Starship Asterisk*

apodman wrote:This is discussed a lot, but it is not easy for everyone to visualize, so keep asking.

Back to the balloon metaphor I just used in another thread, the universe is like the surface of an expanding balloon. The big bang can't be located anywhere on the surface of the balloon. But it was at every point on the surface of the balloon when the balloon's size was zero and the balloon was only one point. Now the only direction to look for the big bang is not in any particular space direction but back in time.

I'm sure someone will provide more detail or a better explanation.

apodman wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:A better example would be a balloon with points on its surface.

As you know, I have a fine-point marker that draws very tiny galaxies. I could also extend the metaphor by arguing that the ink in my markers dries hard and solid, preventing the small marked areas on the balloon from expanding. But that would be more detail than I wanted to write.

aristarchusinexile wrote:But a balloon has a surface and an interior. A singularity, from what I have read, has neither. Or am I wrong? Not that it matters, as IMOPO everything was made from nothing, according to (I hope I'm not wearing out his name) Pascual Jordan.

Qev wrote:It's good to bear in mind that the balloon metaphor is just that, a metaphor, and not a model. You could encompass the interior and exterior of the balloon in the analogy by calling the interior 'the past' and the exterior 'the future', which makes the normal to the surface of the balloon the 'time direction'.

bystander wrote:
Keep blowing up the balloon and you can model the Big Rip

makc wrote:still, in balloon metaphor with even slightly assymmetric balloon, there would be a point closest to its center.

Zargon wrote:Would it be that the big bang is just arriving at some point now in space as we read and write this?

harry wrote:It's funny that everything is expanding from Earth.

Chris Peterson wrote:It was an event which is passed.

harry wrote:It's funny that everything is expanding from Earth. Why is this so?

bystander wrote:

harry wrote:It's funny that everything is expanding from Earth. Why is this so?

Obviously, Earth is the center of the universe.

harry wrote:It's funny that everything is expanding from Earth. Why is this so?

bystander wrote:Obviously, Earth is the center of the universe.

Chris Peterson wrote:From a 3D perspective, that's completely true. Of course, from a 3D perspective every point is the center of the Universe.

Chris Peterson wrote:Of course, from a 3D perspective every point is the center of the Universe.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) wrote:Ch. 1: Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word "orthodox." In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him. The armies with their cruel security, the kings with their cold faces, the decorous processes of State, the reasonable processes of law--all these like sheep had gone astray. The man was proud of being orthodox, was proud of being right. If he stood alone in a howling wilderness he was more than a man; he was a church.

He was the centre of the universe; it was round him that the stars swung. All the tortures torn out of forgotten hells could not make him admit that he was heretical. But a few modern phrases have made him boast of it. He says, with a conscious laugh, "I suppose I am very heretical," and looks round for applause. The word "heresy" not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word "orthodoxy" not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing, and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. For obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical. The Bohemian, with a red tie, ought to pique himself on his orthodoxy. The dynamiter, laying a bomb, ought to feel that, whatever else he is, at least he is orthodox.

One important lesson from radio galaxies is that the central engine continues to eject material in nearly the same direction for at least several million years, based on the fact that the tiny parsec-scale jets in the core regions point in the same direction as the very extended radio structure which may stretch several million light-years (and thus took at least that many years to form).

aristarchusinexile wrote:

Orca wrote:Quantifying anything outside the universe is kind of like remembering events that occurred before you were born. Since there is no possible system of measurement for comparison, any hypothesis on extra-universal events are untestable and therefore meaningless.

Kinda anti-climactic, but well, there it is.

Two to Five years maximum we will have found, with the instruments being built today, what lies beyond the universe.

harry wrote:The observable universe does not show expansion or acceleration one way or another.

It does show a clustering affect.

The clustering produces areas of high density such as large galaxies and centres of clusters of galaxies that produce extremely large jets and Star that produce extremely small jets. This process of ejecting matter and reforming star and galaxies is a main player in the universe.

Chris Peterson wrote: Jets are tiny, local processes that have no impact on the Universe as a whole. Their effect is similar in scale, perhaps, to the effect on world climate of fishes peeing in the ocean.

Chris Peterson wrote:

bystander wrote:

harry wrote:It's funny that everything is expanding from Earth. Why is this so?

Obviously, Earth is the center of the universe.

From a 3D perspective, that's completely true. Of course, from a 3D perspective every point is the center of the Universe.

Orca wrote:
This is a bold yet completely indefensible statement. The "instruments being built today," as all instruments created by humanity, make relative measurements of the internal energies of the universe.

Eternity wrote:Hi everybody!

Could it be that after the expansion from the singularity our 4 dimensional universe was created and around our universe a 5 dimensional universe and around the 5 D universe a 6 D universe and so forth?

Thanks for the answers!