If you mean the visible universe, then yes the universe is finite. If you mean the all-that-there-is universe, then whether the universe is finite or not depends upon the topology. An open universe or one with Euclidean topology will be infinite in size. A closed universe will be finite in size.
Grrrr. It’s like none of you are really getting what I’m trying to say, you’re all reading way too much into it and getting too technical. I understand the “balloon” theory, of course a balloon has no edge, but that balloon is inside a room (for example) and therefore there is something outside of the balloon. You guys keep talking about the size and the age of the universe but I never mentioned the universe, I’m talking about “everything.” Maybe the universe is finite but if it is **what is beyond it?**There can’t be “nothing” because we all know that “nothing” is “something”, so “something” must go on forever, hence infinity.
But here’s the whole problem. You’re trying to analogise using 3D images that you’re comfortabole with - a balloon in a room. The problem is that that sort of idea is anything but neccesarily true with regards to what lies beyond/outwith the universe.
It actually could be nothing. As in nothing. And not in your “nothing is something sense”, in the absolute nothing sense - not a vacumn, not firmament, just nothing,0,null, void. It may well be that the Universe is a thing, of itself, without container.
It’s like saying “what is a concept contained in”. It doesn’t apply.
So, if we go back to your OP:
It may well be finite, without any outside edge, or indeed any outside. There doesn’t have to be anything beyond it. To repeat myself, you’re trying to apply a 3 dimensional view to something that doesn’t neccesarily behave like that.
The universe is “beyond” the universe. Cos, you know, when all’s said and done, the universe isn’t actually a balloon in a room.
Or maybe it is. And Bobo the clown is blowing it up at a kid’s party! That would actually explain a lot.
pan
Quiet, you fool! You will anger Great Bobo if you reveal his majestic presence to these foolish humans.
Dr Matrix
Well, only if you reject the big bang or conjecture that the Universe instantiated in the big bang is a referentially isolated “bubble” existing in a broader medium. One of the really interesting problems of a flat topology is “what happens at the edge”. Curvature allows one to use the spherical analogies to banish edge conditions. A truly flat topology does not, yet it is still bound (until a better answer arises) by the size constraints inherent in the time since the big bang, the speed of light, and the rate of inflation.
So long as none of those elements are infinite, which applies to any time the question might be asked, the Universe is finite in both age and size.
Whether an unperceptible “something” exists outside the perceptible boundary of the big bang is an interesting speculation, but one for which present theory assures us we can never gain any evidence.
The short answer is that they don’t know the shape of the
universe yet. Here is a link for you to the map satelite
homepage: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html Look under: “the shape of the universe”
Map is going to more finely study the background radiation
of the universe to try and determine it’s shape.
To my finite mind, an infinite oscillating universe makes alot more sense, but no one asked me. (:
I am basically in the same boat as Cisco. This has always been a conundrum for me. How can the Universe go on forever? If, it’s like a balloon in a room, that room still exits even if it is a total vacuum. What is on the other side of the room?
I don’t see that any of our attempts to describe the universe with our knowledge of the basic three dimensions fit. Then throw in the fourth dimension, time, and things just seem to get worse.
Since none of the 4 dimensional models adequately describe the Universe (at least from my POV) there must be another dimension as has been stated.(maybe infinitely more - but we better stay away from that).
So we say the “shape” of the universe exists in another dimension yet the matter within the universe exists in the standard 4. Then we go on to describe the shape of the universe in terms that fit into the 4 dimensions, saddle, donut, balloon etc. That’s where I believe the theories fall apart.
We use the first dimension to define the second (two points in space connected by a straight line) we use the second to define the third. Yet when we try to use all of the dimensions to try to describe the shape of the universe, at least for me, it does not define this new dimension.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Cisco *
**
I am a Catholic and going to combat this argument. K, you say that because of infinity there is no God right? K, everything comes into existence because of something(unless you say that there always has been and always will be the same amount of mass, which is true), so there must be a Prime Mover right? The uncaused cause. (This is Thomas Aquinas’ argument right?) God is the Prime Mover, you could say that the Prime Mover is not God, but would it not be an intelligent being, or in other words, a God??
Thanks,
Matt Shepard
As a philosophical argument, the Prime Mover is a classic. But many, many have disagreed with it over time, largely on the basis that the entire argument is based on the “absurdity” of infinite regression. Aquinas felt very strongly in cause and effect, and felt that infinite regression was unteneble. Thus, if there couldn’t be infinite regression, and every effect must have a cause, then there must be a first mover.
Problems: Infinite regression must be rejected axiomatically, and this is not intuitive for many thinkers. A First Mover need not be intelligent at all, or have any conssciousness, or any super powers, or any anything. It could just be “the first thing that moved.”
Later philosophers also went so far as to reject cause and effect asa human convention used in understanding, but not a necessary component of reality.
we don’t exist…we exist…we don’t exist…
in-between we no nothing.
the end