the universe is it infinite?

[tenshi_R]

i ve been trying to visualize the universe beeing infinite in my mind.

but every time iget to the point of the empty space just goin on forever with no stars or any kind of energy.
it seems like that the emptiness is the ballance of space. like water in the winter lake its still and almost mirror like with no ripples.

according to the big bang theory there should have been a center from which everything should "disperse" outwards.

that i can visualize.

but what about on the other end.

since this universe is physical( same plane as we are) with only 3 dimensions there should be a point past which theres no matter present.
since it hasnt traveled that far from the big bang.


does that mean that our dimention expands with the expanding universe?
and if it does wouldnt that mean that this whole universe is within a bigger system?

[Stillwater]

Some Physcists think that not only is the matter and energy in the universe finite, but also the space. Like past a certain point, there is no more capacity to support mass or energy being there, and space just curves back around into itself again past that point. I don't know why they think this, but I think they were reasoning along the lines that space does not exist  be default, but rather must be supported by the existence of energy within it. An interesting idea; it basically amounts to saying that try as you might, you could never fly away from the universe (at least in a physical sense).

[Monk]

tenshi_R:
since this universe is physical( same plane as we are) with only 3 dimensions there should be a point past which theres no matter present.
since it hasn't traveled that far from the big bang.

The point is technically the speed of light with duration of travel dating back to the big bang. There is no real "abstract" point so to speak as that boundary is ever expanding so when you ponder of a specific locale, it is automatically forefit. No point in concentrating on a single point due to the chaos inherent in this system.

does that mean that our dimention expands with the expanding universe?
and if it does wouldnt that mean that this whole universe is within a bigger system?

Not necessarily; our universe in a technical sense is not expanding at all. It is a finite infiniteness of sorts, where there is a finite of energy and matter present in a vacuum of which there is no conceptual end to. It just keeps going and going.

And isnt that a contraction? What could possibly be "outside" of our universe if it is defined as being the totality of everything?

*Aside*
Stillwater, is it just that or do they think it reverts back unto itself because their own logic and reasoning had limits?

It's all just conceptual thought though. We will never really know what will happen until it happens for our observatory equipment can only take a glance up to the limits of out "material" universe, that is where energy is present and not in the vacuum beyond it that is exerting a pull effect onto it.

[tenshi_R]

i didnt think of it yesterday but if we step down a notch.
2 dimensional system can be as big as a sheet of paper.
which is the size given by the system above it(our 3 dimensional world).
we can only extend the size of the paper within our own limits.

[Stillwater]

Stillwater, is it just that or do they think it reverts back unto itself because their own logic and reasoning had limits?

The people who theorize that the amount of space in the universe is finite don't postulate that because they want an explanation to the question of endlessness or finitude, but rather because they think that space "costs" the universe something to provide, and the idea that the bounds of the universe have no space beyond them follows from that reasoning.

I will try to find a source for this, so I am not pulling this out of the air.

[Monk]

why must it's limit be a piece of paper? I thought 2d was a plane in mathematical terms on a coordinate plane. Length and width are its specifications are its only measures and it continues on for as far as we care to measure it. Also technically a sheet of paper is 3d since it also has a minuscule but measurable height. Is that what you were referring to tenshi? Also how does a level above the current provide the current with it's inputs? How can there be 3d without 2d, 2d without 1d? There can be 1d without 2d, but there can be no 2d without 1d. Anyways that was just a thought.

[Stillwater]

I could not find material dealing directly with the theory I spoke of, but here is an excerpt from "Scientific American" dealing with the possible physical reasons for a uiverse with finite space.

http://cosmos.phy.tufts.edu/~zirbel/ast21/sciam/IsSpaceFinite.pdf

I recommend reading it; they provide arguements for the universe possibly being a projection of a "hypersphere" that curves back into itself, or a representation of other closed contiguous surface geometries. One interesting concept that is mentioned in the article is that the idea that there are billions of other galaxies may be an illusion, and it may actually be the same handfull of a few thousand galaxies that we are seeing over and over, from different angles, as spacetime bends around to show us these same galaxies at different positions and times in their spacetime history.

But there are also two scientific lines of argument
that favor finitude. The first involves a thought experiment
devised by Isaac Newton and revisited by
George Berkeley and Ernst Mach. Grappling with the
causes of inertia, Newton imagined two buckets partially
filled with water. The first bucket is left still, and the
surface of the water is flat. The second bucket is spun
rapidly, and the surface of the water is concave. Why?
The naive answer is centrifugal force. But how does
the second bucket know it is spinning? In particular,
what defines the inertial reference frame relative to
which the second bucket spins and the first does not?
Berkeley and Mach's answer was that all the matter in
the universe collectively provides the reference frame.
The first bucket is at rest relative to distant galaxies, so
its surface remains flat. The second bucket spins relative
to those galaxies, so its surface is concave. If there were
no distant galaxies, there would be no reason to prefer
one reference frame over the other. The surface in both
buckets would have to remain flat, and therefore the
water would require no centripetal force to keep it rotating.
In short, it would have no inertia. Mach inferred
that the amount of inertia a body experiences is proportional
to the total amount of matter in the universe. An
infinite universe would cause infinite inertia. Nothing
could ever move.
In addition to Mach's argument, there is preliminary
work in quantum cosmology, which attempts to describe
how the universe emerged spontaneously from
the void. Some such theories predict that a low-volume
universe is more probable than a high-volume one. An
infinite universe would have zero probability of coming
into existence [see "Quantum Cosmology and the Creation
of the Universe," by Jonathan J. Halliwell; Scientific
American, December 1991]. Loosely speaking,
its energy would be infinite, and no quantum fluctuation
could muster such a sum.
Historically, the idea of a finite universe ran into its
own obstacle: the apparent need for an edge. Aristotle
argued that the universe is finite on the grounds that a
boundary was necessary to fix an absolute reference
frame, which was important to his worldview. But his
critics wondered what happened at the edge. Every

edge has another side. So why not redefine the "universe"
to include that other side? German mathematician
Georg F. B. Riemann solved the riddle in the mid-
19th century. As a model for the cosmos, he proposed
the hypersphere—the three-dimensional surface of a
four-dimensional ball, just as an ordinary sphere is the
two-dimensional surface of a three-dimensional ball. It
was the first example of a space that is finite yet has no
problematic boundary.
One might still ask what is outside the universe. But
this question supposes that the ultimate physical reality
must be a Euclidean space of some dimension. That is, it
presumes that if space is a hypersphere, then that hypersphere
must sit in a four-dimensional Euclidean space,
allowing us to view it from the outside. Nature, however,
need not cling to this notion. It would be perfectly acceptable
for the universe to be a hypersphere and not be
embedded in any higher-dimensional space. Such an object
may be difficult to visualize, because we are used to
viewing shapes from the outside. But there need not be
an "outside."
By the end of the 19th century, mathematicians had
discovered a variety of finite spaces without boundaries.
German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild brought this
work to the attention of his colleagues in 1900. In a
postscript to an article in Vierteljahrschrift der Astronomischen
Gesellschaft, he challenged his readers:
Imagine that as a result of enormously extended
astronomical experience, the entire universe consists
of countless identical copies of our Milky
Way, that the infinite space can be partitioned
into cubes each containing an exactly identical
copy of our Milky Way. Would we really
cling on to the assumption of infinitely many
identical repetitions of the same world?. . .
We would be much happier with the view that
these repetitions are illusory, that in reality space
has peculiar connection properties so that if we
leave any one cube through a side, then we immediately
reenter it through the opposite side.
Schwarzschild's example illustrates how one can mentally
construct a torus from Euclidean space. In two dimensions,
begin with a square and identify opposite
sides as the same—as is done in many video games, such
as the venerable Asteroids, in which a spaceship going
off the right side of the screen reappears on the left side.
Apart from the interconnections between sides, the
space is as it was before. Triangles span 180 degrees,
parallel laser beams never meet and so on—all the familiar
rules of Euclidean geometry hold. At first glance, the
space looks infinite to those who live within it, because
there is no limit to how far they can see. Without traveling
around the universe and reencountering the same
objects, the ship could not tell that it is in a torus [see illustration
below]. In three dimensions, one begins with
a cubical block of space and glues together opposite
faces to produce a 3-torus.

When Albert Einstein published the first relativistic
model of the universe in 1917, he chose Riemann's hypersphere
as the overall shape. At that time, the topology
of space was an active topic of discussion. Russian
mathematician Aleksander Friedmann soon generalized
Einstein's model to permit an expanding universe and a
hyperbolic space. His equations are still routinely used
by cosmologists. He emphasized that the equations of
his hyperbolic model applied to finite universes as well
as to the standard infinite one—an observation all the
more remarkable because, at the time, no examples of
finite hyperbolic spaces were known.

[interception]

One interesting concept that is mentioned in the article is that the idea that there are billions of other galaxies may be an illusion, and it may actually be the same handfull of a few thousand galaxies that we are seeing over and over, from different angles, as spacetime bends around to show us these same galaxies at different positions and times in their spacetime history.

This idea just seems terribly messy to me. If this is true I'm going to have to have a talk with the architect... 
What kind of half-assed big bang is this that will only end up reflecting itself over and over. No! Just no! 

[tenshi_R]

big bangs aint cheap lol,gotta save where you can,loop it around like a