What's Outside The Universe?
Grandson Bailey,
When we last saw you, you asked me what was beyond the edge of the Universe, and I didn't have a very good answer. To be honest, I felt like a baseball player that had practiced and practiced (I've read a lot of books and thought a lot about the same question myself), but suddenly I was standing in the outfield and a high fly ball was headed my way (your question)...and I dropped the ball.
Your question is a really good one and a very hard one to answer because the ideas aren't simple and they aren't easy to understand--even for me. But I've been thinking about what you asked, and I'm really, really glad you did because it made me think hard about the question again too.
Next time we see each other, maybe we can talk about this more, but here's my answer: think about the earth. It's a big ball, and when you look toward the horizon it looks like you can see where the earth stops. But you know from driving and flying that there's no edge. You travel for a while and you see past the horizon. And what do you see? More dirt, more trees, more roads, more mountains. There really isn't an edge at all. What's over the horizon? More of the same. That's the way it is when you look out into space. If you traveled a billion miles (which would only get you to about Saturn, still in our solar system) what would you see? More space, more stars, more galaxies.
But now think of this . . . you're a bug inside a balloon. You can't crawl outside because you can only live inside. A giant is blowing the balloon up, bigger and bigger. As the bug, you can see the inside of the balloon and, smart little bug that you are, you say to yourself, "I wonder what's outside?" Same idea as wondering what's outside the Universe, right?
We're kinda like bugs too, really smart ones. We have satellites and instruments and scientists that have done experiments that show the universe (which is kinda like our balloon) is expanding, and there's nothing outside -- there is no outside. But we can wonder.
Another way to think about this, and I know it's silly, is to ask, "What color is your name?" It doesn't make sense for a name to be a color in the same way it doesn't make sense for there to be something outside the universe. The universe is everything there is, and the idea that there's anything outside it just doesn't make sense.
When we last saw you, you asked me what was beyond the edge of the Universe, and I didn't have a very good answer. To be honest, I felt like a baseball player that had practiced and practiced (I've read a lot of books and thought a lot about the same question myself), but suddenly I was standing in the outfield and a high fly ball was headed my way (your question)...and I dropped the ball.
Your question is a really good one and a very hard one to answer because the ideas aren't simple and they aren't easy to understand--even for me. But I've been thinking about what you asked, and I'm really, really glad you did because it made me think hard about the question again too.
Next time we see each other, maybe we can talk about this more, but here's my answer: think about the earth. It's a big ball, and when you look toward the horizon it looks like you can see where the earth stops. But you know from driving and flying that there's no edge. You travel for a while and you see past the horizon. And what do you see? More dirt, more trees, more roads, more mountains. There really isn't an edge at all. What's over the horizon? More of the same. That's the way it is when you look out into space. If you traveled a billion miles (which would only get you to about Saturn, still in our solar system) what would you see? More space, more stars, more galaxies.
But now think of this . . . you're a bug inside a balloon. You can't crawl outside because you can only live inside. A giant is blowing the balloon up, bigger and bigger. As the bug, you can see the inside of the balloon and, smart little bug that you are, you say to yourself, "I wonder what's outside?" Same idea as wondering what's outside the Universe, right?
We're kinda like bugs too, really smart ones. We have satellites and instruments and scientists that have done experiments that show the universe (which is kinda like our balloon) is expanding, and there's nothing outside -- there is no outside. But we can wonder.
Another way to think about this, and I know it's silly, is to ask, "What color is your name?" It doesn't make sense for a name to be a color in the same way it doesn't make sense for there to be something outside the universe. The universe is everything there is, and the idea that there's anything outside it just doesn't make sense.
Mind you, that doesn't mean it's not a good thing to think about and to ask questions about, because it makes us think in different ways. "What if I wrote my name with a red crayon? Wouldn't my name be red?" It sure would! So now we know that there are other ways to look at a question that might let us learn something new.
Think about flying straight north, over Canada, still north past the Arctic Circle, north more to the North Pole. Now ask yourself, can I go further north from here? No, there's no such thing as north of the North Pole. "Ah," you say, "but what if I go straight up?" Brilliant! That's not north, of course, but it does add an interesting new dimension to the problem if you'll pardon the pun.
Another way of thing about the universe might be, "Could there be other universes?" Maybe it doesn't make sense to ask what's outside our universe, but maybe it does make sense to ask if there could be other universes.
In fact, some people today think there are other universes. One idea is that there is an infinite number of other universes. Every time you do something there might be a universe where you don't do it. Did you drop your cookie and the dog got it? Don't worry, in another universe you didn't drop it. And in another universe, you dropped it, but the dog didn't get it so you could eat it anyway. And in another universe the dog got it, but he gave it back to you. In another universe Dr. Schrodinger's cat gobbled it up . . . or not.
WEIRD STUFF, HUH?
Even though we may not know the answer to all this yet, the important thing is that we keep asking questions and we keep looking for answers and we keep doing experiments to see if our ideas make sense. If someone tells you they have the answer to something, anything (sorry Mom and Dad) ask, "Why?" If they can't give you evidence, if they say it's just because they said so—or just because someone else said so—don't accept the answer until you, yourself, are satisfied the answer is right. And be prepared, be willing, to change what you think if new answers come along that show what you used to think is true isn't anymore. That's what learning is all about.
Think about flying straight north, over Canada, still north past the Arctic Circle, north more to the North Pole. Now ask yourself, can I go further north from here? No, there's no such thing as north of the North Pole. "Ah," you say, "but what if I go straight up?" Brilliant! That's not north, of course, but it does add an interesting new dimension to the problem if you'll pardon the pun.
Another way of thing about the universe might be, "Could there be other universes?" Maybe it doesn't make sense to ask what's outside our universe, but maybe it does make sense to ask if there could be other universes.
In fact, some people today think there are other universes. One idea is that there is an infinite number of other universes. Every time you do something there might be a universe where you don't do it. Did you drop your cookie and the dog got it? Don't worry, in another universe you didn't drop it. And in another universe, you dropped it, but the dog didn't get it so you could eat it anyway. And in another universe the dog got it, but he gave it back to you. In another universe Dr. Schrodinger's cat gobbled it up . . . or not.
WEIRD STUFF, HUH?
Even though we may not know the answer to all this yet, the important thing is that we keep asking questions and we keep looking for answers and we keep doing experiments to see if our ideas make sense. If someone tells you they have the answer to something, anything (sorry Mom and Dad) ask, "Why?" If they can't give you evidence, if they say it's just because they said so—or just because someone else said so—don't accept the answer until you, yourself, are satisfied the answer is right. And be prepared, be willing, to change what you think if new answers come along that show what you used to think is true isn't anymore. That's what learning is all about.
But be careful. There are some people that say we should always reject every answer to every question--but that would be a huge waste of time. There are some things such as gravity, and electromagnetism, and evolution that are so well understood that it's simply a waste of time to argue that they aren't accurate descriptions of reality. It wouldn't make much sense to study the idea that the Earth is held up by turtles instead of gravity, now would it?
I know this isn't a simple (or a short) answer. But you'll find there are very few of those in life.
Grandpa Tom
P.S. Now here's a question for you: you want to go swimming and your Mom say you can go, but you can only go halfway to the pool and then you have to ask again. She promises she'll always say yes. But remember you have to ask again after you get halfway to the pool. Will you ever get to swim? Seems like if you go halfway, and halfway, and halfway, and halfway you'll never get there. What do you think?
I know this isn't a simple (or a short) answer. But you'll find there are very few of those in life.
Grandpa Tom
P.S. Now here's a question for you: you want to go swimming and your Mom say you can go, but you can only go halfway to the pool and then you have to ask again. She promises she'll always say yes. But remember you have to ask again after you get halfway to the pool. Will you ever get to swim? Seems like if you go halfway, and halfway, and halfway, and halfway you'll never get there. What do you think?
Comments
I've thought a lot about this question and I still do.
as for the pool question...
i've heard that this question has been answered through high level mathematics... i've taken up to calculus I and i've yet to find the answer. Or perhaps the answer was just a solution to another math problem. i don't know.
That's it. I don't know. and im glad i don't...
surely i would die of boredom if i did.
perhaps it's just the creator trying to get to us the message that... we should never stop questioning...
While some philosopher suggest there is a deep metaphysical issue still undresolved, mathematicians will tell you it's not a paradox at all—you will reach your destination.
Let's say you walk at a constant speed towards the pool. Suppose that it takes you t seconds to reach half way; then it will take only a further time t/2 seconds to reach three-quarters of the way, another t/4 seconds to get to seven-eighths of the way to the bus, and so on. If you add all those freactions for each increment you'll find they add up to 2t seconds. You get there in 2 times the length of time it took you to go the first half of the distance. Assuming you don't stop along the way and continue at the same speed, of course.
You needn't worry about dying of boredom! Without any exception I can think of, new knowledge has only revealed new puzzles. That's not to say what we learned was necessarily wrong, only that it needed to be further refined. Newton's laws of dynamics were refined by Einstein's laws of relativity, etc. Well, maybe some where Wrong, come to think of it—the Earth is not held up by turtles and the stars are not little lights attached to a thin metal sphere.
But why bring the supernatural into this? If you're honest with yourself you won't. See my previous post at Reality Check.
At the same time I wanted it to be realistic and good hypothesis. I'm just not okay with the idea of there being nothing outside of our ever expanding universe.
Your read did somewhat bring me into further realization you don't always get what you want. So your read did convince me somewhat, or maybe i'm just easily persuaded.
your answer also made me think that humans are full of narcissism. We can not possibly be the only life forms in the universe. That's just stupid to think such a thing, and were not all that savage so maybe other life forms wouldn't be either, or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
I appreciate you answering that question, it really got my good ol' cranium working.
and that probably would be the most realistic answer i'll hear.
normally when i ask such a question (i dont mean to bring religion into this, but i'll do so anyway) i get the answer that there is nothing else because in the bible it doesnt disguss anything else. we are all that there is.
so again thank you.
Needing answers seems to be a common human need, something makes that important for us. We just aren't comfortable saying, "Gee, I dunno."
Some people, fortunately, are bothered enough that they go try to find the answer. Others, unfortunately, are happier with a simple answer, even if it's wrong.
People used to think Thor made thunder and lightning, but we know that's wrong and—as far as I know—there isn't any civilized person that still believes that. (Maybe some savages in a jungle somewhere have a similar idea, but we know that's just because they don‘t know any better.) But the strange part is that many people still cling to ideas that are wrong, simply because they aren't okay with it.
I'm not okay with quantum mechanics, it just seems so weird, but just because it seems incredible to me doesn't make something wrong, especially when a lot of other people worked to make sure that it's right. Anyway. these kinds of things aren't something you 'believe' or not, they're things you understand or not. I don't understand Quantum Theory, but it's been tested and proven to be right over and over, so whether I'm okay with it is irrelevant. It's pretty silly for someone that doesn't know anything about something to say it's wrong, don't you think?
The point is, I guess, we have to keep an open mind. While simple, creative and even imaginative answers may be satisfying they're harmful if they lead us away from reality. I've often pondered where humanity would be now if somewhere back when that "I need an answer even if it's wrong' part of us had been replaced with 'I dunno, let's find out'.
Where the problems come is when someone claims they have all the answers—even when they can't logically defend them—they insist they're right just because someone said so, or because some book says so. That's another strange thing about humans. We're willing to believe a lot about what's in old books because they give us simple, creative and even imaginative answers, even when they're wrong. Stranger still, people are willing to believe that some parts of those books are absolutely, positively right without any chance of error, while ignoring other things in those same books that are, well, inconvenient.
People have known for thousands of years that individually we're pretty bad observers. We see things that aren't there, we remember things that didn't happen, we can't see things that do. Because of that, only a few hundred years ago we developed a really successful method for figuring stuff out. You get an idea, you do some tests to see if you can prove that the idea is wrong, and if you can't you tell everyone everything you did, all the details even things that might disprove your idea, and then you ask them to see if they can figure out if you're wrong. If they can't, then we've all learned something new.
Then someone else comes along and says, "Yeah, we'll, you're right as far as you went, but what about this?" Then the process starts are all over again, and if they're right, then we know even more. You weren't wrong, you just didn't understand the whole process. Then someone else comes along ands says, "Well, what about this?" And off we go again, on an other exciting road to discovery.
Think of it this way. We're on the shore of a little island. That island is made up of things that we know are true, we know are real. We're surround by a sea of uncertainty, things we can't explain. Our job, if we're going to survive, is to find ways to build up the island and push back the sea.
Sadly, sometimes it seems that there are people that would rather just let the waves wash over them because it's easier.
It's irrational to deduce there's nothing outside of the universe just because it's unobservable.
A caveman can only get as close as dirt to the earth, but we now know there are atoms, or smaller even.
Compare geocentric models of the solar system to contemporary knowledge of the solar system.
The history of discovery is the history of concentric observation.
It's safe to assume there is something outside of the universe, it's just beyond our evidence to say what exactly.
You see, your Dad's dairy scale and my whale are just silly ideas. Everybody has them, and we'd learn nothing if silly ideas were true until someone proves they're not. After all, everyone can have all kinds of silly ideas, but that doesn't make them good ideas.
It's a much better process for someone with an idea to prove it is true, and provide evidence. The person with the idea has to be responsible for convincing other people they're right. And the more amazing the idea, the more convincing the evidence has to be. You're Dad will have to come up with some pretty good evidence, and so would I.
You say it's irrational to deduce there's nothing outside the universe just because it's unobservable. Did you read the part in my original post about 'What's North of the North pole?" Would you say it's irrational to claim there's nothing north of the North Pole too? We've never seen anything north of the North Pole either, after all.
The problem is you can't talk about something being irrational and then use "if I can't see it it must not be true" as your proof. As someone put it, "Don't believe everything you think." We're notoriously bad at 'seeing.'
Over thousands of years, though, we've learned that logic is a useful way of deciding things, and that science is a valuable tool for developing evidence that helps us make decisions. Sure our knowledge expands and is refined as we learn more. But Newton's laws of motion didn't make Copernicus wrong, and Einstein's didn't make Newton wrong.
Copernicus and Newton may have made discoveries about concentric systems, but I think you'll agree that Einstein's discoveries didn't involve "concentric observation," as you put it.
That said, no one will ever prove that there's nothing outside the Universe. We can't use logic and science to prove anything? We can't prove gravity works the same everywhere, but we can say we're pretty darned sure it does. Still it just takes just one proven observation that shows gravity behaves differently somewhere else and we'll have some revising to do.
But we can say with a great deal of certainty that there is no dairy scale outside the Universe in the same way we can say with a great deal of certainty that the Earth isn't held up by turtles.
And as for the P.S. part, of course he will eventually get there, since reality is made of discrete units.
is there a well at certain momment and you can go trough it?
however about your pool question. i have thought about this aswell but in a whole different concept,
say you had the number 100 and you halfed it each time until to getting to 100 is it possible or would it be infinite?
lets see how it goes 0 50 75 87.5 93.75 96.875 98.4375 99.25 99.640625 99.8359375 99.93359375 99.982421875 100.00683954
so that concludes it, anybody that thinks it would go on forever, i have just proven that there is a limit. you can half it 12 times and it would hit it.
We're used to thinking in terms of before and after so that idea is hard to grasp. Maybe this image will help: You're sitting in a line of traffic at a stop light. Someone asks, "What's the car before the first one?" There is no car before the first one, the first one is, well, the first one.
Sure, you can speculate about what cars might have been at the light the last time it was red, but that's a different issue too. Indeed, the perpetual inflation or chaotic model suggests the Big Bang was just one of many inflating bubbles in a spacetime foam. Our universe is just another car at the light.
If that bothers you, consider that through the history of Man we've always tried to make ourself the center of the Universe only to discover that we really are only a very insignificant blip in scheme of things. The Earth isn't the center of the solar system, we discovered, the Sun is. The Sun isn't the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius is. Our galaxy isn't the center of the universe (this one will make you stop and think) there isn't one. No matter where you are in the universe, everything is expanding away from you--at an increasing rate, it turns out.
Why was there a Big Bang? Current ideas suggest it was just an accidental excess if matter of antimatter in one spot of the spacetime foam. But lots of very smart people are thinking about that question and trying to come up with experiments to test their ideas.
Where did the foam come from, why is it there, you ask? Right now the answer is we don't know. But that doesn't mean we have to make up a story to answer the question. If the mystery capturers you imagination strongly enough maybe you'll be the one who figures it out.
Don't just sit there! Start reading and studying!
you go left...you come out right
you go up...you come out from underneeth
from that... im thinking that maybe the universe exitss in something else
But probably that something else would be in something else also, so where would it stop?
However if the universe is where it all stop, where is the universe located? Is it like just floathing in nothing?? lol, we just don't know...yet...... or maybe we won't.
I ran into the article and found it interesting, but what really captured me is the question you've posed about the pool.
I've messed around with the idea of infinity before and usually dismiss it I can't hold it in my mind. That said, I added a twist to your question that led me down a fun road.
Let's propose that Mom says you can go to the pool, but must step on each halfway point along the way, eliminating the need to stop and ask her for permission again, but keeping with the original theme of the question.
Now lets imagine that you (the son/daughter) are silly fast (60mph full tilt let's say), never ever get tired and the pool is only a mile away
so you run half way at 60mph and then, without stopping, run to the next half way point and the next and so on and so forth... again you'd never get there, very very close yes, but never there. What boggles my mind is that you're moving at a constant rate of speed towards a defined and unchanging destination, but never get there. What would that look like to an observer?!
I'm tempted to setup a computer model or even a computer control physical model, but I'm afraid I'd create a black hole or a time warp or something cataclysmic.
I hope you're still checking in the blog... I could hardly fall asleep last night pondering this.
2 theories.
1. Our current understanding of the universe...
it's expanding. The gravitational pull of everything will cause all matter to begin to collapse. When everything collapses upon itself, Big Bang again, and we relive the existance of the universe again (and again, and again). We cycle our existance each time.
2. The big bang was the formation of a black hole in another universe.
Is it not possible, in the infinite space that is and isn't our universe, that there was another big bang? or a rock? or something? We're talking about something which is as big as the dimensions that we live in, something impossible for our minds to comprehend. We can't even see the edge of our universe yet you think it stupid to believe that there's anything beyond it?
There's a limit to theoretical science in that it's simply theoretical.
Speculating isn't a crime.
Now lets use that knowledge to ensure our time on this tiny spec in the universe has some point
I believe that outside of the universe is simply nothing.
The universe its itself, full of matter, and leaving the universe will result in you becoming your own universe. This is because you, as matter attached to this universe, add yourself to nothing, making it something.
This subject is completely mind blowing.
TRY TO IMAGINE NOTHING
nothing is no color, no shade not even black, no matter, no space......JUST NOTHING
which is impossible to imagine since this universe does not have nothing, it has something all the time. We are something, are thoughts are something so our thoughts cants possibly imagine nothing. We cannot comprehend the complexity of nothing!!!! We are to attached to this universe. So in some way, it is impossible to leave this universe until we detach from it. O
If there are other universes, and if they were expanding, we would never expand into them or even ever reach them, because the nothing is not space, we are just simply expanding. We are there.
This is so confusing I myself am sweating just thinking about nothing. OMG LOLZ
...............there is something outside of this universe something means nothing nothing means something
We have come along way in thought since the dawn of mankind and even now i feel we have not come far enough as a human race to be able to give the answer yet! What does that mean?
At some point on earth man would have stepped into the sea not knowing of other country's or a north let alone other races. He would of had first sensations of wet and cold. This might of got him to think why is it like that, evolution and brain power later he decides to build a vessel to fish in? Or to get to a small island in view, with courage and logical engineering he achieves his goal in getting to a close by island, there is no one there except the same trees and animals that live on his own island, he wonders why but thinks bigger Now the view of the big ocean, it's vast, and looks like the horizon is the edge of the world, bigger vessels many attempts and much more evolution. Man makes first contact with another race another country who aren't as advanced. Just proving with evolution and the desire to ask the question means that we will find an answer. And as already mentioned it could be one of us right here who stumbles across it.
"Foolish are those so young in thought ©
I believe something lies beyond the universe. How could our universe expand otherwise if that is what it's actually doing and not curving say like a spiralling galaxy and if that is so it needs to be somewhere for it to spiral. It's just contemplating what is, is the hard bit to imagine.
Think of the universe a drop of ink being dropped into water ie, a cup, a bath an ocean, it will spread out.
If we are to believe the big bang theory then I say there was something before the big bang, something made it bang, cause and effect. How about this??
Some of you may know about the Large hadron collider attempting to look for the god particle by smashing to atoms together at vast speeds in a underground ring main that is miles and miles long! That Particle the god particle is supposedly evident something like 1 billionth of a micro second atfer the big bang started. Disregard the god particle but think about the experiment, what's to say that we are not in something like a collider, 2 atoms of thousands being smashed together, something that it's over in micro seconds for those running the test but with years worth of data, for us it's a whole life and death of our so called universe a trillion of years. Many universes contained by control. We have run tests in our lhc still looking for answers we may have been gods and created life but not even known it as yet.
There is also the inner space theory as touched on, we the humans living on a planet that could be a cell like function inside a living organism. Does that make us a virus suffocating the cell we live on draing all of its resources?
As for comfort in answers I believe that it is because we think the question, if thought prematurely without the logical wisdom to explain it can all seem scary to think something is beyond our understanding, in the past century's what we did not understand we feared or slayed. As time progresses and scientific and mathematical brains advance we are able to understand much more through technology and logic. We must never stop asking questions or the desire to work things out, that's really livIng.
Keep it comming. :)
If we were inside say someone else's experiment time outside our universe I'd suspect would be on another
Scale, let's just say our universe is black which is expanding into a whiteness of what seems nothing, the eldest & furtherst of our time is being written as our universe expands into the white void, now just imagine getting out into the white void and there's No point of reference to measure time, ie how long it would take to travel to the nearest star. If a total white out it would be hard to measure our time there. This got me thinking if our universe is expanding into the white void and you saw it on coming it wouldn't be how old it is anymore but how new it is, a t-minus count down until it reachs. And if we really are that small say to those who are responsible for the experiment 100 billion years to us could be as long as a micro second to them making the white void seem like there's nothing there. Apart from another time measure we haven't even contemplated yet.
I have no scientific qualifications, so excuse me if I ask this and the answer already obvious but do atoms have atoms within them? I know of the nucleus proton and neutrons etc, so it might be a silly question.
These are just my thoughts and just a possible workaround way of trying to make sense of something so wonderful,
I'm probably way off, yet it makes sense to me :)
I love to hear your thoughts?
Yes, protons and neutrons are comprised of smaller particles. Take a look for a great overview in just under 3 minutes of video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMgi2j9Ks9k
I know it's a hard concept to grasp, but there is nothing outside outside, no out there out there, as far as we know. When the universe expanded, it didn't expand >into< anything. It just got bigger. That's a tough concept for us because all of our experience suggests otherwise.
But the most important concept in this who discussion is to not 'believe' something is so just because it feels good. We're much better off to simple say, " I don't understand."
Evolution isn't something you believe or not, for example. It's something you understand or not. The same is true of cosmological inflation. There's excellent evidence from a number of sources that explain how our universe expanded.
If you don't understand inflation, don't make up your own ideas. Learn about it, or be willing to say I don't know. What seems right, common sense, is a remarkably bad judge of reality.
Sorry I wasn't trying to sell my ideas, just add different angles to see if anyone else thought differently to whats already known, your absolutely right in saying common sense can be a bad sense of judgement, i am only fascinated with anything relating to space, I would love to have a knowledge more in depth about it all and the time to study it. One thing I'm sure about is curiosity will always have man following it, hopefully one day it will lead us to the very answers we all want to know.
I will read up about universe inflation as at this point now in my logistical way of thinking, grasping the concept of the universe getting bigger but not having a place to get bigger into hurts my brain. As nothing surely is something, isnt just we choose not to measure it, or have no way of measuring nothing at our stage in evolution.
But, as happenstance would have it, I recently watched a talk on YouTube by a particle physicist turned cosmologist who addresses the very topic of how you get a whole universe from nothing. Or as he puts it, nothing isn't nothing anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfOL_oGgRVk
This feels a bit like we're just trading the conceptual problem of what the observable universe is expanding into for the conceptual problem of what an infinite Universe is--but does seem to make more sense to me.
But I have to say, the idea of one infinity being larger than another still boggles my mind. If you've read all the way down to here I'd say you're a curious person...I mean intellectually and in a nice way. If that's the case, rummage around and read about the curious case of infinity.
This just leaves a big empty space, no gravity, no light, nothing just one big 0 degree open space!
This maybe a little off course but this being a fundamental rule of physics does it rule out any possibility of time travel?
For how could travel into a place that cannot support matter, or mass/ atoms etc?
Also the theory of multiple universes, would they be neighbours like distant galaxies or do they theoretically
Exist in a incomprehensible place that we cannot fathom
In thought?
Empty open space is brain twister, gonna have to ponder that one. I'm not sure an infinitely expanded universe necessarily means everything disappears, it just means its density is infinitely low. But infinities confuse the heck out me. How, for example can one infinity be "longer" than another (they can)?
And the idea of time travel in a Universe that has expanded to infinity raises the thorny question of what, exactly, is time?
As for visualizing other universes, the concept that works for me is to think of a tub full of bath bubbles where each bubble is a universe.
A friend poses this question: if infinite other universes might have different rules of physics, could some have different rules of logic? What does that mean for our ability to even decide what that means?
As for other universes having different physics I guess some would with illogical understandings, these are the ones I think we will never see without the aide of undiscovered knowledge or some form of vessel.
I like the bubble bath theory :)
Take a look at http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=274 for more on the expanding universe and see if it makes more sense to you than my description.
As for proving the universe is infinite...no one can prove a scientific hypothesis. But when there's a lot of evidence to support an idea and we haven't found a contradiction, then we call it a theory, such as Gravitation, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and so forth.
Neither the infinite universe idea or the parallel universe idea is anywhere near being a theory, and I was careful to make that clear. But there's a lot of evidence to support the concept. See for example http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.0015.pdf which concludes an infinite universe is compatible with the data at a confidence level of 2 x 10^-5.
Gravitation, Relativity and Quantum Mechanicsm have been verified through experiments. Could you tell me of any experiments which conclude that the universe is infinite or that it is paralel?
These theories have evolved to satisfy the voids for which scientists have no answers for...
I understand your points but you seem adamant that just because it isn't proven at this time ( maybe it never will be )
it shouldn't be up for debate. We all know many of great thinkers theory's were never proven till once they had died or were burned by the church for Hersey.
Science is barely a toddler in an ancient universe.
with out a doubt science still has the ability to fall down in places where we thought we had firm standings, but it will always get back up and keep being curious and that in itself keeps my fire burning.
Sooner or later there will be away it can be tested as its already thought about widely. It's just the verdict we are unsure about.
"You can't crawl outside because you can only live inside." What is meant by this? What hinders the bug to get/be outside the baloon?
"A giant is blowing the balloon up, bigger and bigger." What giant, and where does this balloon expand into? What happens when it bursts?
Just two. Are analogies even possible?
The bug analogy fails because you ask the perfectly reasonable question, "why can't the bug get/be outside?" As far as the bug and balloon analogy goes it seems like the critter could burrow through and be outside. The problem is there isn't any outside, the balloon idea is inaccurate unless you have the uncanny ability to ignore the idea of "outside." The idea of something expanding into nothing is such a foreign concept to us humans that it seems illogical, unrealistic, impossible. But all the evidence to date backs up the idea that space is infinite and expanding. But then that brings in the mind boggling idea of infinities, and I find that's just as hard to get my mind around. And if the idea that something goes forever doesn't make your head spin consider that some infinities are greater than others. Shees!
The giant blowing up the balloon, of course, is another analogy that fails if you take it too literally, but it is a useful, if inaccurate, metaphor for the idea that bubbling energy in empty space is pushing things apart. That's based on an even weirder concept: the galaxies actually aren't moving apart they have fixed coordinates, the space between them is getting larger. That 'expansion' is described by something called a 'metric tensor,' which describes the distances between coordinates. It's the metric tensor that's changing and that's why the universe is expanding even though the galaxies technically aren't moving. Sounds contradictory, doesn't it!
The problem for us mere mortals is it's impossible to adequately describe what's going on without getting deep in the math. If I had the opportunity for a lifetime "do over" I'd sure like to be able to understand how it really works. Of course, that suggests I have the smarts to do the math and so far I've done a good job of proving I don't. So inaccurate analogies are the best I can do.
If all this is confusing that's a good thing. The first step towards learning is usually confusion. As long as we're willing to say, "Boy I'm confused; let's find out what's really going on" we'll continue discovering more about reality. Sure, we'll make mistakes. Sure some ideas will have to be abandoned or revised. But as long as we don't refuse to accept new ideas we can expand the beachhead of knowledge we've created in the sea of ignorance.