Universal Expansion...stupid question.

[JS80]

the center is everywhere. no matter where you stand, you appear to be at the center.

Wait, so the Catholic church was right??

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

I fucking love this thread (flaming aside). Conversations about this topic interest me a lot.

We are limited by the fact that the known universe is an estimated 14 billion years old, so we can only see light, just now, from objects up to ~14 billion light years away. Anything further than that hasn't had enough time for its' light to reach us yet. Isn't that fascinating? We could very well be on the hypothetical "edge" of our own universe, and it's very likely that another civilization like ours is simply out of our (and their) reach, so we don't know about each other yet.

Not quite accurate. We can't see back the entire ~14 billion years, but only up until the expansion period using instruments like WMAP. The oldest visible light though, is younger than the information WMAP got (which is ~13.5 billion years ago).

 

[foghorn67]

The center of the universe is Fox News; because it's the biggest gapping empty space of nothing, known to man and everyone is interested in it.

Please don't breed.

 

[BoomerD]

It's me. I'm the center of everything. Sorry.

Now that's the typical female answer...

 

[Macamus Prime]

Please don't breed.

Don't worry, your mom is sterile.

 

[foghorn67]

Don't worry, your mom is sterile.

Internet tough guy....virgin.

 

[Nik]

Wait, so the Catholic church was right??

No. There IS a center, we simply don't know how to find it yet.

 

[Macamus Prime]

Internet tough guy....virgin.

You know what's tougher than that? The guy that stands up to the internet tough guy.

//slow clap//

 

[foghorn67]

You know what's tougher than that? The guy that stands up to the internet tough guy.

//slow clap//

The guy that comes in here has an irrelevant jab at something nobody cares about, then starts making mom jokes that only 13 year olds on xbox/ps3 make, then starts calling people out.
Funny.
Learn some manners, get the fuck out.

 

[Nik]

You know what's tougher than that? The guy that stands up to the internet tough guy.

//slow clap//

Wow. Not even 270 posts and you made it to my ignore list. Congrats.

 

[Macamus Prime]

The guy that comes in here has an irrelevant jab at something nobody cares about, then starts making mom jokes that only 13 year olds on xbox/ps3 make, then starts calling people out.
Funny.
Learn some manners, get the fuck out.

I contributed to the discussion - see the rest of the comments I made. But, you decided to pick up on the stupid response.

Yes. I am the bad guy here. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Macamus Prime]

Wow. Not even 270 posts and you made it to my ignore list. Congrats.

The important thing is that you ANNOUNCE someone is being ignored. Otherwise, I would have NEVER figured it out you do not care to read my posts.

 

[Macamus Prime]

A fun fact about black holes to think about is that "time" actually slows as you approach one. If a person was able to fly to the horizon of a black hole and then had the thrust to get away from it thousands or even millions of years would have passed even though the person was only at the black hole for a day or two.

Another Fun Fact: The faster you go the slower time is for you, and that thought makes me all tingly.

I always figured time slows down, because light is not bouncing off of any objects, since light is being bent. It's not that time is slowing down, its that you aren't seeing time pass. But, it is passing.

 

[tk149]

There is no center.

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/nocenter.html

Please explain. I'm not understanding this, and it's been a looong time since I took physics and I've always sucked at math.

The diagrams show that you cannot figure out the origin of the big bang because everywhere in the universe shows the same relative velocities. That I can understand.

But he also says that ""You might think that by backtracking the velocity vectors you can locate the center of the Big Bang (and it is at A)" which implies that there IS a center.

Yet he also says "The Big Bang has no center". Seems contradictory.

Is he just saying that we cannot know where the center is because we are part of the explosion, or that there really never was a center?

 

[HybridSquirrel]

If everything is accelerating away from each other...are there any conjectures to where the center of everything is?

the center is where god is...obviously

 

[Nik]

The important thing is that you ANNOUNCE someone is being ignored. Otherwise, I would have NEVER figured it out you do not care to read my posts.

It's important for you to know that you should probably wait a few thousand posts to be a complete dick to people.

 

[Jeff7]

None that I am aware of - we don't even know the shape, and we can really only see everything in a sphere with a radius of about 14 billion light years.

And of course there's the huge visibility "shadow" caused by the galactic core.

We need a transwarp-capable probe to venture out into intergalactic space to get a really good look around.

 

[Nik]

Please explain. I'm not understanding this, and it's been a looong time since I took physics and I've always sucked at math.

The diagrams show that you cannot figure out the origin of the big bang because everywhere in the universe shows the same relative velocities. That I can understand.

But he also says that ""You might think that by backtracking the velocity vectors you can locate the center of the Big Bang (and it is at A)" which implies that there IS a center.

Yet he also says "The Big Bang has no center". Seems contradictory.

Is he just saying that we cannot know where the center is because we are part of the explosion, or that there really never was a center?

He's saying that we can't tell right now where the center of the universe is. He's not saying that there is no center, because that would be downright laughable.

 

[BUTCH1]

Watched K-Pax lately?

Ha!, busted!, it's a theory I like though, hopefully it's true..

 

[darkxshade]

He's saying that we can't tell right now where the center of the universe is. He's not saying that there is no center, because that would be downright laughable.

Isn't the center where the big bang started? And by that, wouldn't it also mean we can never see/observe the center of the universe for the same reasons why we can't observe the big bang with a telescope?

 

[Nik]

Isn't the center where the big bang started? And by that, wouldn't it also mean we can never see/observe the center of the universe for the same reasons why we can't observe the big bang with a telescope?

In order for us to be able to see the big bang, we'd have to look away from the center and hope 14 billion year old light will get reflected back toward us, effectively making a 180 degree turn.

We've got pics of the very early universe

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/11feb_map/

 

[Sunny129]

No. There IS a center, we simply don't know how to find it yet.

the reason the argument can go either way (i.e. it can be argued that there either IS or ISN'T a center to our universe) is that, even if we could eventually calculate the position of the center of the universe, we could never travel there or see it w/ observatories/telescopes b/c it would not lie within our universe, as contradictory as that may sound. by definition, the center of our universe must be a point equidistant from all other points in the universe. since there is no single point in our universe that is equidistant from all other points in our universe, we can either argue that 1) there is no true absolute notion of "the center of the universe," or 2) the center of the universe does not lie "within" the universe.

probably the easiest way to visualize the concept of the center of the universe not lying within the universe is to picture a "closed" 2-dimensional universe, for instance the 2-dimensional surface of a 3-dimensional sphere. a 2-dimensional creature living in this closed 2-dimensional universe (that ultimately comprises a sphere in 3 dimensions) would have width and depth, but no height. he/she would live in a universe with no "height," and would not be able to travel down below the surface of the sphere (toward its center), nor be able to travel above the surface of the sphere (away from its center). that is, every point on the surface of the sphere (every point contained within the 2-dimensional universe that is in fact the surface of the sphere) is of equal distance to the center of the 3-dimensional sphere. now any 2-dimensional beings living in this universe might be able to theorize about the center of their universe and calculate its position. but they will never be able to see, smell, hear, touch, taste, or experience it in any way, shape, or form b/c it does not exist within their 2-dimensional universe...that is, it exists only outside their universe.

this example can be extended to higher dimensions, regardless of whether our universe is an open or closed curve. that is, by extension of this concept into the universe of 3 spatial dimensions that we live in every day, its center is not accessible to us b/c it lies in a space of 4 or more spatial dimensions.

 

[Sunny129]

I always figured time slows down, because light is not bouncing off of any objects, since light is being bent. It's not that time is slowing down, its that you aren't seeing time pass. But, it is passing.

no...time does in fact slow down for both objects traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light and objects in an intense gravitational field, even if your intuition is telling you something else. that's the thing about Relativity Theory - NOTHING is intuitive.

 

[Minjin]

I believe the problem is that the "center" is in another dimension. I've always liked the analogy of the balloon. Think of our world as the skin of a balloon. It contains all of the dimensions (3 spatial, 1 temporal) that we know. If we then blow up the balloon, our world expands, with every point expanding away from every other point. So, where's the center? If you are looking at the surface only, you can never find a center. The center exists in the sphere, in a different dimension that we can't see. I'm not sure if this idea has been mathematically disproven yet but I always thought it was a simple, easy to grasp way of thinking about it.

 

[SlowSpyder]

You forgot the part where I am prone to making comments about how I am banging your mom.

On a serious note, it's impossible to tell. Since within our own galaxy we see light from stars that are long dead. The span and space is SO huge in the universe, there is no way to really pin point where the center is.

So, I took the stupid approach,.... oh, and, I'm banging your mom.

I know you are. You like to sleep with 60 year old women and then punch yourself in the liver repeatedly. You call it "The Steve Jobs Experience". It helps you feel closer to your deteriorating messiah.