Where is the Centre of the Universe?

Stick around, George. If you were offended by Frank, ignore him. If you are offended by me, ignore me. There are lots and lots of folks here, and lots of interesting discussions, it would be a shame if you left.

Wow, you sure put your tail between your legs rather quickly.

Hi CG,



Yes, it makes sense to me. Sometimes when you drop into a diverse community such at this, you get responses which shock and confuse, but if you stick with it long enough, you may find that it is exactly those interactions which are the most compelling and informative in the end.

There are some very smart people here, and some wild ones too, but it's not always obvious which is which until you get to know them. I hope you'll stay for a while.

Best Regards,

My view of the universe is such that there can be no decided center of it. What I mean is that any location can be the considered the center point.

Imagine that the Universe is the surface of a ball. The ball is expanding, thus causing objects to appear to be moving away from each other, but if you travel in a single direction long enough, you will eventually end up where you started.

That's MY theory anyways.

It is not known whether the universe is open or closed, because we are unable at present to make the relevant measurements, but if it is closed, what you are saying is true.

okay that's it, I can't ignore friendly voices,


but Frank, I don't have my tail between my legs, I just don't feel like banging my head against a wall and as your mind seems to have been made up about everything already (and I am guessing that happened around 1955 or so) I just thought, what's the use?

but if others are willing to talk and enlighten me and as I am eager to listen and learn, then I'll gladly stay awhile.

c.g.

I am delighted you have decided to stay, George.

Curious George,

Right, We don't actually know if the universe is expanding, or if space is expanding, or perhaps nothing along those lines is actually happening

The "red shift" observations only mean that it (our observable universe) LOOKS LIKE it is expanding, and it is still very possible that there is no actual expansion of anything.

The Hubble Constant may be evident only due to the nature of light as an optical illusion

When push comes to shove the best that we can say is that most modern cosmologists ----BELIEVE--- that Our Observable Universe is expanding. We have no good idea that the OOU is all that there is.

Knowing, Thinking, and Believing are three distinct states of awareness, and I have found that quite a lot of things that I "KNEW" turned out upon careful examination to merely be "Beliefs". Not entirely unwarranted perhaps but "beliefs" nevertheless

This arguement was carried a bit further on the A2K thread entitled "The Universe and Space". You may wish to check it out. Best, M

Wow George, Did this thread ever wake up with a bang!

I hope that you will be as pleased and delighted as I was to find that there are actually people who think about things like this subject and others more or less esoteric.

You may rest assured that Frank will never (to the limits of his power) let you or I or anyone else claim a theory as a fact. This is often done in the worlds various disciplines, perhaps regrettably

ever wonder why light waves? sound waves? do you think it may say something about the medium of space itself?

here's another thought, can you separate time from space?

I'm thinking you can't.

I'm not claiming anything at all "Frank", I'm thinking that the wave does say something about space and I'm thinking that the speed of light also says something about it. I also mentioned that I think that time is the effect of the expansion of the medium of space.

I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying what I think.

I know they couldn't detect the "aether" but maybe the aether is made up of something so small that we just couldn't physically detect it, just surmise it.

if space were little balls and each one represented either +1 or -1 they would both add up to 0.

imagine having a box full of little balls and somehow you could inject a little force and throw a spin into the centre ball, every ball would spin it's neighbour like little cogs, one turning clockwise would turn it's neighbour anti-clockwise and so on, if you looked at it you would see a 3d wave pattern. If you could put a little impetus in a certain direction into the initial injection of force so that it caused the affect to move along a trajectory you would see the 3d wave moving through space, but maybe it wouldn't be moving, maybe just the force would be moving, like those bearings on strings which people have on their desks.

so, if that were the case and you put a target in front of the trajectory of the force it would strike the target like a particle, so you would have a wave/particle duality...right? no?

am I clearly explaining my simple thoughts?

do they make a picture that works for you? no?

I'm artistic, I see things and they either work or don't, I see this working for me, maybe I'm just too naive?

if space were these little balls wouldn't everything that occupied space for a certain ammount of time eventually disintigrate, age, because of it?

wouldn't you be able to make a mental picture that explained gravity like this?

just wondering out loud, that's all.

curious as I am.

thanks Frank, maybe we can give it another chance then?

c.g.

George

You wrote:

No problem at all. I look forward to discussing these issues with you. You sound like an informed person -- and I like the way you say what you have to say.



Without quoting extensively from what you just wrote, I want to give my impression of a notion I think you were trying to communicate - and then comment on it. If I've missed your message, you can correct me.

You seemed to be saying that you were just sharing thoughts about things -- as opposed to asserting "truths." As regards at least one item (I think you wanted it to apply in general) you wrote:

Well, I promise you that if you discuss and debate in this forum for the next several years -- and just talk about what you think (believe, estimate, suppose, or the like) -- I will never challenge you the way I did in this thread.

You're new here. At some point you will here what everyone else has heard from me: I don't care if you think or believe you can train an elephant to walk a tight rope across the Grand Canyon!

But I don't think that our recent "little difficulty" was the result of me challenging something you were merely sharing as a "I think…" -- and the genesis is right here to see and read.

In an early post, you wrote

And I responded:

To which you replied:


My response to that included the word "nonsense" -- and it was all downhill from there.



Now, George, you can see that you were offering a bit more than just "...this is what I think."

You were pretty much insisting that you KNEW the universe was finite and you KNEW the universe was expanding.

I honestly tried to let you know that I understood the literature on this and the sentiments of the scientific community -- but that my problem with it was twofold:

One, we (you, me, the scientists) honestly do not KNOW if the perceived expansion actually is the expansion of the universe -- or merely a manifestation of our perspective. Every indicator we have may show that "the universe" is "expanding" -- and the problem may be that the indicators we have are faulty. We MAY be doing the equivalent of looking at the apparent motion of the sun and moon through the skies - and assuming that it means they are circling us (the perception) rather than the planet is turning on its axis (the reality).

We do not know if it is merely perceived expansion or the reality yet.

Two, we honestly do not know if what we now call the universe (which indeed seems to be expanding -- and at an ever increasing rate) is THE UNIVERE -- or merely a facet of the universe.

Stephen Hawking often includes a caveat in his musings that contains acknowledgement that we do not know what preceded the Big Bang. There is the possibility that the Big Bang is a recurring event -- and has been recurring throughout all of eternity. Said another way -- there is the possibility that THE UNIVERSE is infinite -- but that we are limited to what Mech referred to as OOU -- our observable universe.

Also, there is the possibility that the result of the Big Bang -- this thing we call "the universe" is merely one of gazillions of co-existing, concurrent "results of other Big Bangs" in an infinite UNIVERSE.

We have no idea at the moment, because the science studying these issues is virtually brand new - and we are at a tremendous disadvantage with regard to how much we actually KNOW about anything.

Now, if you want to limit your comments regarding whether or not the universe is a) expanding and b) finite to just the OOU (OOU is what we can see and reasonably infer exists) -- well then, by definition, it is finite.

Once again, I must mention that you are new on the scene -- and you were not aware that most of what is being discussed here has been discussed in GREAT DETAIL in other threads here and over at ABUZZ for the last three years.

Sorry for my contribution to the misunderstanding that occurred between us.

Let's take it from here.

I'll be interested in your reaction to what I've said here -- and to what Mech has said.

We'll see where things go.

Oh Yeah? Well...well...well......I am the EPICENTER of my own personal universe and in my universe we stay up late as we want and don't have to go to school...and we can eat cake and potato chips and Bill Clinton is the president every day and Ms. Lewinsky tucks me in at nap time..... and...and....the blue fairy is going to make me a real boy so take that Mr. Smarty pants.

I simply cannot believe the cruelty of your devastating rejoinder, Bear, how could you?

Frank, what have you read from Hawking?

have you read about the Turok-Hawking instanton?

Einstien Bose condensate, Hawking Radiation?

have you read that they have recently decided that the Universe is open and flat and therefore not an oscilating Universe as you were trying to describe there?

just curious about what you've read recently, have you read for instance, "A brief history of time" by Hawking? what about "the arrow of time", or "the God particle"?

c.g.

A Brief History of Time.

Of course, I read several of the science and astronomy mags -- which often talk about what Hawking says. And I've seen him interviewed.



No.



If they have "decided" that -- they are fools -- and I am fairly certain they are not fools.

Chances are, they have not "decided" that -- but are merely theorizing it.



I am not trying to describe what the universe is at all, George. Nor would I.

I DO NOT KNOW what the universe actually is -- and frankly, have way too little upon which to base a meaningful guess.

I suspect it is much, much, much, much more complicated than the finest minds on the planet currently imagine it to be, though.




Yes.




Nope.

Frank,

My personal suspicion is that it is much simpler. I have that suspicion simply because as far as we know there was no supreme intelligence or government bureaucrat involved in the design

Oh Please!!!
Do you Really think that 'we' are as smart as it gets?
Which universe are we talkin' about anyway?

No Adele, but I surmise that we are going to get as smart as it gets, (If we should live so long).


What Universe do you want to talk about I am game for any one as long as we start with some facts and observations.

At the Centre of My Mine.............

I know I have no place saying this, but that never stopped me before.
I didn't read most of this because of the endless bickering which Frank (as far as I've been reading this forum seems to like to trigger, far be it for me to blame him BUT I would like a small explanation or comment (the nerve! :-) about why they first thought the universe was warming up again :/ I've forgotten. (where it simply all the stars? massivly created in the beginning warming up untill this very moment in time?)

I DO know that they used it as an arguement as to why it's expanding. Because the overall temperature is staying the same, therefore there must be more mass to distribute it over. Hence, universe == expanding. Or so they suspect. But Einstein (it's not just YOUR vision thought, if you continued to go in one direction you'd end up at the same point again (If you live in 2dimensions and you walk a circle, you will be going in one straight line if the circle is big enough(Pi is infinite, so this is always true? :p ), you will end up at the starting point.

I DON'T understand why this would be true in your(Everybody should feel like this comment is about them, I often change the second person whom I'm adressing opinion in a closed universe and NOT in an open, I would expect it the other way around (using infinity as a vague arguement with which one can prove just about anything random which we cannot phantom)

edit: added some structure (2enters )