B What is containing the Universe?

[Spin2win]

Its not because its everything there is FOR us that its everyrhing there is no? Are maths going to help me transcand the logic that something finite can't be everything there is? How do you picture it yourself?

 

[jbriggs444]

Are maths going to help me transcand the logic that something finite can't be everything there is?

There is no such logic. You are making it up out of whole cloth to fit your preconceived notions of how things must be.

 

[fresh_42]

Its not because its everything there is FOR us that its everyrhing there is no? Are maths going to help me transcand the logic that something finite can't be everything there is? How do you picture it yourself?

The example of Earth's surface was a 2D example of what spatially is 3D in the universe: You can have a closed three dimensional, finite surface of a four dimensional manifold. Can I imagine it? No. Does math help to imagine it? Maybe, but at least it allows me to calculate with it, and this doesn't require imagination. I do not claim the universe to be the three dimensional surface of a four dimensional sphere, but it cannot be ruled out from the start. Cosmologists try to figure it out, but that's not an easy task, since manifolds aren't "embedded" in something. They are all there is: no outside!

 

[jedishrfu]

Without further ado, I think the thread has run its course and that's its now time to close it. Thank you all for contributing here.

For @Spin2win please research the notions of infinity in math and physics and see if what you have learned in this thread helps you come to grips with what you now know.

Often in math and science, we must go back to the math to understand something and that's usually because it doesn't follow our commonsense or that we simply can't picture it in our minds. However, the math of a theory coupled with experiment is the ultimate arbiter of what is what in the universe as we understand it today.

Here's an article circa 2015 in Universe Today that attempts to describe our understanding of the vastness of the universe.

https://www.universetoday.com/119553/is-the-universe-finite-or-infinite/

Jedi