Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: tanian on 21/05/2006 16:39:55
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I have to know:
Is the Universe Infinite?
Come on guys help me out here [:)]
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Yes it is.
Glad I could help [:)]
...though I do think the idea of a never ending Universe difficult to grasp..
Perhaps the bods here will explain.
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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But what is your definition of the universe.
As far as we are concerned it may as well be Infinite as we could never see or travel far enough to find out. So in answer to your question we have no real idea.
The universe which we can observe is finite but it is growing all the time as it expands but maybe it is just one of many that have happened in a space time continuum that goes on for ever. or maybe our space time continuum is just one of many space time contiuums existing in many other space time continuums.[:)]
Nobody knows and we will probably never ever know for sure.
Michael
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tranian, You have to be careful here by what you mean by infinite. I would tend to say indefinite a physical term mennig it is not possible to measure hoe big the universe is but it is far bigger than any measurements we could ever make. to avoid the problems caused by using the mathematical term infinite which can be used to "prove" all sorts of absurd things that are clearly irrelevant to any physical theory. Remember mathematics is not bound by physiscs (dealing with the real world) Because you can talk about something mathematicaly does not give it any physical reality. This is much the same way that many religious metaphors must not be taken literally and out of context or absurdities arise.
Lets get back to your question
Firstly, any part if the universe that we can be aware of is bound always to be finite (although it is very big light can travel a long way since the big bang) because any time we can take to watch for a result will always be finite. howver we have good reasons to believe that there is a great deal of our universe that we can never ever see or interact with becasue it is just too far away. The cosmic inflation theories guarantee this. Note also I have used the term our universe. we have also good reasons for thinking that there are other universes than ours. By this I don't mean parallel universes that we might be influenced by but completely seperate universes. A bit like the black holes that exist in our own universe. OK we may go into a black hole but we can never come out again or tell anyone here about what happend when we went in so it is a truly one way barrier. It seems to me quite likely that we are inside a black hole that could be inside another universe (and so on)but we have not yet worked out the scale changing process that goes from a black hole to a large universe.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!