outside the universe

[HasuMasu]

*ahem*

i was just reading the "what if" thread posted recently, and it got me thinking

about stuff

eventually leading to the universe (now how did that get there)

and so, i thought of the universe, and everytime i think of the universe, i find myself thinking about "what might be outside the universe"

i don't know where i got the assurance, but i never had any doubts that there is something "outside" the universe

no, i'm not a cosmologist, or even a plumber

i was just thinking, and i realized of course, i'm not a scientist, so how could i formulate any reasonable theories regarding the universe?

and that's why i made this thread

i might post my own crazy theory eventually, but for now i'd like your input on this, yeah, i kknow there is no "definite" answer right now, but please, by all means go wild with you "what the hell is out there" theories

"the truth is out there"

[Tri-ring]

This is actually a very hotly debated topic between cosmologist after the big bang theory had been postulated since outside the universe means something beyond the big bang.

There are also different schools in defining "Out side" of the universe confining it within the same three dimensional space to different dimensions.

It is interesting if you are really into science.

[Tsuyoshi]

I believe there are has to be some other intelligent life form out there simply because the universe and all the star systems are just way too big (most of them uninhabitable for humans) for us to be the ONLY intelligent life to exist. The thing about it is that if there is such life out there, it can't be more advanced than ourselves in terms of space travel at least, else we would already know about them methinks.

[HasuMasu]

I believe there are has to be some other intelligent life form out there simply because the universe and all the star systems are just way too big (most of them uninhabitable for humans) for us to be the ONLY intelligent life to exist. The thing about it is that if there is such life out there, it can't be more advanced than ourselves in terms of space travel at least, else we would already know about them methinks.

i myself have conflicting thoughts about aliens, i think it's entirely possible that they all destroyed themselves and left their planets uninhabitable in much the same way we are doing now

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by Da_Box

i myself have conflicting thoughts about aliens, i think it's entirely possible that they all destroyed themselves and left their planets uninhabitable in much the same way we are doing now

Some of them may have very well done so, but like I said, the universe is far too big, so the possibilities are close to infinite as to what exists out there.

[HasuMasu]

Some of them may have very well done so, but like I said, the universe is far too big, so the possibilities are close to infinite as to what exists out there.

that's exactly what i was saying, the possibilities are endless, life can adapt almost anywhere, that's exactly why i find it insanely ominous that we haven't found anything

like you said, if they were advanced enough for space travel they should at least have passed by this galaxy at some point, why we haven't seen this i find to be very ominous

[Kafriel]

Well, the big bang theory is flawed anyway...practically speaking, there is nothing beyond the universe, since it includes everything, like, literally everything. Theoretically speaking though, it should end somewhere, and beyond that should be something, and since space is expanding somewhere, it wouldn't stand to say that it includes everything. Too much guessing to type anymore.

like you said, if they were advanced enough for space travel they should at least have passed by this galaxy at some point, why we haven't seen this i find to be very ominous

We haven't really traveled along galaxies either...

[HasuMasu]

We haven't really traveled along galaxies either...

right, but we at least send signals into space, i know NASA sent a beetles song

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

We haven't really traveled along galaxies either...

Which is exactly why I said no other race is prolly much more advanced than we are in terms of space travel

[Kameruka]

In the past Christians against Big Bang Theory and it was atheists who supported it. Ironically it went opposite direction today as atheists start to reject Big Bang Theory as it is "too Christian" for them.

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by Da_Box

that's exactly what i was saying, the possibilities are endless, life can adapt almost anywhere, that's exactly why i find it insanely ominous that we haven't found anything

like you said, if they were advanced enough for space travel they should at least have passed by this galaxy at some point, why we haven't seen this i find to be very ominous

Of course, it's just as possible that they've already passed by our galaxy several times and we just aren't advanced enough yet to notice them. Honestly, if you consider what it would take to get a space ship to travel through galaxies, any living being that achieves it would be leaps and bounds ahead of us by now.

You also have to consider that, by our definition of what it takes to support life, circumstances have to be very specific and just right. And there's always the possibility that just because we've defined what it takes to live as one thing doesn't mean it can't be another thing for a species.

[HasuMasu]

And there's always the possibility that just because we've defined what it takes to live as one thing doesn't mean it can't be another thing for a species.

exactly, it could be as specific as we think, far more specific, or way more diverse, logically i think life should be springing about all over the universe, but all we've seen points to the opposite, this is the one issue that gives me serious goosebumps

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Kameruka

In the past Christians against Big Bang Theory and it was atheists who supported it. Ironically it went opposite direction today as atheists start to reject Big Bang Theory as it is "too Christian" for them.

.... huh?

So far as I know the Big Bang theory is still in general acceptance by scientists, and while I can't speak for others, I'm an atheist, and quite frankly I don't care whether a theory is "too Christian" or not. What matters is whether or not it's supported by evidence and makes sense. I've never even heard of the trend you're mentioning.


On the subject of "outside the universe," well in our current model of the universe it isn't exactly as if the universe has a "skin" or something at the edge, that you can pierce through and find something "outside" of it. It's a little hard to wrap your mind around, but space itself is part of our universe. At least in our current model, there is no "outside" to the universe because space and time only exist inside the universe. That's also why there's no "before" the Big Bang, because time itself didn't exist "before" the Big Bang. However, we humans are so used to living in space and time that it's extremely difficult to imagine anything without them.

On the other hand there is the multiverse theory, which states that there are many (or infinite) parallel universes representing the different results of random quantum fluctuations. The more intuitive way of thinking about it is, "If you decide to turn right, there's a parallel universe where you decided to turn left instead." I think I also remember there being a theory that our universe is actually the superposition of all those parallel universes, like the "averaging out" of all possible futures results in us, the "expected value."

... and to be honest I wish I understood all of this more because I have a test on it in two days. orz

[Ithekro]

Space is vast. We've only been sending signals that could be heard for a century and the stronger stuff that might actually be intercepted even less time. We've just in the last few years been confirming the existances of planets in other star systems and been finding planets that might be able to support life. The closest of these might have received our stronger radio signals, but we wouldn't be receiving a responce from them for another ten or twenty years.

And that is the closest ones...Just our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. Our radio signals won't get to the other side of the galaxy because of the huge black hole in there the center, but even to get to that will take at about 30,000 years or so. Their maybe millions of species out there sending out signals, but we are all so spread out that those signals might be so faint that it is hard to pick up unless your receiver is pointed right at where they were when they sent that signal. At that is assuming other species decided on a means of communication that actually puts out signals rather that an internal system of wires or something else that won't be picked up by us at all.


As for outside the Universe....Other Universes perhaps?

[Magin]

I'm a believer in the idea of mutliverses... everyone forgets that we technically don't live in three dimensions, but four- the fourth being time. This is related to the "what if" idea, in that suppose instead of doing one action at a certain time, you did another, and that other action actually happened in one of an infinite number of alternate universes.

or maybe that's just my nerd side speaking out for once...

[Xellos-_^]

What is outside the Universe?

The Great Old Ones awaits outside the universe.

[mindovermatter]

According to Einstein (it was him, right?) the Universe is expanding, which means that there must be something outside of it.
As far as "space/time continuum," somehow I'm just not so quick to believe that time is a real dimension in the sense that we think of is as something that you can theoretically travel back and forth in. Perhaps if there was something out of the bounds of the universe, it would be out of the laws of time, but how that would relate to humans within the universe, I don't know

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by mindovermatter

According to Einstein (it was him, right?) the Universe is expanding, which means that there must be something outside of it.
As far as "space/time continuum," somehow I'm just not so quick to believe that time is a real dimension in the sense that we think of is as something that you can theoretically travel back and forth in. Perhaps if there was something out of the bounds of the universe, it would be out of the laws of time, but how that would relate to humans within the universe, I don't know

Einstein actually believed the universe was steady-state: neither expanding nor contracting. It was Hubble who showed that the universe was expanding. Nor does the expansion of the universe mean there must be something outside of it-- space itself is expanding. Like I said, it's kind of hard to grasp intuitively.

And yes, time is a real dimension. The effects of special relativity and general relativity are very well documented. If you go fast enough through space, it affects your perception of time. Space and time are inextricably linked to one another. GPS satellites actually have to make corrections for relativity, otherwise their accuracy would be significantly off.

We can't travel backwards in time (conventionally at least... who knows what we'll discover in the future?) because of the universal speed limit c, also known as the speed of light. However, there are some fundamental particles that do in fact travel backwards in time.

[Ithekro]

I wonder if the expansion we think we are seeing is actually the effects of random sub-atomic movements and later gravity on large galatic bodies over several billion years of time. We have only a little over 100 years of reliable data on galactic movements...that's hardly enough to get a clear view of actions that take hundreds of thousands of year to complete.

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

I wonder if the expansion we think we are seeing is actually the effects of random sub-atomic movements and later gravity on large galatic bodies over several billion years of time. We have only a little over 100 years of reliable data on galactic movements...that's hardly enough to get a clear view of actions that take hundreds of thousands of year to complete.

Naturally, our measurements aren't of galactic movements in real time (as in, yesterday it was x lightyears away, today it's y lightyears away). The current data on the motion of distant bodies is based largely on redshift. When bright bodies are moving away from us, the light they emit is redshifted, i.e. the wavelength becomes longer because of the Doppler effect. The faster the galaxy is moving away from us, the greater the redshift.

Also keep in mind that by looking out into the sky we are actually looking into the past. The image of a galaxy that is 100,000 lightyears away is now 100,000 years old by the time it reaches us. If we look a million lightyears away, we are seeing a million years into the past. So cosmologists actually can know a lot about the movement of galaxies across large time scales.

I believe there's also a way to measure the expansion of the universe based on gravitational lensing (massive objects bend light) but I don't know the details. Combined with other evidence such as the Cosmic Microwave Background (relic radiation from shortly after the Big Bang), it's almost certain that the universe is expanding.