moos: What's soul crushing about it, sensationalistmitter?


I read a book a year or so ago about Edward Hubble and the events that led up to his discoveries. Someone from the time period was quoted in there as saying, and I am grossly paraphrasing here:

"As you imagine yourself moving out the distances being discussed in the scientific community, the scope involved becomes amazing, then incredulous, then disturbing, then ghastly, and finally terrifying."

geek_mars: sp86: busy chillin': I'm in over my head a bit now...but light years have nothing to do with time, right? It is a unit of distance, right? so we don't know how old this galaxy is...the light could have been there for a million years. a billion years, and we just now found it, right? We just know how far away it is, right? Not the exact age?

I probably shouldn't have posted, but yet, here we are.

If something is X Billion light years away that means (Barring local spatial anomalies) that that it's been traveling for X billion years and is at this point observable. This establishes an upper limit for the age of the source of the light via Y-X where Y is the calculated age of the universe. As we cannot observe this phenomena before the point we detected it due to the linearity of time we can not determine the lower limit, we can only check it against existing models. If we detect objects +15 billion light years away we will be forced to reexamine this model but currently there's no need.

This is where we start to get into the kind of thinking that my mind can't quite follow. Probably because there's too much I don't know (is the universe spherical? it seems like it would be spherical).

FTFA: ...the Universe started with a Big Bang 13.73 billion years ago, so that's a hard limit to how far away we can see.
...We're seeing it, quite literally, clear across the universe.

Why is that a hard limit to how far we can see? Do we know where we sit relative to the center of the universe? Maybe we're 13.73 billion light years from the center, in which case "clear across the universe" would be at least double that. What if we're only halfway out relative to the center? Then the universe would be twice as old and we'd have the potential to see three times farther than the current accepted limit.

/it's a good think smarter and more creative people then me are working on these things.

The Universe has no center. (about 2:40)

\full episode here

Mart Laar's beard shaver: [www.stargaters.de image 300x200]

/Gots this covered

I miss the hell outta that show.

busy chillin': sp86: busy chillin':
Okay, thanks...so my first impression was correct. But then of course this galaxy might no longer exist, but we are still seeing the light, right? But I guess that is neither here nor there.


I love thinking about the edge of the universe...it makes no sense. how can it end? and even if it stops having galaxies and stars there is still dark matter with sub atomic particles. forever. and ever.

it can't end. even if there is nothing there, there is still quarks at the subatomic level. Nothingness is impossible. and if it does end, what is beyond that edge?

/probably should have quit while I was tied

Option 1:
If you go past the outer reaches of known space, there is nothing. No further atomic rendering is completed. You have to reboot the matrix. This is colloquially known as a 'big bang'.

Option 2:
It is round. Just how humans thought the earth was flat, and then infinite, before acquiring the technology to see the truth. At the center of each galaxy is a black hole, which causes the gravitational pull against nearby celestial bodies. These holes are portals to other locations within the expanding spherical universe; shortcuts, effectively. Unfortunately, the longer it takes humans to discover FTL tech, the infinitely larger the sphere grows. However, once you circumnavigate the universe, you gain +1 to naval unit movement.

Option 3:
Our universe is one of an infinite number of universes that are attached in a dodecahedral tessellation, like a honeycomb. Each new universe is created when the individual honeycombs can no longer hold the quantity of energy contained within (e.g. time travel). When that occurs, they divide, like a cell, creating universes that are exact duplicates of each other, but move forward in time independently of each other. Each additional 'cell' adds to the honeycomb, growing in perpetuity. Thus, you have a potentially infinite number of universes that represent infinite number of historical periods and their resulting actions. 

Option 4:
The universe is actually just some dude's brain. Link

Option 5:
The universe is a meticulously crafted finite space because God.

Approves

I'm in over my head a bit now...but light years have nothing to do with time, right? It is a unit of distance, right? so we don't know how old this galaxy is...the light could have been there for a million years. a billion years, and we just now found it, right? We just know how far away it is, right? Not the exact age?

I probably shouldn't have posted, but yet, here we are.