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Post by abacus9900 on Mar 14, 2011 9:52:05 GMT
What is the universe expanding (or should I say 'inflating') into?
I have seen people say, oh it does not expand into anything because there was nothing outside of it to begin with. Well, that's all very well but a) the universe 'exists' yet b) it is expanding into 'non-existence.' How can that be? Surely 'exist' and 'non-exist' are mutually exclusive, aren't they? Can we truly say that something does not exist?
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Post by naymissus on Mar 14, 2011 13:38:58 GMT
Another topic that is beyond our comprehension. Remember that the expansion/creation of the universe is a mathematical concept without much corroborative evidence, and is in fact metaphysics as there does not appear to be any way of proving or disproving these hypotheses.
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Post by abacus9900 on Mar 14, 2011 17:21:40 GMT
Another topic that is beyond our comprehension. Remember that the expansion/creation of the universe is a mathematical concept without much corroborative evidence, and is in fact metaphysics as there does not appear to be any way of proving or disproving these hypotheses. And, what's more, the egg-heads can't agree on one theory.
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Post by bikerman on Apr 1, 2011 1:52:07 GMT
The expansion of the universe is not a 'mathematical concept' and there is plenty of evidence. The theory has been tested, using observational evidence. a) Hubble redshift. It is observed that distant galaxies recede from us at a velocity proportional to distance. Expansion accounts for this. b) In 2000 it was observed that a distant nebula was significantly warmer than local CMBR temp. This is a prediction of expansion - viz that temperature must decrease over time as the universe expands. Without expansion this cannot be explained, since the extra heat energy would have nowhere to go.
There ARE a couple of assumptions implicit in the theory - the Copernican* and the Cosmological* principles - but those assumptions have also been subjected to physical/observational testing and they hold up. There is no other hypothesis that can account for these observations and, since the theory of expansion originates from General Relativity, this is extremely strong evidence.
Copernican principle - there is no 'preferred' point in the universe - no 'starting point'. Cosmological principle - the universe is homogeneous and isotropic at a large scale.
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Post by naymissus on Apr 7, 2011 6:51:46 GMT
The expansion of the universe is not a 'mathematical concept' and there is plenty of evidence. The theory has been tested, using observational evidence. a) Hubble redshift. It is observed that distant galaxies recede from us at a velocity proportional to distance. Expansion accounts for this. b) In 2000 it was observed that a distant nebula was significantly warmer than local CMBR temp. This is a prediction of expansion - viz that temperature must decrease over time as the universe expands. Without expansion this cannot be explained, since the extra heat energy would have nowhere to go. There ARE a couple of assumptions implicit in the theory - the Copernican* and the Cosmological* principles - but those assumptions have also been subjected to physical/observational testing and they hold up. There is no other hypothesis that can account for these observations and, since the theory of expansion originates from General Relativity, this is extremely strong evidence. Copernican principle - there is no 'preferred' point in the universe - no 'starting point'. Cosmological principle - the universe is homogeneous and isotropic at a large scale. In fact I was addressing the question of expansion into rather than expansion which does have evidence
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