That’s what I find hard to accept - basically, I don’t agree with your first statement. What does it mean to be curved in and of itself? Curvature must be relative to something, an additional dimension. Otherwise, “curvature” is the wrong term.
There has been some research on other universes, but of course it’s mostly theoretical and pretty much impossible to prove. With quantum particles popping in and out of existence, they could effectively be popping in and out of different universes. There’s also the theory that there exists an infinite amount of universes like our own except for one simple difference. Like with time travel, if you go back and kill your grandmother, you’ll be transported to the universe in which your grandmpther was killed by you instead of giving birth to your parents. There could be universes completely identical except for one particle having a different charge. Of course if you want to be picky you could say that they’re all the same universe, just with minor changes. But what about realities that fork near the Big Bang? Maybe different elements form instead of hyrodgen and helium, or something minorly different happens at the beginning that completely alters the future universe.
Well regarding your first point, if you call such shrinkage expansion of space then you’re applying a concept (expansion) that makes it possible to understand the measurements but evading the consequences of the concept, which is that expansion must (IMHO) be in relation to something. Regarding your second point, I assume you are referring to the fact that redshift increases with distance. Well certainly I’m not arguing with that, just that if you say it’s due to space expanding that you need a higher dimension. Also, there’s an alternative to the geometrical interpretation - all the observations that are explainable by curved/expanding space can equally be explained by the action of forces over large scales. For example one idea in vogue is that there’s a very large scale “anti-gravity” force that increases with distance, explaining the increasing acceleration of galaxies away from each other over time. (Sorry that was more long winded than I indended.)
I’ve always believed that our existence makes up a very small part of another, larger one in the same way that atoms and sub-atomic particles make up ours. Now *thats[/] infinity for you.
No, that’s not infinity for you. In fact, that unimaginably huge whatever-it-is is by definition precisely as far from infinity as one is.
And by the way, what reason do you have for believing that? Do you have some evidence to back it up?
wont the dots on the balloon expand just as fast as the balloon itself?
This is the only ‘correct’ answer although there very well may be something beyond our ‘horizon’ (so to speak). It is true nothing beyond that horizon can affect us in any way so as to be essentially not there but that doesn’t mean there really is nothing there.
This is especially likely if Inflationary Theory is correct (and it seemed to get a confirmation fromt he MAP data linked to above).
So again, in an arguable sense, every single person (or point) is at the center of the Universe no matter where in the Universe they are.
obviously the analogy isn’t perfect, all analogies breakdown at some point, but think of the dots as stickers (I know, they’d fall off then) rather than dots done with matrker pens.