[infinityparadox (OP)]

I recently saw a video on youtube that was attempting to explain what would we see if a sphere was pulled through the 3rd dimension into the 4th. It's a very well made video and shows the concept very clearly. It starts by showing what would happen in a 2D world and what people who live in 2D would see. They would basically see a dot that grows and grows then becomes smaller and smaller and then disappear.
Then it goes on showing that we would see in our 3D existence. What we would see is the top of the sphere appearing out of nowhere, growing and growing until we see the whole sphere and it disappears.

We observe the universe's expansion with infrared and other clever methods, but what if the apparent expansion is just because our universe is being pulled through time and we have the illusion of expansion being on the inside of it? That in fact what we are seeing is more of the edges of the sphere being revealed as we are moving through time. 

This line of thought may help answer a few enigmas about the universe. No more wondering what the universe is growing into for starters. Maybe it could help shed some light on the elusive total mass of the universe, who knows, maybe time has mass too? After all, we are traveling through it.

More and more, I think our existence is very close to an illusion but not totally. There is a shred of existence, at least in our thoughts.
 

[Kryptid]

That would still be a form of spatial expansion from our point of view.

[infinityparadox (OP)]

Yes, exactly. The universe looks like it's expending but it really isn't...

[Kryptid]

Yes, exactly. The universe looks like it's expending but it really isn't...

How would you tell the difference?

[infinityparadox (OP)]

I wouldn't know how to tell the difference. It's the whole story of relativity, we can't really tell if we are observing actual expansion or movement, it looks exactly the same because we are inside. Do you know of a way to tell?
 
Sometimes I try to step out of the universe in my mind, but it's hard to make my brain go there. Even as a kid I accepted the universe being infinite to mean it is ever growing. I spent nights running towards the edge, trying to see what it's growing into. Expansion is the logical thought when thinking of an infinite universe. I read some articles that suggest some farther galaxies are accelerating away in an unexplained manner. After I saw the video about the 4th dimension I started wondering, what if the universe is finite and not expanding?