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qualia

what is outside the universe

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i was just now reading the story of the nobel prize winners and their discovery of an accelerating expanding universe. so if the the universe is expanding, it has to be expanding into something, doesn't it? like, room to grow? so what is it expanding into? what's outside the universe?

Edited by qualia
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I think a good analogy is a ballon being filled with air, although now that i think about it the air must enter into the balloon from without so this is not a good analogy.

This one is hard to analogise, but I would say that it does not necessarily imply an 'outside'.

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yeh inside and outside are almost always crude distinctions, framing it in these terms would maybe be like using the nomenclature of a tennis game to understand what's happening in peak hour traffic

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I reckon the universe is a strange loop. If we zoomed out far enough our solar systems would resemble tiny particles making up a greater whole (the universe) which if we zoomed out even further would appear as, say, a sub atomic particle and exist in conjunction with many other universes/sub atomic particles which as we zoomed out further would make up atoms which would make up molecules which would make up matter which would make up stars and planets which would make up solar systems which would make up universes. Nothing too unusual there - certainly nothing that hasn't been said before, but the bit I think is the doozy is that the universe we live in is actually the same one that we'd observe if we zoomed out far enough. Likewise, if we could zoom in far enough down through the quarks we'd actually come across our own universe, existing down there simultaneously.

Now, in terms of the expansion. I reckon that like on a revolving disk a point on the outside of the disk moves at a greater speed than a point near the centre (or possibly the inverse - I'm making this up on the fly) the larger versions of our universe (which of course are the same as the smaller versions of our universe) have a much faster passage of time so if we were to observe our universe as a tiny particle from out in the larger version of our universe we would perceive the expansion as happening in a fraction of a fraction of a second. So, while we perceive our immediate universe as expanding very slowly we are really just perceiving a very slow version of a particle coming into existence and disappearing again as we have observed in tiny particles in Quantum Physics. Likewise, the tiny particles that we observe appearing and disappearing are really universes having a big bang, expanding and eventually dispersing into nothing. For the smaller versions of ourselves living in those smaller universes it appears to take eons.

So we're all simultaneously existing and not existing in the strange loop that is our universe.

Who's with me?

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there is no end to the universe.

there is no such thing as nothing.

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its hard for bacteria living in a toilet to even comprehend out side of that toilet. Let alone other things and even other life.

How does a toilet bacteria even begin to comprehend a blue whale swimming in the ocean?

That the way i look at it.

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So we're all simultaneously existing and not existing in the strange loop that is our universe.

Who's with me?

 

I love this idea, very elegant. I actually thought of this myself when I was a kid (although I can't rule out the possibility that I heard it from someone else). Not sure if this idea fits with science, although i'm guessing (naively) that science is probably not advanced enough to be especially informative on the matter (we don't even really know what time is, right?).

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Us the ability to see our universe from the outside.

Nothingness from my viewpoint would be like a beer from which bubbles froth [many raise to the top but which can life exist in..

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-atoms-entangled-microwaves.html

[Two atoms entangled using microwaves for the first time]

Quantum computers would harness the unusual rules of quantum physics to solve certain problems—such as breaking today's most widely used data encryption codes—that are currently intractable even with supercomputers. A nearer-term goal is to design quantum simulations of important scientific problems, to explore quantum mysteries such as high-temperature superconductivity, the disappearance of electrical resistance in certain materials when sufficiently chilled.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So they want a device [quantum computer] but don't consider the religious aspects or even philosopy of a scientific discovery and proof that a atom is a singularity and information communicator..

So much different outlook from Newtonian physics assumes a direct connection between cause and effect. Electric and magnetic forces pose a dilemma for this interpretation since there is no ...,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion

Edited by devance

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It's all got to do with Reimann, when he formulated his curved geometry, which we now use to explain the curvature of spacetime via Einsteins theory of general relativity. The thing is, we can use points within the universe to come up with an "internal" description of curvature and expansion, which is completely different to how we usually define curvature, by using an "external" or background-embedded description. This is why the theory of general relativity is said to be "background independent", and it also means that we can make assertions about the universes general curvature or expansion without having to make reference to anything that it is curving in, or expanding into.

I must admit that this "internalisation" can be a pretty tricky concept to understand, and pretty much no popular science books talk about it, giving not-so-helpful "balloon" analogies to explain expansion, which can just confuse the reader who starts to think a little more.

But given this expansion is "internal", it begs the question: could everything just be re-scaled, in which case it just turns out that masses are getting more dense, or G is increasing with time. I believe it is possible to reformulate expansion in those terms.

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i always thought matter was required for time and space to exist? i.e. the universe has no "location" and there is nothing outside of it.

on the other hand, i also have it on good advice that outside the universe is a whole bunch of turtles. ALL the way down.

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Well, there are FAR too many unknowns to answer this question with any conviction.

But I will speculate. I don't think we have anywhere near the amount of evidence to proclaim that the universe is expanding at the rate we have calculated it at, i.e. to agree it's correct you must also agree that dark energy is in fact real, or else the model of the universe is grossly wrong - i.e. Einstein is very wrong.

I don't think the idea of dark energy is compelling, and I think it's really just a cardboard-flavoured fudge factor.

There are alternative explanations of the expanding universe. Something like our observable universe being in a region of the universe which is locally much less dense, would allow the observable universe to accelerate much faster, locally. That I find far more plausible and since there is no evidence of dark energy, Ockham says that a huge density aberration is potentially more plausible.

I also think that it's more compelling that our universe's macro geometry is closed, but not necessarily a sphere (the balloon analogy is a spherical closed geometry). I think that a torus rotating into itself seems nicer, but that's just my personal feeling. :)

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This is similar to the question that began my headspin described in this other thread.

Here is a good discussion of the question on a physics forum. Essentially, the scientific answer is (assuming a perpetually expanding universe) nothing - that is, no space and no time - as the universe encompasses everything that is. It always has infinite volume and so is not expanding into anything.

Personally, this scientific answer does not satisfy me. I personally feel there is a superstructure that the universe exists in, but not necessarily a purely physical one. Maybe our 4d universe is a cross-section of a higher dimensional object?

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it is my belief that nothing does indeed exist and is juxtaposed relative to existence in a polar manner

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-This post was stupid. I was tired.-

Edited by ErraneousHerbalist

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it is my belief that nothing does indeed exist and is juxtaposed relative to existence in a polar manner

Yeah.

Why is it that anybody would think nothing couldn't exist? That's just silly, just because you can't totally wrap your mind around something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

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They get caught up in thinking logic exists outside their mind, so think that nothing can not exist.

Void, vacuum, nothing, ain soph, wuji, etc, as a working concept nothing is indispensable and invaluable.

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I reckon the universe is a strange loop. If we zoomed out far enough our solar systems would resemble tiny particles making up a greater whole (the universe) which if we zoomed out even further would appear as, say, a sub atomic particle and exist in conjunction with many other universes/sub atomic particles which as we zoomed out further would make up atoms which would make up molecules which would make up matter which would make up stars and planets which would make up solar systems which would make up universes. Nothing too unusual there - certainly nothing that hasn't been said before, but the bit I think is the doozy is that the universe we live in is actually the same one that we'd observe if we zoomed out far enough. Likewise, if we could zoom in far enough down through the quarks we'd actually come across our own universe, existing down there simultaneously.

Now, in terms of the expansion. I reckon that like on a revolving disk a point on the outside of the disk moves at a greater speed than a point near the centre (or possibly the inverse - I'm making this up on the fly) the larger versions of our universe (which of course are the same as the smaller versions of our universe) have a much faster passage of time so if we were to observe our universe as a tiny particle from out in the larger version of our universe we would perceive the expansion as happening in a fraction of a fraction of a second. So, while we perceive our immediate universe as expanding very slowly we are really just perceiving a very slow version of a particle coming into existence and disappearing again as we have observed in tiny particles in Quantum Physics. Likewise, the tiny particles that we observe appearing and disappearing are really universes having a big bang, expanding and eventually dispersing into nothing. For the smaller versions of ourselves living in those smaller universes it appears to take eons.

So we're all simultaneously existing and not existing in the strange loop that is our universe.

Who's with me?

 

Nice! Before I even got to your post I was actually thinking of something quite similar, and then slam, to see you put that so well even while "making this up on the fly" leaves me simply saying...I'm with you.

~Michael~

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? nothing is just the absence of things, it's a negative definition, its essence is what it lacks, meaning it's abstract. all the new agey 'oh nothing really exists as a thing in the universe' shenanigans is just confusing the map with the terrain so to speak, just because nothingness functions as a feature inside the symbolic space of people doesn't mean it exists in reality.

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There is only 'everything'. Nothing does not exist.

'Nothing' is simply another way of saying 'we do not understand it (yet)'

Not being able to wrap your mind around it doesnt mean it's not there. Best to call that part 'Great Mystery' as it is the unknowable and it is not subject to duality. :-) hahaha

matter is simply condensed energy. dark energy is the least condensed (or most fluid) of them all,...... there is a whole spectrum of energy types between Dark energy and solid matter.

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thanks for all the ideas/answers. keep'em coming.

i personally think, that there's going to be a major shakeup in how we view the universe before too long.

kind of on the scale of when humans turned from flat earth to round ball, or when turned from geocentric to heliocentric,

there has to be, just too many gaps in current "knowledge"

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also nothing exists, it's just that humans can't conceive it, as thinking about something naturally gives it substance, thereby turning nothing into something, or something,

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but then again nothing can't exist, by virtue of the fact that if nothing did exist, it would be something.

or something.

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thanks for all the ideas/answers. keep'em coming.

i personally think, that there's going to be a major shakeup in how we view the universe before too long.

kind of on the scale of when humans turned from flat earth to round ball, or when turned from geocentric to heliocentric,

there has to be, just too many gaps in current "knowledge"

 

I think your right here....something big is just around the corner. The pace of discovery amazes....

I can't imagine nothing myself because nothing is still something or am I making something out of nothing...maybe our universe is expanding as others shrink or implode. I was interested in our latest Nobel prize winners (Brian Schmidt) research that shows the expansion of the universe accelerating. Maybe our universe in the scheme of things is no bigger than what we perceive as a grain of rice. Who knows.....interesting none the less....

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imagine nothing, the complete absence of any thing.....

now that thing becomes real, it is become manifest,

it is no longer nothing, it is,

the thing

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