I hate cosmology...

[Chogy]

...but I love it at the same time! ;)

When you were a kid, did you ever wonder "If I fly in a rocket to the edge of the universe and keep going, where am I?" Or, another way to look at it - The entire universe is the size of a grape fruit. You set it on the ground, take ten steps, turn and look at it... where are you? Outside the universe?

My physics professor tried to explain it - "You cannot travel outside the universe, as there is no outside. Space is curved, thus you'd continually wrap back into it." This of course makes no sense at all.

HowStuffWorks "Does space have a shape?" This link is "Cosmology for Dummies", and still cannot explain it in terms that are meaningful. If you ponder it too much, it makes your head spin.

Another good one is "It's just before the big bang. You are a mile away, watching. Where are you?" The apparent answer is, "space was undefined before the BB. There physically isn't any place to be." :bang:

Anyone have any resources that can explain this sort of thing? It's always baffled me.

[bigross86]

Try reading Simon Singh's The Big Bang

[bigross86]

I also like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time

[Parihaka]

...but I love it at the same time! ;)

When you were a kid, did you ever wonder "If I fly in a rocket to the edge of the universe and keep going, where am I?" Or, another way to look at it - The entire universe is the size of a grape fruit. You set it on the ground, take ten steps, turn and look at it... where are you? Outside the universe?

My physics professor tried to explain it - "You cannot travel outside the universe, as there is no outside. Space is curved, thus you'd continually wrap back into it." This of course makes no sense at all.

HowStuffWorks "Does space have a shape?" This link is "Cosmology for Dummies", and still cannot explain it in terms that are meaningful. If you ponder it too much, it makes your head spin.

Another good one is "It's just before the big bang. You are a mile away, watching. Where are you?" The apparent answer is, "space was undefined before the BB. There physically isn't any place to be." :bang:

Anyone have any resources that can explain this sort of thing? It's always baffled me.

"There is no edge of the universe as it wraps in upon itself.
Therefore all points are the edge and you're already at it.
Ommmmmm....."

"You are and always will be too little to get there no matter how fast you go so don't worry about it"

"To get there you have to go really fast as the universe is expanding really fast. The problem is, as you go fast, your personal time slows down in relation to the universe, so in relation to you the universe speeds up so you never get any closer to the edge"

[zraver]

You would be in another dimension of scale. The energy that lead to the bog bang is still aorund creating other big bangs, the number of universes may in fact be limitless.

[bigross86]

I was once at a lecture given by Gerald Schroeder. When I asked him after the lecture about the Big Bang being the remnant of another Big Crunch, he said that it didn't necessarily have to be as the result of a Big Crunch. He said that there are quantum particle physicists that back in the 1970's wrote a series of papers on how on the quantum level, a Big Bang truly could have occurred out of nothingness, though there's no way in the world I remember what the name of the paper was or could even begin to try and understand what it was they were actually talking about...

One of the things I find most interesting about the universe is the Anthropic Principle, which pretty much says that we're here because the universe (or who/whatever created the universe) wanted us to be here. The flip side is that we're here not because some divine being wanted us here, but because we're the natural result of the universe we're in. If the universe was formed slightly differently, then other life forms would eventually emerge...

From Wikipedia:

The strong anthropic principle (SAP) as explained by Barrow and Tipler (see variants) states that this is all the case because the Universe is compelled, in some sense, for conscious life to eventually emerge. Critics of the SAP argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter, which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing any such fine tuning, while a universe less compatible with life will go unbeheld.

[zraver]

I was once at a lecture given by Gerald Schroeder. When I asked him after the lecture about the Big Bang being the remnant of another Big Crunch, he said that it didn't necessarily have to be as the result of a Big Crunch. He said that there are quantum particle physicists that back in the 1970's wrote a series of papers on how on the quantum level, a Big Bang truly could have occurred out of nothingness, though there's no way in the world I remember what the name of the paper was or could even begin to try and understand what it was they were actually talking about...

One of the things I find most interesting about the universe is the Anthropic Principle, which pretty much says that we're here because the universe (or who/whatever created the universe) wanted us to be here. The flip side is that we're here not because some divine being wanted us here, but because we're the natural result of the universe we're in. If the universe was formed slightly differently, then other life forms would eventually emerge...

From Wikipedia:

One of the current theories is the particular energy used to create the big bang pops into existence as it were as it created our universe, but popped from the creation of another, and popped out to create yet another ad inifinitum.

[bigross86]

Yeah, that goes just a tad too far into the whole quantum multiverse theory for my own limited knowledge. I understand that on some level it may make perfect sense, but if I can't understand it well enough to explain it to someone else, even without the math, just on the practical level, then I don't feel I understand it. I understand Schrodinger's Cat, the particle/wave light slit experiments and what they mean by multiverse, but I don't know how it's meant to work. How is the new universe created to accommodate both cats? How does the light act as both a particle and a wave? I understand that it does. It's they WHY that gets me

[zraver]

Yeah, that goes just a tad too far into the whole quantum multiverse theory for my own limited knowledge. I understand that on some level it may make perfect sense, but if I can't understand it well enough to explain it to someone else, even without the math, just on the practical level, then I don't feel I understand it. I understand Schrodinger's Cat, the particle/wave light slit experiments and what they mean by multiverse, but I don't know how it's meant to work. How is the new universe created to accommodate both cats? How does the light act as both a particle and a wave? I understand that it does. It's they WHY that gets me

:)Screw the math, I ca follow the theory easy enough but math using letters and symbols is sheer torture.

[dalem]

Gribbin's your man.

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality: John Gribbin: 9780553341034: Amazon.com: Books

-dale

[tankie]

I love it , exercises the grey matter , the wonder of it all .

[Stitch]

Gribbin's your man.

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality: John Gribbin: 9780553341034: Amazon.com: Books

-dale

I have that book and, actually, that whole series of books that Gribben wrote back in the '80's, just haven't gotten around to actually reading them yet!

[dalem]

I have that book and, actually, that whole series of books that Gribben wrote back in the '80's, just haven't gotten around to actually reading them yet!

The last couple of years he's turned into a kindof Intelligent Design guy so I won't be buying any of his new books, but his stuff up til now is wonderful.

-dale

[Tanker]

I loved cosmology until that damned chick messed up my hair......