Starship Asterisk*

Recycled Electrons wrote:A problem with printed media? That's a new one... Are you at a university? Are you familiar with NASA's ADS service?

No I am not (both questions). I am ukrainian resident, MoCS, programmer

Back to the earlier discussion regarding expansion, is it possible to speculate how this would all play out if our universe existed on a membrane?

Here's somewhat better theory on why we can't see something in the universe. Just in case anyone will come across this thread later.

Lately I've been wondering if the CMBR represents a kind of universal reference frame. Does anyone have thoughts on this?

I hope this doesn't stray from the subject too much. This may not be as profound or as deep; but if we can see 13 billion light years in front of us and 13 billion years in back of us; doesn't that put the visible universe as 26 billion years? Also we probably aren't in the center; so maybe we can only see 13 billion years. Just maybe that the universe goes on and on. How long can a photon go before it finally decays into dust? (If we could only capture that longevity.)
Orin

The universe does likely go on for a lot further than we can see, but it's almost irrelevent to think like that since we have a 'cap' on the rate of information transfer throughtout the universe - the speed of light.

More accurately, the speed of information. Since it's space itself that is exanding (not galaxies expanding through space) the speed of the expansion is proportional to the distance.

What this means - is that at a certain point the rate of expansion is going to reach the speed of light. Anything 'further away' from that point will never be able to transmit any 'information' to us, so as far as we're concerned - it might as well not exist - on a philosophical level you could argue that in our universe, it actually doesn't exist.....

Not sure if that's very clear but hopefully you get the gist.....