -- like ONLY considering matter as 'something to see' and a value for the expansion velocity for matter (0.8660254 of the speed of light). Nothing important.

Now I'm sure everyone feels much better knowing this.

 

[Chronos]

An interesting proposition, and unsupported. Do you have any papers in mind? Your calculations appear to be a naive solution to the Friedmann equation.

 

[keepitmoving]

more of the same.

 

[Onslaught]

I know that this is a physics forum but just because physics can't explain the proposed question in totality doesn't mean you can't have some insight into a possible solution.

I doubt that the questioner wanted an exact answer. You should let your imagination explore these ideas sometime. Who knows what someone with your knowledge in physics might come up with. I bet you could come up with better answers than were given in this thread.

Just because you don't have an answer doesn't mean you shouldn't try to answer.

 

[Cryptonic]

I know that this is a physics forum but just because physics can't explain the proposed question in totality doesn't mean you can't have some insight into a possible solution.

I doubt that the questioner wanted an exact answer. You should let your imagination explore these ideas sometime. Who knows what someone with your knowledge in physics might come up with. I bet you could come up with better answers than were given in this thread.

Just because you don't have an answer doesn't mean you shouldn't try to answer.

Nah they don't like that here, I have learned. Just another bastion of closed-minded reactionism, like the horrible bautforum.

 

[Onslaught]

I was also wondering what people thought about poincare dodecahedral space. I haven't found any papers refuting this theory about the shape of space. Especially with the recent WMAP data.

 

[Chronos]

The dodecahedral proposition is weak. See, for example:
Dodecahedral topology fails to explain quadrupole-octupole alignment
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0611640

 

[Onslaught]

Thanks for the link, thought it sounded to good to be true.

I find it impossible to comprehend a universe that is infinite, because no matter how you try to explain it, it HAS to end somewhere. Even if you use the balloon analogy that's like saying walking on a straight path on Earth will bring you back to where you started. However if you take a rocket at escape velocity you can go beyond this.

Should there be a way, no matter how inconceivable, to escape from this so called Universe. i.e. an escape velocity for our Universe?

 

[Chronos]

By most models, the speed of light is the escape velocity of this universe. That is obviously impossible to achieve. It is unclear if the universe is finite. I tend to think it is from a strictly observational standpoint - e.g.. Olber's paradox. There may be 'stuff' outside our universe but I see no possible way to confirm this by observation,

 

[danda22]

hmm. a very hard question to consider with no definite answers.

i tend to believe that there is nothing outside our universe. just... nothing

btw. even if youu were traveling at lightspeed you could never escape"" or even reach anywhere near the edge of our universe. (the furtherst particle away from the "middle")
simply because it is also expanding at the speed of light.

 

[DaveC426913]

hmm. a very hard question to consider with no definite answers.

i tend to believe that there is nothing outside our universe. just... nothing

btw. even if youu were traveling at lightspeed you could never escape"" or even reach anywhere near the edge of our universe. (the furtherst particle away from the "middle")
simply because it is also expanding at the speed of light.

The universe has no middle. The universe has no edge.

The best model that shows how this can be so is that the universe is curved and closed. A 4-spatial-dimensional sphere.

Travel in any direction long enough and you will arrive back at your starting point.