Quote:
Originally Posted by evman150
Notwithstanding theories about "multiverses", which are at this point untestable, all that exists is the universe.
So saying "What lies beyond our expanding universe?" is a little like saying "What lies outside the baseball stadium inside the baseball stadium?". Or "what is the largest integer from 1-10 that is not 1-10?".
We are dealing with a complete set, actually THE complete set, outside of which nothing exists, only because we define the set as everything. Something existing outside of everything is nonsense.
What is it expanding into? Itself is the best answer. There is no medium it is stretching in. Space itself is stretching, so to speak. We never hit anything, there is no "nothingness" or otherwise. Just space stretching.
The north pole example does not obtain. If you're going to say "what is above X", the location of X is arbitrary. You're shifting the parameters of your thought experiment in an ad hoc manner. You can't go more north than the north pole. "Up" is not north.
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I think I just blew your mind.
Again, there was a big bang. The resulting universe is expanding outward.
Photon is right to say that if I took a long walk around the outside of our universe I'd end up in the same place, the North Pole, because I'm walking on a bubble.
That's not what I'm asking about.
The universe is expanding into an emptiness. Or empty as far as we know.
Even as I stand stationary at the North Pole of the Universe, I would be moving outwards into this empty space because I'm standing on the bubble of the expanding universe.
So, what am I moving into?
How far does "nothing" extend?
Are there other big bangs and other expanding universes, in this dimension, also expanding outward into nothing? Perhaps closing the gap with our universe as an example.
Do universes, like galaxies, eventually collide? Is it just a bigger example of something that already seems collossally large in scale?
What lies beyond our universe, in this dimension?
I'd love to know how far "nothing" really goes. How big is nothing? And, come to think of it, what lies beyond "nothing?"
Cowperson