What Is At The Edge Of The Universe?

[RR_Trials]

You can not travel faster then the speed of light because as soon as you reach the speed of light your weight becomes infinite and you can't move something that has an infinite weight.

It's all i know and i wanted to contribute.

[Willy]

Rowly and Dani have good points. My head hurts from thinking about a logical come back.

Edit: ^^^ Theoretically...

Edited August 9, 2007 by Willy

[ilikeriding]

You can not travel faster then the speed of light because as soon as you reach the speed of light your weight becomes infinite and you can't move something that has an infinite weight.

It's all i know and i wanted to contribute.

So you randomly posses an insane amount of gravity when you go as fast as light, that sounds really stupid, why would you think that

so if anyone did go as fast as light, everything would die and be crushed becuase youd be infinitley heavy

and why isnt light infinitley heavy too

Edited August 10, 2007 by afroman

[Shaun H]

I thought the universe was infinite and expanding. Which leads to the impossible question 'What is it expanding into?'.

By the way, they know the universe is expanding due to the Hubble equation and Doppler shift. Stars in the distance appear red due to 'red shift' - this indicates that they are moving away from us. It's pretty basic really, no philosophy required.

Some galaxies/stars are also heading toward us. There's one galaxy which is due to collide with ours in a few million years or so. Should be good fun

Yeah, but like a lot of physics, there is an awful lot which is extremely hard to comprehend using what we assume to be the normal. Most of the stuff you learn when you are younger has to be thrown out the window when you consider some of the theory's about the universe.

One thing that amused me;

Imagine two trains traveling towards each other at 100mph, the relative speed of one compared to the other is 200mph.

Do the same with two beams of light, and although they are both going at the speed of light, the relative speed is still only the speed of light.

I loved getting to A level, "Right, everything you know, you need to forget it and I'm going to teach you physics all over again. God help you if you take it at Uni cos you'll have to do the exact same thing with some stuff..." haha

I really don't understand the trains/light thing. It's relative speed and as Tomm (I think it was) has said, their relative speed must be Cx2. I refuse to believe it til someone/an article explains how that works.

Yeah, rowly is right, fact. There is no way to quantify or measure something without there being a contrast with another "known" or quantified thing which is in turn measured/quantified with an imaginary known (a metre for example). Er..about the polo going 120+mph, I don't see how that compares to light and the speed of light and light's max speed. Light travels at the fastest speed known to man. That speed, incidently, has been proven to be the "ultimate" speed...after that your mass becomes infinite and god knows what happens (E=MC^2 bitches), ever heard of something going faster than the speed of light other than in star wars? or anything else that travels the speed of light for that matter? Thought not. I Have seen the proven facts, I personaly didn't understand all of it but I'll take Einstein's word for it . It has been agreed among the boffins of physics that a photon (light when under a particle form for the younger of you) has no mass. "Why, in that case, can a photon move an atom during the process of laser cooling then?" I hear you ask (or not) - In that case Radiation pressure plays a part but thats damn complicated.

Yeah so as someone said, after a certain point in physics everything you know as being true suddenly isn't and there'e an obscure and absurd explanation for everything. Im sure that even the likes of Stephen hawking will admit that much of what they know about our universe is merely based on educated guesses.

I've heard of things traveling faster than the speed of light. Some galaxies relative to us are traveling much much much faster, however relative to something else they may be stationary. It's all very confusing.

Einstein did a lot on relativity. This is the key with all the speed of light shizzle, and Doppler shift patterns. I haven't looked much into it but there's several ways to "cheat" the speed of light. Pretty sure they're all on wikipedia.

Also I'm afraid a photon does have mass. EVERYTHING has mass. As you rightly stated in your post E=MC^2. If something has energy it must have mass. If something has mass it must have energy. If it has neither of these I'd struggle to comprehend how it could exist.

So you randomly posses an insane amount of gravity when you go as fast as light, that sounds really stupid, why would you think that

so if anyone did go as fast as light, everything would die and be crushed becuase youd be infinitley heavy

Because it's true. Due to the equation E=MC^2 (E=energy M=mass C=speed). It's too late for me to explain it, if someone hasn't done it by tomorrow I'll have a crack lol

Night.

[Haz]

So you randomly posses an insane amount of gravity when you go as fast as light, that sounds really stupid, why would you think that

so if anyone did go as fast as light, everything would die and be crushed becuase youd be infinitley heavy

If you are infinitely dense, it's arguable to say you have infinite gravitational pull, because gravity is a known component of all mass, which suggests if you have an infinite amount of, in an infinitely small space, you've got infinitely gravity.

How this 'speed of light' stuff, and E=MC^2 stuff helps I don't know, relativity isn't really incredibly important, in view of Hubble's Constant

The evidense the universe is expanding based largely on Cosmic Background Radiation, which we can measure, and watch the wavelength stretch as time and space are stretched whilst they pass through.

The photons from a laser light are no different to the photons in any other light or that emitted by a gamma source, sure they are emitted with a different energy, but when compared to the likes of an alpha or beta particle they behave incredibly differently. The reason the atoms move during Laser Cooling, is not because the photon is hitting the atom, but because of the atoms themselves as they are cooled, reach a point where they begin to slow cooling where they can release photons of thier own. In turn that allows the atoms to take, if IIRC, what they call a random walk? (need to check on wiki, or something)

Also I'm afraid a photon does have mass.

Since when?

If you know something that the rest of the physics world doesn't please do tell!

[Fixed Pants™]

Erm, i dunno if it's a proton, but doesn't one of them things have a REALLLLYYYYYYYYY small mass, nearly none but there is some, forgot the technical name for it, but that's what he might be refering to?

[Haz]

Proton has a really small mass indeed. Photon does not.

That's why light has always been considered a wave, and only in more recent years has the theory of wave-particle duality been coined to describe them.

[Fixed Pants™]

Whoops, damn my tiredness.

I was right though yay! I remembered some science!

[Alan]

It takes off goddamnit!

Nooope, 'cos theres no wind under its wings!

[ManxTrialSpaz]

Nooope, 'cos theres no wind under its wings!

Yeh, but its engines drive the air, not the ground, and then it would start rolling forwars at x mph until it took off. (It would be 2x mph when compared with the speed of the roller below it)

EDIT by Tomm. I was frigging joking about the plane thing. If you really want to discuss that, search for the old topic. We don't need even more crap in this topic

[JT!]

God.

[Rich Pearson]

Unfortunately though, before that happens we will die off due to global warming. But that is going to take a few years anyway.

Find my anger rant in here somewhere to hear more on global warming.

Time expanding is the reason a second has to be added onto atomic clocks, to resyncronise them in time with our solar system, because the expansion of time means the time period of our days, months and years will fall out of time after a very long time, I guess into the millions of years.

Random fact, I'm pretty sure its 1 second every 150,000 years

Anywho...I am BASTARDLY hungover but I'm going to try and explain some of this as best I can, because I can see something a few of you have missed which is kind of important.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on any of the following points, my head is really hurting but I kind of got inot the swing of things there.

philosophy,

what if the universe is actually just a black ball in and about loads of other black balls.........inside of a giant mans ball collection??

basically, our earth is actually only minuscule, and our metres are actually only a millionth of a mm.

oooooooooooo, new controversy, brought to you by ben travis

First of all, stop watching Will Smith films, its bad for you and second, yep: Philosophy.

Renne Descartes (famous French philosopher) came up with something that is about as fundamental to philosophy as E+MxC2 is to physics: ergo cogitio ergo sum (hereon:ECES). Which means, "I think, therefore I am." I'll explain...

Descartes is regarded in general as the father of Rationalism, a philosophy built on logic and reason. The first rule of this was ECES which was what Descartes needed to use as a foundation to build the rest of his prinicpals on. He basically used what has been known as a meathod of doubt to qustion everything around him, i.e: "Is this tree real? I can touch it and feel it, but how do I know my senses are not being tricked into feeling this perception?" Which is where he came up with the 'brain in the vat' subtheory (Am I not just a brain in a vat being fed stimuli by an evil genious?) which became a rather successful film a few years ago called The Matrix.

Anyway, Descartes kept on doubting until he got down to the point where he realised that even his own body might not be as he perceived it or that he may not even have one, which is where he hit on the one most fundamental point: "I am thinking, therefore I must be existing in someform." He realised that everything and everyone around him might all be a figment of his imagination but that because he was conciously thinking, HE, at least must be existing.

Now why did I bother explaining all of that? Well to be honest, I almost forgot... Then I remembered!

God.

Now unfortunately scientists and physicists in particular don't like this guy very much, because he's an easy answer. Same goes for this VV

I think that beyond the universe might be where heaven is.

which the also don't like the idea of, so a bunch of them a LONG time ago sat down and thought about a lot of what most of the people in this thread have been talking about, and they realised that there are simply things in this universe that they couldn't, and to this day no one has, been able to explain.

So physics needed a fundamental rule. One sole principal on which everything else could be built on, which is:

"You, and nothing else, can possibly exceed the speed of light (heron: C)"

Btw: C = (roughly) 186,000mps (miles per second)

It is the ultimate speed limit of the universe and nothing can ever exceed that. But then...

I loved getting to A level, "Right, everything you know, you need to forget it and I'm going to teach you physics all over again. God help you if you take it at Uni cos you'll have to do the exact same thing with some stuff..." haha

Which is true. At GCSE you're taught that nothing can exceed the speed of light. At A-Level you're taught about what would happen if something could exceed the speed of light. And then at degree you're taught possible ways to exceed the speed of light.

And its because of this that physicists started to question the fact that C is an unobtainable speed and came up with what has sometimes been referred to as 'disaster theories.' Strangelets: huge vortex's in the space time continum created by the collision of two subatomic molecules both exceeding C. Blackholes: which have almost infinite mass and density which has the gravitiational power to drag objects over the event horizon (the point where you stop seeing events happening because they have exceeded C). And lots of other, quite, frankly, terrifying stuff. Like this...

so if anyone did go as fast as light, everything would die and be crushed becuase youd be infinitley heavy

But anyway, thats not really all that important to my point, except that its all quite cool. the point is that physicists could now use C as an excuse almost. Someone would ask a question which before they'd all have been stumped at, now they could use the speed of light to get them out of it. And thankfully, they were about as right as you could be. Which is why...

Is there any evidence of this 'wrap around'?

...you'll never see any real evidence...

As we can't detect everything how can we say the universe is infinite and it's expanding into nothing?

...this will never get properly answered...

Yeh, but the relative sped would lightx2 wouldn't it? As nothing is actually travelling faster than light.

..and things like this will continue to confuse people the world over.

So basically, the point I'm getting at is that although the idea that everything functions in someway on the pricipal that C is unobtainable is 99.9% certainly correct, it does explain a few things, such as infinity, and (coming riiiight back to the beinning) what is at the edge of the universe, which the best guess I've ever heard was: "More universe."

Rich

[poopipe]

Not quite following the bit where the universe is actually 3 dimensions compressed into 2

then you're thick

actually, don't bother to pretend. the surface of the balloon isn't actually 2 dimensional as it has thickness which means it has 3 dimensions, the magic part is that the surface does'nt get thinner as the balloon is inflated.

happy now?

[Tomm]

Is this thread just about saying something clever, even if it's completely out of context? That's what it looks like so far - just a jumbled mess of people trying to look clever. Frankly, I want in:

The square of the length of the hypoteneus of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the opposite sides.

[ilikeriding]

then you're thick

actually, don't bother to pretend. the surface of the balloon isn't actually 2 dimensional as it has thickness which means it has 3 dimensions, the magic part is that the surface does'nt get thinner as the balloon is inflated.

happy now?

nope

so the universe has an edge but it doesnt get thinner as it expands so it never blows up

and why are you comparing the universe to a 2 dimensional shape when apparently its 4

[Tomm]

and why are you comparing the universe to a 2 dimensional shape when apparently its 4

Because 4D is much harder to visualise than 2D...

[poopipe]

Because 4D is much harder to visualise than 2D...

that's one very good reason for putting it like that.

The 4th dimension is conventionally time, various physics theories suggest that there's loads of other dimensions as well (I think one theory says there are precisely 11 ) . Either way, they're all contained within the surface of the balloon which has no edges and is therefore infinite yet can still expand.

if you can't handle the balloon theory we'll stay away from the cosmic trousers and the 2 dimensional dog

Edited August 10, 2007 by poopipe

[nafan]

This may sound ignorant, especially from someone who wants to become a physisist/chemist, but no-one in our time will ever make a craft or device to even be able to see that far, let alone get there... so in a sense it is a pointless phenomenon...

Interesting to talk about though

Nathan

[nmt_oli]

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

[Rich Pearson]

This may sound ignorant, especially from someone who wants to become a physisist/chemist, but no-one in our time will ever make a craft or device to even be able to see that far, let alone get there... so in a sense it is a pointless phenomenon...

Interesting to talk about though

Nathan

You obviously havn't seen Event Horizon. The ship in that actually seems half not completely and utterly insane to build.

You just have to be able somehow to trap a black hole...

Rich

[nmt_oli]

You obviously havn't seen Event Horizon. The ship in that actually seems half not completely and utterly insane to build.

You just have to be able somehow to trap a black hole...

Rich

sweet film, i do like it.

[poopipe]

You just have to be able somehow to trap a black hole...

that's easy, you just need bait

[Captain Scarlet]

On the subject of the expansion of the universe, the universe doesn't expand forever, eventually it will slow down and reverse, it will compact inwards and create another Big bang.

The Big bang hasn't happened just once, its happened numerous times throughout the history of the universe.

Thats what I was told anyways.

As for the universe having an edge, I always thought the universe was a closed loop (as someone already stated, imagine a baloon and picture everything in the universe inside of it).

[poopipe]

As for the universe having an edge, I always thought the universe was a closed loop (as someone already stated, imagine a baloon and picture everything in the universe inside of it).

see, he's not thick.

the expand-compress (big crunch) thing is one theory - interestingly it holds that time will start running backwards when the crunch starts.

Other people suggest that the energy produced by the big bang was too great for the big crunch to happen.

Others suggest that when the big crunch happens we'll just pop out the other side and start expanding that way,

it's all very silly

[Trix]

a post-it note