Hi all,
Taking the frame of reference of the center of the universe, the point were all matter originated and spread from there, what would the time be relative to Earth? And how old is the center of the Universe as compared to the edge of the universe? with frame of reference at the center of the universe.
What is the contraction of length of our distance from the center of the universe?
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity states that:
The laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames. No preferred inertial system exists.
-Shouldn’t the preferred inertial system be in relation to the point in the universe that has never moved? Shouldn’t therefore our units of time be based on the point of largest possible time dilation??
Even if we assume that there is a “point were all matter originated and spread from,” are you so sure that there was nothing to be rightly called a “universe” anywhere else (even if it had no matter)?
[q]Shouldn’t therefore our units of time be based on the point of largest possible time dilation??[/q]
Why would they? Time is relative, and our designated units of time are almost entirely arbitrary. These units of time are exists solely for our own convenience, and having to figure out where the universe started to know today’s date isn’t very convenient.
So you think there was either no big bang or multiple big bangs because you say ‘what makes me so sure that all the matter in the universe originated from one point’. I think most scientists in the world believe in the Big Bang! Also I was talking about this universe (I don’t really care about outside the universe or any other alternate universes or whether there was a universe before there was matter).
When I was talking about using it as a basis unit of time, I mean as an extra one that scientists use when they are describing time dilation. eg, Space mission to another star system would be in measured in ‘origin time units’(who knows what they would be called?). The time units could also be used to describe the time in relation to different points in the universe. etc.
Still wondering if any scientists out there have ever worked out my original questions…
PerfectDark
While there was a Big Bang, it didn’t happen in a single point. It’s all there was, so it happened everywhere. It’s probably better to imagine that every point of universe is the center of the Big Bang.
Take a look at a balloon. If you imagine the universe as the surface of the balloon, and you inflate it more, where is the extra surface being created? Everywhere.
How about gravity? At the center of the universe, all the matter is distributed equally apart from the center, so all the gravitational attractions should cancel out.
According to my physics teacher, there is no center of the universe known.
In my book, I’d assume that the center of the universe, being an unmoving point relative to all other points, the time would be zero divided by infinite.
There’s four ways to consider the “center of the Universe”:
1: There is no center
2: There is a center, but it’s not in the Universe
3: There is a center, but it’s impossible to say where it is
4: Every point is the center
In any event, it’s not possible to point to any single point in the Universe and say “That point and that point alone is the center”. The point that’s never moved? Moved relative to what? The point where the Big Bang happened? It happened at every point in the Universe. Therefore, your question can’t really be answered, unless you just want to say that the time at the center is about the same as the time anywhere else.
The current theories of the Big Bang have it that space itself expands, rather than stuff expanding into space. So there is no central point and there is no time associated with a central point. There is no preferred frame of reference (“preferred” in the sense of “better”; often a particular reference frame is “preferred” because the calculations are easier).
This is difficult to visualize in three dimensions, and downright wierd when you try to visualize it in more than three dimensions (e.g M-theory). The classic two dimensional analogy is a balloon. Imagine that you are a two-dimensional being on the surface of a balloon, with no ability to sense or measure a third dimension. Imagine that, through some unpecified means, the balloon is being blown up, and imagine that the balloon is a perfect sphere at all times with no neck or air entry or whaterver.
As you measure things along the surface of the balloon, you can detect that your two-dimensional space is expanding. However, even if you can circumnavigate the balloon and visit all points on the surface of the balloon, there is no point anywhere on the surface of the balloon that you can identify as the “center” of the two-dimensional surface, and there is no point that is “better” from which to measure things.
I feel that the two-dimensional being on the balloon would still ask where was the center of the expansion or the point it started from and he could travel in a spaceship to that point, which is where the air went in at the stem. You can’t really rule out that point. Suppose the universe were two-dimensional and it began with the big bang. Whether it was a blalloon or any other shape it still would have started from an identifiable point. We must not despaire of finding the Center of the Universe. IF you were a one-dimensional being on a line you could also travel to where the line began and where it ended even if it was a curved line or circle there would still be that point where it started.
You are the center of the universe. The proof is quite clear: if you look as far as you can in any direction, that distance is exactly the same distance from you no matter which way you look. So look at you watch, add in the fraction of time for the light to leave the watch, hit your retinas and be understood by your brain, and that is what time it is at the center of the universe.
Read what you just wrote. If a creature lived on a circle, and that circle was expanding, where is it expanding from? There is no single point.
From the balloon analogy, there isn’t any point outside the surface of the balloon. The same problem applies.
It’s a definition issue, you cannot find a single point because the WHOLE UNIVERSE WAS A SINGLE POINT. And we now inhabit that universe, so all points are the center.
What that really amounts to is every observer is the center of the universe he observes.
It can also be said you are exist at the most forward point of time in the universe you observe, since everything you observe you are actually seeing (other senses being even slower – sound, taste, touch) what it looked like in the past. Objects close to you only in the very recent past, the sun what it looked like eight minutes ago, Alpha Centauri what it looked like several years ago, and so on.
Alright… I will change my question because we don’t know where the center of the universe is or we can’t agree on the fact that there is a single point?
Our Galaxy had to have moved from somewhere? If we take the point that our galaxy originally moved from as the frame of reference, then what would the dilation of time be because of the speed of our moving galaxy and how long it has been moving.
In otherwords… Because we aren’t moving away from our original at the speed of light then the time dilation from where we started can’t be infinate… so therefore can be calculated. Wouldn’t this be the fastest time can be from our frame of reference? Could it be calculated?
(Just wondering were you guys saying that everything in the universe is moving away from each other and not a particular point?? How could this be because something near the center would move away from everything else and would have to move into itself? Perhaps I just misread it… I do that often)
“Imagine that, through some unpecified means, the balloon is being blown up, and imagine that the balloon is a perfect sphere at all times with no neck or air entry or whatever.”
In the balloon analogy, there is no stem. We don’t knwo how the air is getting ianto the balloon, but lets jsut say it’s getting in by magic. There is no point on the balloon that is distinguishable from any other point.
Unless our current theories of the universe are seriously wrong, and it’s incredibly unlikely that they are, we do agree that there was a single point. But …
Yes, sort of, it “moved” from that single point. Although our galaxy didn’t exist as such at the instant of the Big Bang, everything that eventually went into our galaxy was at that single point at the instant of the Big Bang. And so were all the other elements of the universe. The Andromeda galaxy “moved” from that single point. Every galaxy “moved” from that single point.
So the point from which our galaxy moved is now equivalent to the entire universe. There is no such thing as a single point in the universe today that is equivalent to that single point at the time of the Big Bang. All points in the universe today are equivalent to that single point at the instant of the Big Bang.
You can pick any point in the universe as the “original” point and calculate your time dilation relative to it. This includes picking us as the point and calculating a zero time dilation. All these possible calculations based on different points are correct (assuming you do the math right {grin}). And all of them give the same answer, as long as you apply the correct transformation to express the final results in one coordinate system, whether that coordinate system is the one centered on us or one centered somewhere else.