Observing the entire universe at once

[Anonymous No.2637788]

So let's say the universe IS flat:
If one were to fly in an absolute upward direction (from the center of the universe), would a point be reached where one could look downward and observe the entire universe, look up and around and observe nothing but dark matter?

[Anonymous No.2637807]

>>2637788
Universe being flat doesn't magically give it a center.
Also what the fuck made you think the second half of that would be true?

[Anonymous No.2637813]

>>2637788
no. what? what shit are you smoking, nigger?

[Anonymous No.2637829]

>>2637788
>look up and around and observe nothing but dark matter
what? expand on what you meant here.

[Anonymous No.2637824]

>>2637807
well if the universe expands infinitely on an X-Y axis, then I guess there wouldn't be a center, but you could still move in the Z-axis and essentially exit the universe while still being able to observe it

[Anonymous No.2637833]

no part of that makes any sense,
1) flat does not mean everything is in a plane, it is still spread out in 3 dimensions
2) there is no center of the universe
3) why would there be dark mater?

[Anonymous No.2637836]

You can't move in the "Z" direction.

[Anonymous No.2637842]

>>2637833
he probably thinks the universe is surrounded by dark matter or some stupid shit like that. btw op, if you are a troll, you get 9/10, you confused the fuck out of me. there is a possibility you are just retarded tho.

[Anonymous No.2637856]

>>2637842
well then what exists at the edges of the universe?

also, is the universe infinitely expanding in ALL three dimensions? if so, wouldn't that make the universe round?

[Implying No.2637857]

>mfw no one understands what a "flat" universe actually is

[Anonymous No.2637868]

>>2637856
If you're a troll, I'll give you an 8/10. If not, please refrain from reproduction.

[Anonymous No.2637886]

just watched carl sagan's video in dimensions.avi

[Anonymous No.2637887]

>>2637856
>implying the universe is only 3 dimensions

[Anonymous No.2637894]

>>2637887
>implying implications

[Anonymous No.2637901]

If you went in one direction faster than the speed of light until you surpassed the universe, when you looked back you would witness the big bang

[Anonymous No.2637898]

>>2637894
>implying implications were implied

[Anonymous No.2637903]

>>2637898
>inferring i'm implying

[Anonymous No.2637905]

OP, where did you get the stupid idea that everything outside your gay ass flat dimension would be dark matter?

[Anonymous No.2637912]

>>2637905
what else would be there? light? goddamn.

[Anonymous No.2637913]

Dark matter is just a name someone made up for the missing mass in their equation.

It hasn't been discovered yet and makes me feel ashamed to be a scientist.

It's as proven as string theory.

[Anonymous No.2637920]

>>2637856
No center, no edge. Everything is moving away from everything else. After a certain time passes, you'll find every distance doubled.

[Anonymous No.2637934]

>>2637912
That's like saying, "Oh, well, of COURSE there's people living on the moon. What else would be there?"

[Anonymous No.2637961]

>>2637901
This. Even though it is impossible.
You would observe the big bang, followed by the universe expanding until it expands onto you, in which you would then exist in that universe and abide by its laws.

[Anonymous No.2637984]

they universe is actually infinitely concave

[Anonymous No.2637985]

>>2637912
oh boy are you thick. how the hell would you even go out of the universe? for fucks sake you better be trolling me

[Anonymous No.2637990]

>>2637984
you mean circular?

[Anonymous No.2637997]

>>2637961
No. There's no edge that we know of. The Big Bang happened everywhere.

[Anonymous No.2638009]

>>2637990

I meant what I said, as opposed to what you think I should have said. Thanks for the thought though.

[Anonymous No.2638044]

even though the universe is currently expanding according to our observations, according to time (part of the 4th dimension), it's always existed for an infinite distance in any direction

[Anonymous No.2638077]

>>2638044
The universe at any given time is infinite (to the best of our observations). That something is expanding doesn't mean it is finite.

[Anonymous No.2638098]

>>2637886

A tesseract is what a shadow of a 4 dimensional hypercube would look like in 3 dimensions.

Well thats cleared that up.

[Anonymous No.2638240]

>>2637788
"In the perpetual daylight of the Antarctic summer, Mount Erebus isn't as forbidding as its demonic name would suggest. Clad in white and wreathed with clouds, it juts majestically above the frigid wasteland. To cosmologists, though, it is merely a prop in the most stunning photograph that they have ever seen, a composite image released by the Boomerang team in April 2000. Superimposed upon the sky, in shades of psychedelic blue, the cosmic background radiation blankets the heavens Hot spots and cold spots in the microwave background, invisible for years, were visible for the first time. The fate of the universe was written in the sky, and cosmologists could finally read the writing. The first instrument with vision fine enough to see the hot and cold spots in the cosmic background radiation was an ungainly metallic-looking "telescope " known as boomerang )(a contorted acronym of Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics_+. Boomerang dangled from an enormous helium balloon above the frigid Antarctic in the summer of 1998.

[Anonymous No.2638248]

>>2638240
Working in the Antarctic is expensive and cumbersome, not to mention cold as heck. However, two important reasons drew the boomerang team, an international collaboration of thirty-six scientists, to the antipodes. The Antarctic is the coldest place on earth, and as a result it radiates the least energy- its ground radiates the fewest microwaves, and microwaves can swamp tout the weak signal from the farthest reaches of the universe. The colder the instrument and the colder the surroundings, the better the chance of seeing the tiny fluctuations in a faint hiss of microwave noise. But there was another reason that made the Antarctic an ideal laboratory for cosmic microwave background measurements: a quirky wind current. There is a stream of wind that circles the Antarctic If you stand in the right spot and release a balloon in the atmosphere, the balloon will get caught by the win, circle the pole, and return to its launching spot a bit more than a week later. This is precisely what the Boomerang scents did with their telescope.

[Anonymous No.2638257]

>>2638248
Boomerang is an extremely sensitive machine designed to pick up microwave radiation from the sky without confusing it with energy from the ground or even the instrument itself. The machine gathers light from the sky and guides it on to small bolometer, heat sensors that can pick up even the weakest signal from the microwave sky. The bolometer were suspended in a spider web of filaments of isolate them from heat and to make them particularly sensitive to microwave light. They worked beautifully.

COBES's (another cosmic background radiation doohickey) seven degree resolution was too coarse to pick up the tiny hot and cold spots in the cosmic background radiation. Boomerang, on the other hand could resolve spots as small as one-third of a degree across. No longer were scientists looking at the cosmic background radiation with blurry glasses. They were beginning to read the writing on the walls. That writing told the fate of the universe. It also told of its shape.

Yes, SHAPE.

[Anonymous No.2638259]

>>2638257
>here is the important bit, fags
Though it might seem as ridiculous to discuss the universe’s shape as to try to figure out the universe's scent, it makes perfect sense to mathematicians and physicists. The equations of general relativity liken space and time to a flexible fabric, something like a rubber sheet. Mathematicians have a set of tools that they use to describe curvy and stretchy objects. They make up a whole field of study called differential geometry. Differential geometry allows mathematicians to study curves and surfaces in space. It allows mathematicians to analyze quantities like curvature and torsion that describe the properties of an object in space. Though a rubber-sheet space-time seems like an artificial construct, it is a very natural and powerful idea when you have the tools to deal with it./ Einstein's key insight, the idea that formed the basis for the general theory of relativity, was that space and time behave, MATHEMATICALLY< like a smooth surface. This has a few important consequences. For one thing it explains where gravity comes from. A heavy object, like our sun, distorts that space time fabric, bending it slightly, like a bowling ball on a mattress. If you place a marble on the mattress, it will roll toward the bowling ball because of the curvature of the mattress. Likewise if you place an asteroid near the sun, it will fall towards the sun, because the curvature of space-time forces it to move in that direction.

[Anonymous No.2638264]

>>2638259
Why space and time, rather than just space? Einstein realized that your motion in the everyday three dimensions of space (up-down, left0right, and back0-front) also affects your motion through the fourth dimension, TIME. For instance, if you move very, very fast in space, your wristwatch will tick very, very slowly with respect to your clock back on Earth. Though space and time have slightly different mathematical properties (our four-dimensional universe has three "space like" dimension and on that is "time like"_ and they are inseparable. Affect space and you automatically affect time, and vice verse. So in a MATHEMATICAL SENSE they are woven together.

[Anonymous No.2638269]

>>2638264
Since space and time are like a fabric, space-time can have curvature locally, like the distortions caused by the sun or "globally" a curvature for the entire universe. It is something like our own Earth. Locally the surface of the Earth has peaks and valleys, rolling hills and crevasses, little lumps and divots that affect a small area on the surface. But zoom out far enough and you see that the Earth is a sphere, even though the curvature is all but imperceptible across small distances. It is the same with the universe as a whole. Locally, the fabric of space-time can be flat, or it can have ripples; it can even have immense, seemingly bottomless pits. The universe as a whole, however, also has a shape. It might be flat, or it might have a *positive curvature* like a ball, or *negative curvature* like a saddle. All of these shapes are in FOUR DIMENSIONS, of course, so they are very difficult to visualize, even with training. Nonetheless, the three-dimensional versions- a plane, sphere or enormous saddle- are reasonable approximations of what is happening in our 4-D universe.

[Anonymous No.2638272]

>>2638269
The shape of the universe, according to the equations of general relativity, is closely tied to the amount of "stuff" - matter and energy - that the universe contains. Einstein's equations state that matter curves the fabric of space-time, and the more matter there is in the universe, the more highly curved the universe, as a whole, is. If there is more than a critical amount of matter, then the universe has positive curvature, like a ball. I there is less than this critical amount then the universe has negative curvature, like a saddle. If the amount of stuff in the universe is precisely enough to balance it on the knife-edge between positive and negative curvature, the cosmos is flat, like a plane. Scientists use the symbol OMEGA to represent the amount of stuff in the universe. The size of OMEGA determines the curvature of the universe; if it is below the critical density, if omega is less than on, then the universe has negative curvature and is shaped like a saddle. If omega is greater than one, then the curvature is usually positive, and the universe is like a ball. IF IT’S EQUAL TO ONE THEN THE UNIVERSE IS LIKE A PLANE

[Anonymous No.2638278]

>>2638272
The symbol OMEGA is a particularly apt choice, because the curvature of the universe is related to its fate. Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, symbolizes the end of everything, just as alpha symbolizes the beginning. Omega is a measure of the stuff in the universe, the matter and energy that make up the cosmos, and omega determines the evictor in an eternal struggle: the struggle between expansion and contraction, the battle between an ever growing universe and one that collapses under its own weight. For just as OMEGA determines the curvature of the universe, it is also related to how the universe dies. If it is below the critical density, then there is not enough stuff to counteract the expansion of the universe, and the cosmos expands forever and dies an icy death. If it’s greater than one, then there is more than enough stuff to overcome the force of the initial explosion, and the universe's expansion stops, reverses itself, and leads to a fiery big crunch. The case of omega = 1 is special. The inverse dies a COLD death, as the expansion never quite ceases.

Curvature, the amount of stuff in the universe, and the ultimate fate of the cosmos are all interrelated. Determine one of them and you can divine the other two. And the cosmic background radiation gave cosmologists a way to measure the curvature of the universe directly.

[Anonymous No.2638281]

>>2638278
Einstein's theory of general relativity states that light doesn't necessarily travel in straight lines; instead, it follows contours of the surface of space time, called GEODESICS. On a flat plane, geodesics happen to be lines. This mean that two ants, marching on parallel lines, will always stay the same distance apart. Likewise, in a flat universe, two parallel light rays will always stay the same distance apart as they approach and observer. But on a surface with positive curvature, the term parallels doesn't make any sense. Geodesics on a sphere are great circles, like lines of longitude. If two ants at the North Pole began marching down lines of longitude, they would start out inches away from each other and wind up separated by miles and miles. In a positively curved universe, this effect distorts the apparent size of distant objects; incoming rays, in a sense, are spread father apart so objects look bigger than they normally would. On a surface with negative curvature, like a saddle, the opposite is true, making distant objects look smaller than usual.

[Anonymous No.2638283]

>>2638281
This suggests a way to figure out the curvature of the universe. All you need is a standard ruler. Take an object of known size and transport it a great distance away- halfway across the universe. Compare its apparent size to the size you expect it to be; if it looks smaller than you expect, then the universe is saddle shaped. If it s larger than you expect, then the universe has a positive curvature; it is shaped like a sphere. The only trick is to find that standard ruler.

That is exactly what Boomerang did. The fundamental hot spots in the cosmic microwave background are standard rulers. Theorists knew precisely how big these hot spots are supposed to be, based on how far light can travel in the 400,000 years between the big band and recombination. These hot spots are effectively blotches of known size on the most distant object that astronomers will ever see. Since they have a known size, these hot spots are standard rulers. If the universe was flat, theorists expected those blotches to be about one degree wide. If the universe was curved like s sphere, then those splotches would appear bigger than expected, maybe a degree and a half r two degrees across. If the universe was shaped like a saddle, the hot spot would appear smaller than expected, perhaps two thirds of a degree or half a degree wise.

[Anonymous No.2638290]

>>2638283
THE FUNDAMENTAL HOTS POTS WERE PRECEISLY AS ABIG AS THEORISTS EXPECTED THEM TO BE:

ONE DEGREE WIDE.

This means that the light from the distant universe is not distorted by the shape of a space-time; the universe is not curved like a sphere or curved like a saddle. Boomerang's data provided powerful evidence that the universe HAS NO CURVATURE. The world might be round, BUT THE UNIVERSE IS FLAT."

From Alpha & Omega the Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe by Charles Seife.


apologies for the spelling errors, this took a bit to type up. Capitalizations are mine.

[Anonymous No.2638296]

>>2638290
>TL;DR
OP IS A FAGGOT

and the "flatness" of the universe is a mathematical property of space-time and the four dimensionality of the universe

[Anonymous No.2638316]

bump for the sake of science

[Anonymous No.2638319]

>>2638278
This part is outdated by observation. Omega is not enough to determine the fate of the universe; the cosmological constant / dark energy must be taken into account also.

[Anonymous No.2638337]

>>2638319
right, forgot to mention this is from 2005, it does mention how dark energy affects the situation though. That bit was an explanation under the assumption of no dark energy. The rest of the book goes into detail concerning dark energy, etc. But still, it's 6 years old.

[Anonymous No.2638449]

>>2638296
>OP IS A FAGGOT
>doesn't answer question

[Anonymous No.2638474]

>>2638449
did you not read what I posted

perhaps if you did you would understand that OPs question was based on entirely false premises

the universe is flat in the fourth dimension, not in the third dimension. It is currently unknown as to whether the universe is infinite or finite, but it is not flat, as it is obviously very thick, or at least relatively so.

[Anonymous No.2638488]

The Big Bang didn't happen at a single point. The Big Bang happened everywhere. There is no center and no edge. From any observer's perspective, everything else is moving away. Animated GIF related.

[Anonymous No.2638520]

wasn't 'everywhere' at a single point in the moment of the 'so-called' big bang? looking back along our timeline it appears (and might as well be) a single point?

continuum ftfw anyway

[Anonymous No.2638551]

>>2638474
>the universe is flat in the fourth dimension,
That's not quite accurate either. Intrinsic curvature (which is the type of curvature cosmologists are talking about) is a geometric property that means that if you add up the angles of a triangle, the result is something other than 180 degrees. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's an extra dimension in which the universe is curved. (The latter is called extrinsic curvature.)

As a side note, the time-slices of an expanding universe do have extrinsic curvature in the time dimension. That's why you need a certain critical density of matter in order to have a flat universe. The curvature due to gravitation cancels against the curvature due to expansion.

[Anonymous No.2638557]

if the universe is infinite both in space and time, then how could there be multiple universes?

[Anonymous No.2638590]

>>2638520
A singularity doesn't mean the universe was a point. It means that the laws of physics as we know them break down. So no one yet understands what happened at the exact moment the universe came into being (if such a thing happened).

[Anonymous No.2638592]

>>2638557

Who said space and time were the only dimensions on which things could exist?
Picture you have a piece of paper that's infinite in length and height, but still only as thick as a sheet of paper. Beings living on said paper are two dimensional and only perceive two dimensions. You have several of them stacked one atop another. Ta-da~!