Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: LetoII on 24/03/2012 18:51:38
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In most of what i read and see on the universe there is a mentioning of how we are surprised that our universe is still expanding.
To me however it's more surprising that the center isnt expanding faster and stuff isnt coliding through this effect, what causes this stability?
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The centre is believed to be everywhere and is also believed to be accelerating. Space is still expanding and so collision is less likely as this means everything is moving further apart or did i missunderstand your question?
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1st, saying the centre is everywhere sounds beautyfull but doesnt make it very discusable.
2nd the thing im saying to find facinating is that the expansion of our universe isnt happening faster at any one place, it seems to happens everywhere in the universe at a good rate so stuff wont collide more then it already does. if for example the expansion happend extremely fast in the centre and slow on the outside a stable universe couldnt form to be if you ask me.
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There is no defined centre. Think of 2 dimensional beings on the surface of an expanding balloon. As far as they are concerned they see there neighbours moving away from them. You can imagine that the balloon started at some point where all the surface points were superimposed. However there is nowhere on the surface that is anywhere special from which you are expanding. You can think of the universe as a 3D version of a balloon in a 4D universe.