Does anyone know what the universe is expanding into?

[nimrod78]

:thinking:

 

[c750dt]

A gigantic uterus! First we had the big bang that sent some stardust or whatever into this thing, it started growing and moving down a tube and in a few milennia, this shit's gonna pop out!

 

[gb2000ie]

Nothing - that's a nonsense question - the universe is everything, if there were something to expand into - it would be a part of the universe!

It's mind-bending stuff, but when the universe expands it is more of existence coming into existence, not existence taking the place of something else.

B.

 

[Tjerk12]

Nothing - that's a nonsense question - the universe is everything, if there were something to expand into - it would be a part of the universe!

It's mind-bending stuff, but when the universe expands it is more of existence coming into existence, not existence taking the place of something else.

B.

I agree that it is mainly a deforming of our minds.

This is a passage from a book. Imagine 800 AD; a priest is teaching his pupil:
“In science they try to discover what we don’t know. That’s nice, but what will happen when they prove that our Earth is not flat and also not the center of the sky? It would cause major trouble. But happily these things are beyond any doubt!”

In science people show sometimes the same behavior as in religion. Axioms and postulates are not proven but very probable assumptions. Newton discovered the gravitational law, but do we really know what gravity is? The big bang theory is still a theory and never reproduced in a laboratory.

I like science. I am a deeply religious unbeliever, but I do not believe everything scientists write in their bible. They have to prove things first.

 

[slimjim]

 

[gb2000ie]

I agree that it is mainly a deforming of our minds.

This is a passage from a book. Imagine 800 AD; a priest is teaching his pupil:
“In science they try to discover what we don’t know. That’s nice, but what will happen when they prove that our Earth is not flat and also not the center of the sky? It would cause major trouble. But happily these things are beyond any doubt!”

In science people show sometimes the same behavior as in religion. Axioms and postulates are not proven but very probable assumptions. Newton discovered the gravitational law, but do we really know what gravity is? The big bang theory is still a theory and never reproduced in a laboratory.

I like science. I am a deeply religious unbeliever, but I do not believe everything scientists write in their bible. They have to prove things first.

The idea of a science bible is nonsense - science is about not taking things are gospel (if you'll excuse the pun), it's the very opposite.

Also, it is impossible to prove anything, you can only dis-prove things. You give weight to ideas in science based on how hard people have failed to disprove them.

Since Newton, gravity has not been disproven, and we sure as heck have tried, so we give a lot of credence to the theory. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting it, and none against.

The evidence of the Big Bang is equally VERY strong. The expansion of the universe has been measured many times now, in numerous different ways, and we have found the predicted afterglow the big bang should have left. And not only have we found it, but it looks like it was predicted it would, adding even more weight to the theory.

Rationally, you cannot say we are certain about anything, but you can, and should, say that the preponderance of evidence supports Gravity, the Big Bang, and Evolution. Not accepting the evidence is irrational, and unscientific, it is religious thinking.

B.

 

[Tjerk12]

The idea of a science bible is nonsense - science is about not taking things are gospel (if you'll excuse the pun), it's the very opposite.

Also, it is impossible to prove anything, you can only dis-prove things. You give weight to ideas in science based on how hard people have failed to disprove them.

Since Newton, gravity has not been disproven, and we sure as heck have tried, so we give a lot of credence to the theory. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting it, and none against.

The evidence of the Big Bang is equally VERY strong. The expansion of the universe has been measured many times now, in numerous different ways, and we have found the predicted afterglow the big bang should have left. And not only have we found it, but it looks like it was predicted it would, adding even more weight to the theory.

Rationally, you cannot say we are certain about anything, but you can, and should, say that the preponderance of evidence supports Gravity, the Big Bang, and Evolution. Not accepting the evidence is irrational, and unscientific, it is religious thinking.

B.

Science has many braches which each have their own methods, their own rules, their own book. It is in that way the same as the bible, which is also a collection of various books. This is the aspect I thought of when I used it as a metaphor.

In my way to see things I use falsificationism (although not quite in the original form from Karl R. Popper). I do not believe there is a god. I am an atheist. But I cannot prove or demonstrate that god doesn’t exist. So I have to believe my assumption. That makes me a believing unbeliever.

In science we often have to believe things. We have to believe the accuracy of axioms and postulates. Mostly I have no problems with that. The scientific approach I do consider more likely than the theological approach. But with Einstein’s postulate that the speed of light is the maximum possible speed I had my problems to believe. Possible the result of my lack of imagination. Shortly experiments showed that nutrino’s travel faster than light. So when this experiment shows to be correct Einstein’s postulate must be rejected and together with it his relativity-theory. An interesting development.

Strangely nearly all media declared that when the relativity-theory appears to be wrong it would be possible to travel in time. This is in my opinion wrong; it was the postulate that light speed was the highest possible speed that made traveling in time possible. Being untrue you would have for light the same Doppler Effect as for sound and that would make time traveling impossible.

It was Einstein who shattered the traditional gravitational law of Newton by his reasoning that it is not the actual gravitation force of mother Earth that things does make fall down, but a deformation of the force field around the sun. Nice to know but my mind is still not able to make an exact idea of what that means. I am afraid my mind is too simple for that. The same with the big bang theory. For me it is far more likely that it is realistic than creation by God. So I do believe in the big bang theory, but I am not fully convinced.

 

[etilit]

Does anyone know what the universe is expanding into?

isnt it expanding into itself? lol

kinda like all of us? oh wait...i have to let my pants out again lol

 

[gb2000ie]

Science has many braches which each have their own methods, their own rules, their own book. It is in that way the same as the bible, which is also a collection of various books. This is the aspect I thought of when I used it as a metaphor.

I can see your logic, but I have to say, as a metaphor, the bible evokes very different images, particularly of un-questioning belief, and the glorification of blind faith. In short - an inverse of what science strives to be. (Being a human endeavour science of course falls short, and often it takes too long for old ideas to crumble as they should)

In my way to see things I use falsificationism (although not quite in the original form from Karl R. Popper). I do not believe there is a god. I am an atheist. But I cannot prove or demonstrate that god doesn’t exist. So I have to believe my assumption. That makes me a believing unbeliever.

Is it an assumption? Or is it the case that the preponderance of evidence makes it the most likely answer? Rationally, there is nothing wrong with accepting that which the evidence points at, even if you can't ever have 100% certainty. Do you also class yourself as a believing non-believer in a pink teapot orbiting Saturn? Or Unicorns?

In science we often have to believe things. We have to believe the accuracy of axioms and postulates. Mostly I have no problems with that. The scientific approach I do consider more likely than the theological approach.

I think you're missing the vital point here - it is not about believing, it is about questioning. Science is ever-changing, because all assumptions are always up for grabs. Newton is not 'gospel' anymore, because we now know that his view of the world was incomplete, his laws worked on the human scale, but not the galactic or subatomic scales, so we got Einstein and Quantum Mechanics which go further, and do explain the high energy large universe, and the subatomic universe well, but are not actually compatible with each other, so we know there is more to the universe than those two theories, and we're working on a number of possible successors, and actively experimenting to gather more data to help in that quest.

It's not about believing assumptions, but questioning them, and about never accepting the status-quo!

But with Einstein’s postulate that the speed of light is the maximum possible speed I had my problems to believe. Possible the result of my lack of imagination. Shortly experiments showed that nutrino’s travel faster than light. So when this experiment shows to be correct Einstein’s postulate must be rejected and together with it his relativity-theory. An interesting development.

Don't be too quick to jump to conclusions! You are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Firstly, Einstein's 'postulates' as you call them have been very rigorously tested over the last 100 years. We have observed time and again that the predictions made by his theories are correct. Before Einstein no one predicted that gravity would bend light, and that we could measure that during solar eclipses, but now we have. Before Einstein we would never have assumed that orbiting bodies would bleed off energy due to their gravitational radiation, but we've measured the effect, and it's both real, and as the theory predicted. It is Einstein's theories that allowed us to finally explain the precession of Mercury's orbit around the sun. And finally, without Einstein, your GPS would not work! The GPS system needs to take account of relativity to get the right answer, if you ignore Einstein's odd laws, you get the wrong answer from GPS!

Each time you get in your car, and it correctly figures out, you have Einstein's strange 'postulates' to thank for that.

So - it is fair to say the evidence in favour of Relativity is VERY strong.

Then we come to this one experiment. It MAY be the first crack in the wall, BUT, it is by no means a conclusive experiment. What the researchers are trying to do is measure the speed of neutrinos over what is in effect a tiny distance at relativistic speeds. A beam of light can ring the world more than 7 times in one second, yet this experiment is over just the Alps, from Switzerland to Italy, and tiny fraction of the cirference of the earth! The measurements depend on many assumptions, and are particularly sensitive to measurements of the location of the two sites (and hence the distance between them), and the accuracy of the clocks on both ends. Over these distances, and these tiny time intervals, that's bloody hard to do accurately!

For now, the result is just potentially interesting, and the experiment needs to be repeated by other teams using the own equipment over larger distances. If the result can be independently confirmed, using a differnet technique, THEN things get really interesting!

Finally - you cannot ignore the MASSIVE piece of counter-evidence given to us by supernovae. When a star goes kaboom, it emits both light, and neutrinos in all directions, when we measure the emissions from supernovae here on earth, they light and neutrinos arrive at the same time. If you scale up the swiss/italian result, then the light and the neutrinos should arrive YEARS apart, but, we know they don't.

So - it is rediculous to assert that all the decades of experiments confirming relativity should be ignored in favour of this one questionable experiment. The weight of evidence is still VERY strongly on Herr Einstein's side, at least for now.

Strangely nearly all media declared that when the relativity-theory appears to be wrong it would be possible to travel in time. This is in my opinion wrong; it was the postulate that light speed was the highest possible speed that made traveling in time possible. Being untrue you would have for light the same Doppler Effect as for sound and that would make time traveling impossible.

*sigh* don't get me started on the media coverage of science

It was Einstein who shattered the traditional gravitational law of Newton by his reasoning that it is not the actual gravitation force of mother Earth that things does make fall down, but a deformation of the force field around the sun. Nice to know but my mind is still not able to make an exact idea of what that means. I am afraid my mind is too simple for that. The same with the big bang theory. For me it is far more likely that it is realistic than creation by God. So I do believe in the big bang theory, but I am not fully convinced.

A good scientist is always looking for more and better evidence - so keep that healthy scepticism and interest alive!

B.

 

[ob1]

Truth is no one knows. If we live in a multiverse? If M Theory (A Version of String Theory) is right there could be up to 11 dimensions.Only Four of which we can experience.
They still have not got a grip on energy. Until they do don't expect too much.

 

[abeachbum]

there is no "into" -- the 3d we believe we understand is not all there is!