Is the universe endless?

[kool bubba ice]

Can we measure the bounds of the universe? Or it just goes on forever?

 

[iriverdude]

Well they've found galaxies 12 billion light years away so I guess can currently date the universe at that, whether or not it means more out there, and what's beyond that dunno.

 

[catachresis]

My Uncle Andy--God 'rest him--was a pretty radical theoretical mathematician. He argued towards the end of is life that he had almost resolved a proof of the Poincare conjecture, and he claimed that he would ultimately demonstrate the last great topographical mathematical theorem: the universe is a four-dimensional sphere with a three-dimensional boundary.

He didn't get it finished, and he died about fifteen years ago of intestinal cancer. When he was buried in the family plot in the little old country graveyard in Brewton, AL, his momma--another great mathematical mind but a devout Baptist--had something like 'God, accept your servant into your eternal arms.' inscribed on his tombstone. But Andy had 'The universe is a sphere.' carved underneath that. He stipulated it in his will.

I was in Brewton a few weeks ago and saw it.

 

[iriverdude]

Quote:

the universe is a four-dimensional sphere with a three-dimensional boundary.

I assume he meant the extra dimension is time?

 

[milkweg]

Everything is finite.

 

[iriverdude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkweg /img/forum/go_quote.gif Everything is finite.

What about a rubber band?

 

[milkweg]

Stretch it as far as you can and you will find out.

 

[iriverdude]

I'm no physicist but don't believe the universe would act that way, it'll either continue expanding- so each galaxies are so far apart you'd only have your own galaxy in the heavens, or the universe would collapse on itself, possibly creating another big bang.

 

[SleepyOne]

Doesn't affect us, we are too low down the chain to matter....

 

[dhaninugraha]

I wonder if they have a community similar to head-fi on the other end of the universe?

 

[SleepyOne]

Or multi-universes...

 

[*Ing*]

The universe is just a gigantic mass of matter, all containing mass, which expands so far beyond the stretches of human comprehension that it seems endless, but somewhere out there you come to a point were everything becomes the same, a point where you break the fourth dimension and go beyond the expanses of time. Returning to a past time in the same patch of space which you began. Or this is my theory at least, it's probably wrong but unsolved are open to suggestion.

 

[Arainach]

Quote:

Can we measure the bounds of the universe?

Not at the moment. The farthest we could possibly measure is (age of the universe in years) light years away. The area of the universe we could possibly know about expands each second.

Most theories currently predict a finite universe that is expanding, however. Whether that expansion will continue forever, stabilize to a level, or eventually re-collapse is unknown; we're so close to stability that our the error bars in our calculations could push it any way and we can't know for sure.

 

[iriverdude]

I assume since we've detected a galaxy 12 billion light years away, it makes sense the universe has to be much older than 12 billion? As we're not on the edge of the universe nor in the center. So must be more than 24 billion years old?

 

[Nocturnal310]

Parallel universes?


think of it...so much time, research, money has been spent on finding the answer to this question.

its smthg i think of so often and read up later.

i dont think we ll know so easily