Yes.
The only way this can be is if there is no center.
I did say it’s hard to visualize in three dimensions …
Evidently the BiG Bang theory is only a visualization in the realm of mere appearances that glosses over a mathematics that is beyond appearing like ANYTHING, even to its creators.Or I should say at least the first moment of the BB is this. Something or other (sometimes said to be the actual space, sometimes the galactic groups) is expanding, and any given part of the expansion is redshifted from our point of view, which proves the expansion. But when we think and visualize back to the original moment, we see that it is discontinuous with its predecessor and apparently even with its immediate antecedent, the state of matter in which quarks were disassociated with each other. After that anybody can understand the agitation becoming less on each small scale (this may be what they mean when they say the temperature goes down) and the quarks come together. It doesn’t help when “they” say things like the original material in the Bib Bang was the size of a tennis ball.
Saying that a hole developed and matter from another realm poured in at that hole just makes us ask where did that matter come from. We are no better off at the Original Moment than Parmenides or the other 6th century BC philosophers. Parmenides did say,“There is only the One,”
in other words What Is always was. Protagoras said, “Man is the measure of all things: of that that is that it is, and of that that is not that it is not.” Thus all our pictures and theories are merely analogies to human life and experience in society. I think Gorgias said nothing exists because if anything existed it would have to come either from something else or from nothing. Nothing can come from nothing, but if what is came from something else, it raises the same question. Blut I mayhave him mixted up mit Parmenndides aggggggghhhhhhhhhh!
You’re still picturing the Big Bang as an explosion of stuff into space. This is not what happened. At the Beginning, all of space was a single point. There was nothing outside of this point that was part of our universe. Not even empty space. So, this point rapidly expanded and created space and time. It was also full of energy. When space expanded far enough, this energy cooled and condensed into atoms of matter. Gravity pulled the matter together into stars, galaxies, etc. So, matter was already throughout the universe to begin with. Space continues to expand in every direction, so the matter that now exists in clumps is getting farther from other clumps of matter. And by “clumps”, I mean galaxy clusters. The gravity within a galaxy overwhelms the expansion of space (i.e., a galaxy, a solar system, you…are not expanding).
:sigh: There is a center. It is you. All light you see in any direction comes from somewhere back in time. If you peer out as far as you can to the edges of the universe, you would be able to see the early stages of the big bang itself. The distance is the same in any direction you look, therefore you are in the center of the universe. And the universe is expanding from this center at which you are located at – though IIRC at the edges it is infinitely curved into a single point. If you walk five miles east, you are still the center of the universe. The universe has moved relative to you. The fact that the center of the universe is relative to each observer doesn’t mean that each observer can’t witness that he/she is exactly in the center or that the question is invalid.
No matter where you go, there you are…
good god.
I’ve been away from the SDMB for a couple months, and this is what my flabby brain comes back to.
I think my head is going to explode. I wonder if anybody will be able to find the center after it expands?
"How old is this place? We can actually get a decent handle on lower-limits to this number simply by recognizing that the universe has to be older than the oldest objects in it. Radioactive isotope studies yield ages of at least nine to sixteen billion years for our Galaxy, and the ages of the oldest star clusters put the limit at about 14 billion years. Give or take a billion years, a reasonable lower limit to the age of the Universe turns out to be about 15 billion years.
The fourth number is our Hubble Constant Ho."
We are back to Hubble again, Andromedea, etc. … the clock at the “center” can only be that of the measurable time relative to us, no “other” time exists. Relativistic time only applies to what one sees while moving relative to the other, and it is not necessarily that of the local stationary / reference clock. The “center” of the universe is 15 to 16 billion +/- years old, the same as the universe.
Not it’s not. It’s me! Actually, I keep the center of the universe in my wallet between my credit card receipts and my drivers license. I hope I don’t lose it. :eek:
Since every point can be subjectively viewed as the center, there is no center. Objectively, viewed from an outside point of reference, my subjective center does not appear to be a center at all. So , it’s not.
I see where you are coming from, but this is a little like a hampster running in a hampster wheel saying every rung in the wheel is nearest the bottom of the cage, because where ever he runs, the rung beneath him is nearest the bottom of the cage. But really, only the rung beneath him right now is at the bottom of the cage, even though he could go to any rung and then it would be at the bottom. The hampster is the constant in the equation.
(Well, I never thought I’d say that)
If there is no center because all matter in the universe is moving away from each other then wouldn’t stars in a galaxy be dispersing and matter in the stars dispersing?? That would also cause it to disperse into itself because it has to move away from all matter and if it were surrounded then it would move into itself. Or is it that the space is expanding and the matter sliding over this expanding space so new space could be created within the matter and then everything could move away???
I think that idea is to weird and sounds like the Ether Theory except my idea causes matter to exist in ether not ether as the invisible matter that occupies a vacuum. Ether would allow time and matter to exist, although without matter time doesn’t exist so would the ability to progress in events (time) be a property of matter? Can time not exist with matter? When something exists in ether it would distort the ether because of it’s mass and it’s velocity through the ether (mass and time dilation).
I think this almost theory of ether was put to rest about 100 years ago wasn’t it???
Anyways… PerfectDark
Maybe “without matter”? Really thought this was an excellent OP! Maybe we can debate the concept of clock times, universe time (age), and time and length dilation, the core of this question. It seems that the idea of different clock times and ruler lengths is “sexy” regarding different refrence frames. Does this really change the measurable observations of an independent event?
I was under the impression that regardless of what one observer sees relative to another observer and their relativistic motion, they will still agree on an independent event using their own clocks and rulers. Even an observer in a black hole, if he could “see” the characteristics of the universe, would arrive at the same age (time) of the universe using his own clock and ruler?
Maybe way off base here? Please be gentle!.
Now they say that there is a nonexistent virtuality from which particles pop. Every particle is shadowed by another particle at the other level of existence. It is a whole shimmering flux of particles and some enter our area and some don’t. Another theory was that new space is always coming in at every possible point from the Other Realm.
However, so little of it comes into existence at the teensy level that it doesn’t make much difference there, but it all adds up. In any case, you would have to be a mathematician and understand wave equations of Whatsisname. The true comprehension of these things is only available to the most advanced portions of the population who have gone to all the trouble of learning calculus n’stuff.
We can define the “proper age” of the Universe, which can be roughly defined as the longest age any observer could possibly measure for the Universe. This is an absolute number, and can be calculated even by observers who, due to black holes or whatnot, can’t observe it directly. Since we have no major black holes in the near vicinity (or other strong gravitational fields), and the Earth isn’t prone to large accelerations, the age observed by a person on the Earth is a very good approximation to the proper age.
PerfectDark, galaxies, planets, people and the rest are not dispersing, because as mentioned above, local effects like the gravitational field of a galaxy or the electromagnetic forces holding your body together can easily dominate over the cosmological expansion.
Hi Chronos … we are never going to agree on this, but that is ok! I guess this is a reason for the SDMB. Gravitational fields between galaxies is not and never has been in play … for collosions of galaxies or otherwise …
“One group, using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on Mauna Kea, monitored three Cepheids and worked out the distance to galaxy NGC4571. This results in a value for H of 87 km per second per megaparsec (Michael J. Pierce et al., Nature, 29 Sept.). A second team, using the (appropriately named) Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and looking at 20 Cepheids in galaxy M100, found a value of 80 for H (results announced at a NASA news conference today). Converting a measurement of H into an estimate for the lifetime of the universe is as not as easy as it once was since astronomers began to suspect that large amounts of dark matter lurk in and around galaxies. The presence of this matter can distort the cosmological “flow” of galaxies and complicate any determination of the expansion rate of the universe. Still, these new H values suggest a young universe; the HST results provide a lifetime estimate of 8 to 12 billion years.”
The lowest Ho etimate I have seen is about 46 +/-. Ho includes the effects of inter-galaxy gravitation, minimal at best. Maybe black holes, black matter, or other flow effects can affect the expansion, but not inter-galaxy gravitation. Still waiting to see from others the calculation, from a previous thread, of Newton’s inter-galaxy gravitational attraction vv Hubble expansion Ho. Respectfully – DD
Then this must mean that there is a cosmological expansion constant otherwise the gravity and electromagnetic forces would have stopped acting as a retardant to the expansion and started pulling matter together??
PerfectDark
That appears very consistent with the observed measurements of the Hubble expansion constant, based on what little I know about it. Maybe it would not have necessarily already started pulling matter together though, H<0. We can only speculate if there is enough black matter, since there doesn’t appear to be enough visible matter, to cause H (as a model) to go negative or to zero at some point in time. Another question would be, has there been any observations of H decreasing and/or what is the time frame to measure these potential effects? Until then … it’s more fun to speculate.
Schrodinger’s Wave Equations, that’s what I was thinking of above. Not that I know what they mean.
Gravity does slow the expansion. The amount of slowing depends on the how fast the expansion is, how much gravity there is, and how much of other forces there are. You can imagine a Universe with no matter; it would expand forever at a constant rate. A Universe with a lot of matter might only expand a little before gravity slowed, stopped and reversed it.
As far as we know, there is not enough matter in the Universe to create enough gravity to stop the expansion. Worse, it appears (though it is not absolutely conclusive) that the expansion is actually accelerating. There may be a pervasive ``dark energy’’ that acts like pressure, speeding up the expansion. If true, the Universe will expand forever, and eventually will cool to absolute zero. Creepy.
Phil!!! Love your website. 
Does cooling down to absolute zero mean nothing will exist or nothing will move? I thought temperature was a measure of how fast little particles were moving. Solids are solid because the particles aren’t moving very fast. At a certain point after being bombarded by outside particles that thus agitate the particles of the mass in question, these are moving so fast that the solid becomes a liquid, and etc. for becoming a gas and then a plasma and then a quark flux. Or is the universe possibly going to expand so much that the distance between solid parts would be real big? I feel that the energy would just goon expanding and it would all only be a loss at our level. As far as the universe is concerned it is just still going on getting bigger and bigger. There would be like a little atom here and then the next one would be like a zillion miles away and so forth. If the universe begins to contract it would first form a big solid like the One of Parmenides, and then collapse and go Ba WOOSH into the next realm.