Timeless universe theory
 

i'm sure someone has thought of this before, but i personally came up with it by myself.

Due to the process of diffusion, temperature and concentrations of gases always seek an equilibrium.

Jumping from this, it is possible that the universe first expands (starting with the big bang), then eventually slows down and contracts again, collapsing under its own gravitational pull, back into the ball of matter which the theory claims started everything.

so this would have already happened countless times...

...or it could all be happening now and the past and future could be disappearing vapor trails in time.
that's how I prefer to think of "it"...

whatcha talking about? i'm just saying that the universe may reconstruct itself every so often and that ultimate oblivion would probably be in the form of a massive black hole

I'm saying the only time I prefer to think of actually existing is now...

There's no way to observe or demonstrate that time-related things are either true or untrue - since all experiments take place in the present. The present may well have "special" conditions that render it the only actual moment that exists. So all observed time-related phenomena could be movements backward and forward in relation to the present.

well said, ART. You always find away with words.
Seperating time can really make things confusing and all of life is existant Here and Now. The data/information of what we call time is kept, never lost, but may seem distant. It's all an infinite spiral.

The theory you bring up, Man, is known as the Big Bounce. The thing is, there's really no theory for the universe's creation (or lack thereof) that makes intuitive sense.

1) If the universe started at the Big Bang, where did it come from?
2) If the universe was created by God, where did God come from?
3) If the universe has always existed, how can that be? Does that make time irrelevant?

And if the universe it expanding (which it appears to be), what is it expanding into?

Big questions, ManWithAPlan. This is sure the forum for them.

Well, if we can conceive of All being One Thing- connected on an invisible string, then all questions have one answer that makes sense-
Energy.
It always was...is...and will be....you can't seize it- but it can be manipulated and brought into infinite forms (and un-forms). It is everywhere and binds everything together and makes it possible for motion.
That's what space is, that's what God is, that's what the earth- the universe- and all that exists is. And energy knows no time, it just exists Here and Now. And, in the position of the universe and its magnificent layout and structure, it IS expanding and contracting as we speak, and the whole Big Bang can happen again.

Alan, i think that by the universe expanding, it just means taht everything is getting farther apart.

it makes perfect sense if you concede that the universe is an array of all its contents. it's not a bowl

It does mean that everything is getting farther apart, and because space itself appears to be expanding, things that are further away recede at a rate proportional to their distance.

What I'm wondering... The thing that I find mind boggling to the point that I don't even know just how I should pose the statement... Is where are the objects on the edge going?.. The two things that are furthest apart in the universe, what is allowing them to continue to move apart? (And don't say Dark energy.)

I know the "raisin bread" analogy for the expanding universe, but it falls short in so many ways. The raisin bread is expanding to fill the inside of the breadmaker, whereas the universe is simpy expanding and there's supposed to be no space into which it's expanding.

It's a pretty big thing for me to try to warp my mind around.

one theory is that the universe wraps around, in which cae it would be like a balloon. in such a case the best analogy is that the balloon is being inflated (stretches out)

Yeah, that's the same as the raisin bread. The whold things expands, so the parts inside it get further apart whil the thing itself also expands.

except there's no stove:-D

The Last Question
 

"The Last Question" is a great short story by Isaac Asimov that addresses some of these issues. In it, the universe continues to expand; the sun burns out and dies and all useful energy is extinguished. The Big Sleep.

Spoiler:
Spoiler: Eventually the great thought computer answers the last question, which is how to reverse entropy, and re-creates the universe with a cry of "let there be light."
End Spoiler.

I remember first reading it in middle school and just being completely stunned by the story. It would make a brilliant short film.

No, there's no stove. It's a big ass microwave, as COBE has shown us. Here's a picture of it that you may have seen before:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_ig/020598/020598_ilc_640.jpg

Why do you say/believe there is an edge to the universe? It could be infinite, or that meets another universe, which leads to another, and so on.......
Just because this life on earth seems limited, doesn't mean that LIFE itself as a grand whole is.
And I will say......dark energy. It's proven that scientists find holes of great unknown mass containing what is known as dark energy. This energy, perhaps, is the field of so much compacted information of what we know as past and future that may later on provide us with answers if we are able to utilize it. Nothing gets lost, nothings falls off the edge or dissapears. It's all stored somewhere.

just because it expands, doesn't mean that there is an edge. if it's wrap-around it can still expand, but no seams.

Either way the answer holds no meaning because we cannot comprehend an infinite universe nor a finite one.

That's certainly what my problem seems to be, Mantus. Either answer seems nonsensical. That goes for space AND time.

I can. Steven Hawking can.

You can say infinity, you can spell infinity, you can make a little symbol for it but you cannot comprehend infinity.

You can say the universe is finite and you can write it down, you can even make equations of it but when it comes down to it you simply cannot imagine a space that that doesn’t exist within another space.

the universe isn't a space... when they say the universe is expanding, they are saying that everything is rippling out.

everything is contained in nothing, i have no trouble understanding that at all... it's like being in a vacuum jar minus the jar...

planets and everything else in the cosmos is just a jelly blob that's slowly spreading out, the distance between each individual body increasing.

the universe is a concept, not a pile of dough, if you wanted to measure it, you'd have to draw lines around the most distant points. the only problem would occur if the universe was indeed wrap-around, like a ball...

Yet what is this nothingness that our universe is expanding into? It has to be infinite because if it were not then we would have to ask what contains the nothing.

I can visualize our universe as a little ball of light that keeps growing. Yet by doing so I realize that my perspective places me at a distance hundreds of thousands of times the span of our whole universe. By placing myself so far away form it, I actually expand our universe by that distance. Yet where am I? How can I just keep going further and further into the darkness and never reach the end?

I suppose the nothing doesn’t matter, because it has no influence on us, but if it is infinite, can we really think of our universe as finite?

The universe doesn't work by any means. Steven Hawking can't explain where existence came from.

of course he can't, but atleast he doesn't fudge and say that some other unexplained being zapped us from a steaming pile of mud.

i don't think there is anything outside the universe, per se... to my understanding the universe is like a salad.... there are things in it like tomatos and lettuce... they are essentially the salad, but the space between them (air) is not the salad....

as i choose to understand it, everything is part of the universe...

you, me, the earth, a meteor... but the void space between earth and mars is not part of the universe... so to me, when it expands, it's just the distance between the furthest objects increasing..

ie if you were to just keep going straight out and out until you passed EVERYTHING, you'd be making the universe grow.

Since our Uni(?)verse has up to, or over, 11 dimensions we may not be expanding outward at all. We may be expanding into one of, or more of, these extra-dimensions (Extra to our experience/degrees of freedom; up/down, back/forth, left right, time.) So instead of expanding we may just be coiling into and/or out of ourself (from our perspective). Space-time expanding to us could be our section of 4 dimensional space-time moving into, engulfing, encorporating, or un-encorporating these other dimensions. This process may reverse or may be the cause of a reversal of this effect that has happened in a previous time. (i.e. those dimensions could have been expanding or absorbing us at one point, when here was a bounce-back) It could also be a random oscillation. So our uni(?)verse could be one, possibly of many swirling mass(s) of dimensions that exists in a single higher dimension. These multiverses could all vibrate/oscillate in their own ways to produce something even grander (god), or even US!

How `bout dem apples?

Those are some apples I can sink my teeth into. Reminds me of a great book I'm sure you've read: Flatland (and it's counterpart Sphereland).

Nope, it just seemed to make sense with what i know :P

okay, if we have 11 dimensions, what are they? i've heard that talk, but up until now i've heard only nonsense without proof. how can they prove that there are more than 3 (4) dimensions

It all comes down to how things of different sizes behave.

Here's what they're working on at Fermi that may actually physically detect the other dimensions.


http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html4...h.Casimir.html

and different explaination etc here

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~mbw/a...ons.html#extra

They're both really long or i would post them. +you'd miss out on all the neat pictures and diagrams. I didnt get any pop-ups

Regarding the bouncing universe theory this thread started out with: I've read somewhere, I believe in Kip Thorne's book [u]Black Holes and Time Warps[/i], that a bouncing universe is physically impossible. If things end in a Big Crunch, they won't expand again.

obieX, sounds like these people are taking one thing and calling it another.... the first article talks perdominatnly about forces.

the second one feeds you some patronizing garbage and then claims these dimensions would have a finite size... now if you consider the understood definition of a dimension you'd agree that dimensions are infinate within the ?questionable? bounds of the universe... not however thick or wide or long those dimensions that the second article claimed..

that brings me to my next point... how can you measure those dimensions... they would require their own standard of measurement since they are non-spatial