What happens...

What happens if you reach the end of the universe? If it is no infinite. Will you just hit some sort of wall? Will you find yourself on the other side of the universe? Will you fall off? Will you find that the universe is round!?! Please answer me!

This is one of those questions noone can answer because noone's been there, well.... maybe FM has, at any rate, I think you'll get sucked into a giant 3 dimensional black hole, but, I'll ever get there and I doubt you will either, so don't worry about it.

- Tassadar

Don't you hate double posting???

[Edited on 30-8-2003 by Tassadar]

I think you'd just come to absolute space, complete blackness. Can you imagine that? Without any light no matter where you turn there is nothing but blackness.

I guess it's kind of like death, except thank heavens you're not concious.

[Edited on 30-8-2003 by John Nada]

You probably fall off at the end
Actually the universe is probably like a giant sphere or something so it's impossible to reach and "end"

I think it's a bubble (well, you get the point), and the walls are where all the entropy gets trapped. So I think you'd either get stuck in a great big pool of coagulated entropy...or bounce off and head back toward the center.

Possibly there is an issue with finite beings for whom it is implausible to grasp that infinity is infinity.

Being finite kind of makes us want other things to be finite and have boundaries.

That's a good one MA...

There's another theory which says that you may end up in an alternate universe... (Bubbles theory)

We talked about it here some months ago I think...

Theory is exactly that.....theory. Neither founded nor unfounded. Neither proven nor disproven.
Is the universe finite or infinite?
Will anyone be able to reach the end of the universe to find out? I doubt it.
MA spoke correctly if not prophetically.....the finite mind (limited) of man cannot grasp the concepts of the infinite (limitless).
This is almost like wondering or questioning if there is indeed a God and what, exactly is God.....

regards
seekerof

That's right seekerof...

i think space goes on forever... as for planets and galaxys i think they will just stop eventually then you have nothing for infinity

According to almost all scientific data available, the universe is extremely large, but still finite. Many theories state that in a finite universe such as ours, it is a 4 dimensional version of a 3 dimensional balloon.

Consider the time shortly after the big bang as a deflated balloon. Draw some dots on the surface of the balloon representing stars. Now blow up the balloon... as this "universe" expands the stars grow farther and farther apart. The balloon's surface is a finite, expanding volume. Now if one of those dots, or stars, is our own sun and we head for a distant star it will feel as if we are going in a straight line, when in actuality we are traveling along the curved surface of the balloon. It only feels like a straight line because we can't really sense this curvature. Now if we keep heading in a straight line... towards the "end" of the universe we will find that we end up right back where we started. The universe is closed back upon itself, so as we travel in a straight line we are really just travelling along the curvature. There is essentially no "boundary" that we can hit in a 3 dimensional sense.

my view is just that space is what happens when nothing exists...

if earth wasnt here it would just be another part of space... since space is nothing it continues forever, no end...

only the part of the universe that has mass is expanding... space itself just goes forever...

so planets stars, gallaxys are moving away from each other into infinity...

as for how they came into exsistance thats a tricky one... maybe it all came out of a white hole somewhere... and is continuning to spill out (mass which collides big explosions ect ect...

it all just goes on for infinity...

Because of all the forces like gravity then eventually (even if it would take a long time you would start where you came from)

If you travel to the edge of a binary space partition in a virtual world, you fall off the map, but that is because there is gravity being defined beyond the edge of the binary space partition.
If you were able to reach the edge of the universe, I would have to agree that you would be confronted by more empty space and you would find yourself increasingly fighting the gravity of objects that are still held within our currently expanding universe and perhaps at some point, you would simply turn around because there's nothing else out there(yet).

By this time, you are a total rockstar because you have been able to outrun eons of expansion after the big bang(if it ever happened). The material universe would be your oyster and you would most likely be capable of travelling through time(relatively)...or you'd be dead...or immortal and just super-duper old.

Course it could be more like asteroids where you go off one side and appear on the other. Guess that'd be a wormhole, then.

Wouldn't that be bad if the universe were surrounded by wormholes?
Great, now I'm gonna have nightmares.

My hypothesis is..

As you get close to the edge of the universe matter will be less dense and your atoms will expand. Long before you actually reach the edge you will be pulled apart, die, and your atoms will also begin to expand to the point where they are pulled apart, and so on untill even the smallest part of the smallest part is also pulled apart. That is, sopposing you could push against the edge, otherwise your "matter" will fall back to the adge and exist there, ever so sparsly.

Originally posted by 4N6310
If you travel to the edge of a binary space partition in a virtual world, you fall off the map, but that is because there is gravity being defined beyond the edge of the binary space partition.

I'm not sure how can 'binary space' exist. Binary is made of two 'units' - 1 or 0. Whereas space or spacetime as we know it consists of 4 dimensions. You couldn't even use binary to point out a specific 'location' in a dimension, say, the y coordinate axis (height or whatever). So I don't think you can compare 'the world of binary' with reality. Unless you're sitting on a stone, looking into the horizon with your chin on your fist, and thinking deeply about the existence - whether God is a zero or a one.

But hey, I'm no physicist, please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

If I remember correctly, the theory goes that space is expanding faster than light, so it is unlikely (unless we get warp drive and create a massive generational ship that can go for centuries) that we'll ever reach it. When thinking about expansion, one has to remember that expansion doesn't necessarily mean the propagation of information, in a scientific sense.

The expansion of the Universe is a "growth" of the spacetime itself; this spacetime may move faster than the speed of light relative to some other location, as long as the two locations can't communicate with each other (or, in terms of light rays, these two parts of the Universe can't see each other).

source

If you've ever read up on Quantum Entanglement, you'd be familiar with this. This is the best theory we have, as far as I know, but I could be wrong.


However, if we could transport beyond the edge of space in an instant... Who knows? I think speculation is pretty much free-wheeling at this point in our technological advancement. Maybe it's an existence we're expanding in to? I don't know if that's likely since we'd probably see the effects of something pushing back, but who knows. Maybe we just aren't at a level to detect it yet. Maybe outside the current expansion of the universe is something that doesn't obey the laws of physics as we know them.

Speculation is fun, heh.

Originally posted by Sanders
According to almost all scientific data available, the universe is extremely large, but still finite. Many theories state that in a finite universe such as ours, it is a 4 dimensional version of a 3 dimensional balloon.

Yes, that's a very logical theory and I've read a lot about it. My question, though, is: If we can imagine a baloon, and it's expanding, it has to have it's "center" outside of our spacetime fabric. How can this be?
And more importantly: If something is expanding, is expanding against something else! So, what is out there besides the Universe? Otherwise, the word "expanding" has no meaning, or maybe I'm just confused by the terms used.