THE question ... where does it end

Great Debates
1

I asked this question in 5th grade and can distinctly recall my teacher getting flustered and dishing out a “well, that’s quite a mystery” response. 20 years later and I’m still asking the question.

What is outside the universe, or the universes, depending on how you refer to “everything”? I can comprehend a circle going on infinitely … BUT … there is something outside of that circle. So the “Its infinity” answer doesn’t really fly.

I seriously doubt there’s an answer out there that would bring me closure, but there has to be something better than the cop-out responses I usually hear.

2

Who the hell knows? Use your imagination to find something that satisfies you.

I like to think there’s another universe out there. Maybe one day someone’ll figure out how to connect the two. Of course, evil alien demons might come pouring out and slay us all, but that’s the price you have to pay for curiosity.

3

I don’t think it ends, but I have nothing to cite, and have not studied this area.

4

THE question … where does it end ?

after the question mark.

5

“Outside” in what sense?

Do you mean something along the lines of, “If I get in a hypothetical rocket ship and fly ‘away from’ the universe, what will I see when I’ve left it?” If so, then that can never happen. For one thing, your rocket ship, as part of the universe, is merely “expanding the boundaries”, so to speak, wherever you go. For another, you might well be unable to escape the gravity of the universe, which might itself be merely a restatement of number one. You can’t go where there isn’t any mass, because you are mass.

Or, did you mean something along the lines of, “What’s out there beyond where I can possibly go, perceive, or measure?” If so, then you’ve asked a question that is definitively unanswerable. You’ll find no answer here, there, or anywhere. You’ll find no useful opinion either, since all knowledge about such matters is entirely mediate.

Finally, did you mean something along the lines of, “Is there any metaphysical existence beyond the ontology of the universe?” If so, the answer is subjective, and depends, in part, on whether you posit Platonic ideals, for example, as things that are real. Is love real? Not the synaptic discharge that awakens you to love, but love itself. Would love exist if there were no humans and no universe? If yes, then there is a metaphysical reality beyond the universe. If no, then there isn’t.

6

Ah, this one again.

It’s possible that there is no such thing as ‘outside’ the universe if the circle is the universe.

Thinking of the universe as the three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional balloon sometimes helps, but the analogy breaks down if you start to ask about the medium in which the ballon is suspended, or the gas that inflates it, much as it would break down if you asked what colour was the ballon or how long is the string that’s attached.

It’s not unlike (and perhaps related to) the question “What happened before time started?” - in this case, there is no such thing as ‘before’.

7

and before rushes in to nitpick, my four-dimensional balloon has four geometric dimensions; I’m not talking about ‘time’ as the fourth dimension here.

8

It’s one that bugs me too - a kind of niggling question.

Mangetout hits the nail on the head when he [sub](or she? sorry Mangetout - I have no idea whether you’re sword or sheath)[/sub] talks about the balloon expanding into what?

Picturing the universe(s) is easy enough, but what does the universe sit in? By universe, I mean the “stuff” in the universe - which my brain says is obviously sat in nothing, and expanding into it. But, says niggle, I can accept that the nothing goes on forever, but where did the “nothing” come from? Because this means that before the Big Bang, there was space (although it was a bit lonely as pubs hadn’t been invented yet), and there always was space, and always will be.

Perhaps there are loads of these bubbles of matter all over the place, stretching into infinity. But - this infinity still bothers me.

I think the problem is that it’s hard to grasp the idea of a limitless “nothing”. The neatest thing I heard was Cecil’s old throwaway comment that perhaps the Universe is one big black hole. I know it was mostly just a crack, but I like it - it sets a boundary to our universe and that I can grasp. There doesn’t even have to be anything outside, as we can never get outside - there will be a limit that we can never reach.

9

Oh and I’m also assuming, for the purpose of the analogy that the surface of a conventional balloon is a two-dimensional plane that is warped in the third dimension (this would not be perceptible to a race of 2D beings living in such a 2D universe, they would just wonder why, when you travel in a straight line for long enough, you end up back where you began)

And yes, I have read Flatland.

10

the expansion of the universe would be analogous to the ballon being inflated; it’s not taking up more of anything, just stretching.

But again, the analogy breaks down, simply because we think of balloons as objects that take up space and contain volume.

It may be, of course, that there is some medium in which the universe sits, but we cannot probe it by physical means, because those means are restrained to operating within the universe.

(sirjamesp - I’m a bloke BTW)

11

Mangetout, you should be Cecil’s boss.

No sooner have I typed some rambling “I don’t get it either” message, I see you’ve neatly answered the question. If I’d been just a little slower, I could have saved myself looking dumb…

I like that warped balloon thing (I didn’t cotton on when I read your first post) as it not only gives a neat solution to the question, but shows that, as a matter of fact, we can’t fully understand the solution.

I’d like to have a little look around this fourth dimension, though.

12

While I’d love to have been the originator of the baloon analogy, sadly it’s just something I read somewhere, can’t even remember where now.

For the record, this was one of the first hard questions I remember asking my parents - picture the scene; a beach in Limassol, Cyprus (that’s where we lived at the time), a family, including a four-year-old Mangetout, who has again been told, and at last, grasped the idea that the earth is a ball, not a flat thing:

Mangetout: “Daddy, what’s all around the world?”
Daddy: “Well, it’s like an egg; the world is the yellow bit in the middle, and there’s air all around it, like the white bit”
M: “But what’s outside the white bit?”
D: “Empty space, mostly”
M: “What’s outside the empty bit then”
D: “erm…”
M: “How far does it go on for?”
D: “erm…”
D: “Hey, Who wants ice cream?”

13

Aren’t these two statements from the OP in direct conflict with each other? Either the circle is infinitely large or it isn’t. If you can comprehend the universe as being infinitely large, then there is no “outside”. All there is is universe.

Unless what you mean is that the “circle” which is the universe is expanding infinitely–it has a finite but constantly increasing volume–and you’re wondering where it’s expanding into.

I have no problem with an infinitely large universe.

14

I think the term is finite but boundless, like with the circle; it’s finite, but if you trace your finger along the line that describes it, you never get to the ‘end’

15

in much the same way as space on that old classic video game Asteroids is boundless, but not infinite; you can travel indefinitely in a straight line and never leave the universe because it ‘wraps’

In this way, the universe can be argued to have no central point (it would be a bit like asking where is the centre of the earth’s surface).

16

Sorry to keep posting one comment after another, but this one keeps coming back to me; the line that describes the circle IS the universe, not it’s boundary.

If the universe is expanding ‘into’ anything, that something isn’t empty three-dimensional space.

17

I think your posts are expanding into infinity too, Mangetout… :smiley:

18

Hehe, try this one then

We live in a three-dimensional* universe, it’s possible to move in three axes that are at right-angles to one another (up/down, left/right and forward/backward)
*geometrically speaking

But imagine a one-dimensional universe, where there is only forward and backward; up, down, left and right do not exist, you can’t point up because there’s no such place. Objects in this universe can have only one dimension; length, they don’t have any width or height, or rather width and height are not possible.
So our one-dimensional universe is a straight line without width or height, that extends infinitely in two directions; there is nothing ‘above’ or ‘outside’ of the straight line, as these directions simply have no existence.
Or you can make it finite and boundless by bending it through the second dimension and making it into a circular loop (the inhabitants, locked into their one-dimensional viewpoint and unable to experience the second dimension, don’t notice this at all, except in that when you travel far enough in one direction, you end up back where you began).

Now imagine a TWO-dimensional universe, where there is forward and backward, but also left and right; up and down do not exist, you can’t point up because there’s no such place. Objects in this universe can have only two dimensions; length and width, they don’t have any height, or rather height is not possible.
So our two-dimensional universe is a flat plane without height, that extends infinitely in four directions; there is nothing ‘above’ or ‘outside’ of the flat plane, as these directions simply have no existence.
Or you can make it finite and boundless by warping it through the third dimension and making it into a spherical surface (the inhabitants, locked into their two-dimensional viewpoint and unable to experience the third dimension, don’t notice this at all, except in that when you travel far enough in one direction, you end up back where you began).

Now I don’t have to ask you to imagine a THREE-dimensional universe, that’s the one you live in, where there is forward and backward, left and right and also up and down. Objects in this universe can have three dimensions; length, width and height.
So our three-dimensional universe is a volume that extends infinitely in eight directions.
Or you can make it finite and boundless by warping it through the fourth dimension and making it into an exotic shape that I don’t have a name for (we, the inhabitants, locked into our three-dimensional viewpoint are unable to experience the fourth dimension, so we can’t percieve this at all, except in that when we travel far enough in one direction, we end up back where you began).

(In theory, anyway)

19

Very nicely described in that last post, Mangetout.

I congratulate you on creating a rare creature: a thread that is interesting and thought-provoking, yet which generates none of the belligerance we normally see in GD.

I hate questions like these…or rather, I hate the glib answers we get from cosmologists. Like when they say “there’s no ‘before’ the Big Bang because there was no time until the Big Bang.”

Or when they suggest the whole Universe could be just a quantum fluctuation bubbling out of nothingness.

I can accept that time as we experience it is a property of the Universe, but if we can call the Big Bang an event at all, then there must be some sort of “super-time” within which that even occurred. I just can’t be convinced otherwise, or haven’t heard of a model that can illlustrate it for me.

And there must be something in the “nothing” the Universe bubbled out of, or it couldn’t have bubbled out of it, right?

Shit, I don’t need this on a Friday. Thanks a lot, Mangetout.

20

What about the theory that all matter in the universe is finite? You know, going on the premise that matter is simply a form of energy, and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore, all the energy/matter of the universe that is in it now has always existed and will always exist as a specific (yet immessurable) amount. How can the universe be expanding if there can’t be more of it? I mean, aside from the thought that everything is just flying farther and farther away from each other.
I don’t think that made any sense. Basically, if the universe is still expanding, where is this new matter/energy coming from?
Also, what about the belief that the Big Bang happened when the universe as it existed beforehand, collapsed in on itself and, upon reaching a certain condenced state, exploded again creating the universe we exist in now. If this is a common occurrance, and after eons and eons the universe eventually shrinks and implodes, what’s left? Think of it like this…at the center of the universe is a sponge sitting in a pool of water. As the sponge expands, it sucks up the water, until it’s full, and something applies preasure and flattens the sponge releasing all the water. Basically, it’s the same question, isn’t it? What’s left would be the same thing as what’s beyond it to begin with, no? Alright, that was a waste.