Quote:
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Originally Posted by chillHayze
The universe is expanding at the speed of light faster than we can perceive it. Don't worry about it and drink another beer lol.
While drinking that beer, though, have a gander at this: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Note that even at 10^23 meters from earth we only see an insignificant bit of the actual 'sky'. Further note that this is only what we humans with vastly limited imteligence have learned in our blip of a spec of existence.
Take the time to actually relate to the distances. Take it to "Manual" control to do so. |
The universe is
not expanding at the speed of light. If it were, we would see no stars in the sky, no distant galaxies, powerful bursts from pulsars, or the like. The universe
is expanding at a an accelerating rate however. This accelerating rate started ~7x10^9 years after the big bang, and is the result of Einstein's so called "cosmological constant" overpowering the decelerating pull of gravity (the cosmological constant exerts a constant repulsive force regardless of distance whereas gravity decreases with distance). We will eventually, some 100 billion years in the future reach a point where the universe IS in fact moving faster than the speed of light however. You will be able to look up at the sky and see nothing but empty blackness.
As far as "what's beyond the edge of the universe"; scientists do not yet know. So far we know that there are only a handful of shapes that the universe could possibly resemble, based on translational invariance, as well as time symmetry. We also have the exact equations to figure the shape out, but they rely on very very precise measurements, including the estimation of all the so called "dark matter" in the universe, as well as the energy/mass density. Currently the technology and theory doesn't exist to perform these measurements precisely enough, but with the information we do have, we can tell that the universe is either flat, or an extremely extremely large sphere. The problem is that similar to earth, if you are standing on a large enough sphere, everything appears flat unless you have measurements that are precise enough to reveal the curvature. If the universe expanded as rapidly as we think it did, the task is daunting. If the entire universe were shrunk to the size of earth, our visible universe would be about the size of a grain of sand. Imagine being a little grain of sand on a beach and trying to figure out if the world is flat or round!
To answer the original question, if the universe is flat, when you reach the "edge", you will "wrap around" to the other edge. It's similar to how in pac-man if you are travelling upwards and go past the top edge, you come reappear on the bottom edge of the screen. If the universe is a sphere the answer is pretty obvious.
)
...if you are ever in Tasmania we can discuss this (and the gene pool!) over a frothy as they say down here.
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