10,000 Galaxies: A Hubble Telescope Image

[HotPants]

I can't help you too much here, maybe a little

[ QUOTE ]
well the universe consists of atoms and molecules and is expanding with speed of light. where into the universe is expanding is nothing. no molecules no atoms just vacuum.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, this is possible. Although saying 'just vacuum' might not be technically right, let's just call it 'nothing'

It's also possible that the Universe is 'closed', such that if you went in a 'straight' line forever you might end up where you started. An analouge some one already mention is imagine a plane flying in a straight line, but, given enough time it will circle the globe and end up where it started. This is essentially what it would be like in a 2D 'closed' universe, the whole universe would be a sphereical shell in 3D. So yeah, extend that to go from our 3D to a 'curved' spacetime that in 4D would like like a 'hypersphere'

Let's go back the the 2D sphereical shell for a second. To complicate things, the universe is expanding, so image the shell getting bigger and bigger (like a balloon blowing up). In this way, all galaxies appear to not actually move, but the distance between them seems to grow. And apperently this is more correct than saying galaxies are moving away from each other.

So yeah, it's possible the balloon is expanding so fast that if you try to circumnavigate it, due to speed of light limitations, you can't ever make it around since the circumfrence of the universe is getting bigger and bigger too quickly.

[ QUOTE ]
Well, the atoms and molecules we have, well they have to come from somewhere. so even before the big bang what was there? There just couldnt be a bang which created physical matter. is should have existed before. If so, who or what created it.

I JUST WANNA KNOW ANSWER. I WANT TO KNOW IT SO HARD that i would agree to die right after you tell me the right answer.

[/ QUOTE ]

I WOULD TOO.

I've heard things like " 'before' the big bang is a meaningles statement. There was no space before the big bang, and hence not time (cause space and time are linked)"

That's all I got

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
Diebitter - the odds of amino acids randomly combining into a functional protein are much worse than the monkey example, and a single protein is just a tiny portion of even the simplist lifeforms we know of.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agree, but the odds of them combining in a certain way, that then somehow split and then the separate parts combining the same way again (hence two copies from one) are much, much better...

and if there must be one defining feature of life, it's the ability to replicate itself in some fashion...

I think Richard Dawkins talked at length about this in 'The Blind Watchmaker', FWIW.

[acoustix]

WIKI is your friend. The answer is within.

[HotPants]

besides the 'time didn't exist before the big bang' thing, all I found in that Wikipedia link was:

[ QUOTE ]
# brane cosmology models, including the ekpyrotic model in which the Big Bang is the result of a collision between branes
# an oscillatory universe in which the early universe's hot, dense state resulted from the Big Crunch of a universe similar to ours. The universe could have gone through an infinite number of big bangs and big crunches. The cyclic extension of the ekpyrotic model is a modern version of such a scenario. (The chief outstanding problem is that entropy would apparently be carried over to each new cycle, resulting in a condition of heat death in the remote past).

[/ QUOTE ]

which just begs the question, where did those things come from? I suppose though that this leaves open the possibility stuff has existed infinitely far back in time

[acoustix]

What you should pay attention to in the link the fact that nobody has or can ever have a definitive answer. It is all speculation. If you think about this stuff for a while, you end up thinking in circles and eventually blowing your own mind. Do your self a favor and smoke pot before having this discussion.

[Digs]

[ QUOTE ]
What you should pay attention to in the link the fact that nobody has or can ever have a definitive answer. It is all speculation. If you think about this stuff for a while, you end up thinking in circles and eventually blowing your own mind. Do your self a favor and drop acid before having this discussion.

[/ QUOTE ]

fyp

please have someone around who can interface with the computer so they can relay us the correct answer as well.

[tpir]

[ QUOTE ]
This picture makes discussing optimal strategy for AKs in the small blind seem rather meaningless.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow! That is such a great way to put it.... and in only one sentence!

I love space stuff... but it terrifies and saddens me since there is so much unknown [censored] out there that we can not understand/will not understand because we aren't smart enough/won't be alive long enough.

I am super freaked out now BTW just thinking about this.
-tpir

[RubberDucky]

http://cfnews13.com/StoryHeadline.aspx?id=13873

[Kamakaze22]

I was frustrated about this about a week or so ago.


Intergalactic Space Travel

[suzzer99]

I love when OOTers decide to all chime in and definitely figure out some highly technical topic in a realm of deep science, all by themselves.

Next week in OOT: Cancer, curable? OOT decides.