What is the Universe Expanding Into?

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According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, the Universe is temporally and spatially finite, and it is expanding. 

The question becomes, what is it expanding into?
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And that is one of the many reasons I began to question NASA and space theory altogether. So many contradictions and nonsense.

I believe we are in a flat earth simulation and that Antarctica is the massive outer ring, not an island.

I am fine to be mocked for it, I hardly care. One thing I will make clear is there is some real small outer space, outside of the sky that allows real satellite imagery and satellite functionality to take place. However, space debris and the rest of it is false.
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@RationalMadman
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
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@Sidewalker
This isn’t a question that physics can answer with our present knowledge or without some form of qualification.
The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so there is nothing beyond the universe. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across.
Because the universe is homogenous on this scale, we imagine that what is beyond our observation looks much the same as what we can see.
If the universe is infinite, there is nothing beyond it, by definition. A finite expanding universe conjures up the idea that it would have a boundary or edge, separating it from something beyond. Of course, the universe has at least four dimensions (three for space and one for time) which is nigh on impossible for us to visualise.
However, space could be represented as two dimensions, confined to the gossamer-thin surface of a sphere. You could travel in any direction on the surface without encountering an edge. If the radius were to increase, the “universe” would expand as ours does, but it wouldn’t be expanding into anything.
Finally, we could speculate that our universe is part of a multiverse with many other universes beyond our own, but it is unlikely that we are expanding into them.
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@Sidewalker
The question becomes, what is it expanding into?
NOUMENON
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What is the Universe Expanding Into?
Russell Crowe
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@Sidewalker
Time and Space are intangible qualities and therefore potentially infinite.

Matter creates events with a duration.

The greater the event the longer the duration.

An ongoing event is therefore only limited by it's own potential.


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@Sidewalker
It’s not really expanding into anything.

Higher dimensional examples - like balloons are used to explain the principles; but they can be confusing - because not every aspect of the comparisons are analogous.

The way to think about  curvature, and universal expansion, is that is a change in the standard rules of geometry - two parallel lines in curved space may end up diverging or converging; in expanding space the distance between fixed points increases; the analogous examples we have where that happens is curved surfaces and expanding surfaces - so we use them. In reality, it’s not curvature or expansion in the same sense of the word.
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I am fine to be mocked for it, I hardly care
I think this a lie - lets see.

One thing I will make clear is there is some real small outer space, outside of the sky that allows real satellite imagery and satellite functionality to take place. However, space debris and the rest of it is false.
And also. I must stress that there is some small real area behind the sofa that actually allows me to put my hands behind it. But when daddy moves the stuffed giraffe behind the sofa - it ceases to exist. It is not real. It is only when daddy re-corporeates the giraffe by saying peekaboo does the giraffe Exist again.


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@FLRW
This isn’t a question that physics can answer with our present knowledge or without some form of qualification.

Then to conclude that it is expanding is not really explanatory, is it?

The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so there is nothing beyond the universe. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across. Because the universe is homogenous on this scale, we imagine that what is beyond our observation looks much the same as what we can see.If the universe is infinite, there is nothing beyond it, by definition. A finite expanding universe conjures up the idea that it would have a boundary or edge, separating it from something beyond. Of course, the universe has at least four dimensions (three for space and one for time) which is nigh on impossible for us to visualise.

If the universe is infinite then how can it be expanding?  If it’s finite, then it is expanding relative to what?  Perhaps we are confusing the tools of science with the substance of science, confusing the map with the territory, interpreting the abstract mathematics rather than the reality the mathematics is supposed to represent. The metric expansion of space is only one way of interpreting the mathematics associated with redshift, it could just as easily indicate the universe is getting heavier, the farther away the galaxy is the older it is, and therefore the heavier it is.  Maybe light is losing energy to the medium of space, if that were the case then the farther the light travelled the more redshifted it would be. 

Expanding relative to nothing, finite without borders, expanding into nothing, it’s clear that the conclusion that it is “expanding” is conceptually inadequate, the word “expanding” is not explanatory in this context. 

However, space could be represented as two dimensions, confined to the gossamer-thin surface of a sphere. You could travel in any direction on the surface without encountering an edge. If the radius were to increase, the “universe” would expand as ours does, but it wouldn’t be expanding into anything.

You mean we can interpret some abstract mathematics and decide that it is explanatory regarding the universe?  Isn’t that self-defeating?

Finally, we could speculate that our universe is part of a multiverse with many other universes beyond our own, but it is unlikely that we are expanding into them.

Yeah, you see a lot of speculation about the so-called multiverse, but that’s all it is, speculation, it’s not science, and it’s unfounded.  That is the problem with confusing the tools of science with the substance of science.

We can never accept that our theories might be wrong or at least incomplete, it must be the universe that is wrong or incomplete.
We observe that Galaxies spin in contradiction of our laws of gravity, so there must be something that is holding the galaxies together, something unobserved and perhaps unobservable – some kind of unseen matter that emits no radiation, and we say we know it by its secondary effects, it is an “inferred” phenomena. And what is that secondary, inferred phenomena?  It is the fact that the current theoretical framework doesn’t explain the observations.  Galaxies spin wrong, the universe is observed to be flat, so to preserve the theories, we adjust the facts to include dark matter and dark energy, unobserved and unobservable, then we notice that the universe appears to be fine-tuned so we say there are an infinite number of undetectable universes and we just happen to live in one that looks fine tuned, viola, reality is a multiverse.

Somewhere along the way, the observed universe we were trying to understand with our theories was no longer reality, it was just 4% of reality, the rest was “theoretical”, unobservable, a matter of abstract mathematics. and then one day that contrivance wasn’t even the universe anymore, it was just one infinitesimal piece of reality, one of an infinite number of universes, all of them unobserved and unobservable of course, and all so the sacred theories could remain intact.

The enterprise of science had largely abandoned its reliance on observations and gone into the business of manufacturing unobserved and unobservable realities in order to support the theories.  I’m not really sure what this process is, but I know what it isn’t, it isn’t science.
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@FLRW
The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago
Time being "created" is a contradiciton in terms. i.e. it is non-sense to say and anyone who says it basically confesses that they're making shit up.

Of course, the universe has at least four dimensions (three for space and one for time) which is nigh on impossible for us to visualise.
It's easily visualized, it's called motion.

Time is not a spatial dimension, it is put into the same matrix with spatial dimensions to facilitate the math of special and general relativity.


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@Sidewalker
Finally, we could speculate that our universe is part of a multiverse with many other universes beyond our own, but it is unlikely that we are expanding into them.
Yeah, you see a lot of speculation about the so-called multiverse, but that’s all it is, speculation, it’s not science, and it’s unfounded.  That is the problem with confusing the tools of science with the substance of science.
You're correct multiverse is pure speculation, but very often people are obviously not even aware of what the speculation originally was. Intrinsic to that speculation was the notion that the generation of a new universe is not spatially remote but at the instant of wave collapse the universe and every object in it occupy the exact same space at the same time.

Anyone who understood the speculation would know that "expanding into them" is like a bad sci-fi movie's first impression. As if they're "out there" beyond the "barrier between universes"

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@Ramshutu
It’s not hard to see that science has built a self-sustaining system, a mathematical tissue of concepts, its gone way beyond interpretation of observations to become a tower of abstraction that is completely detached from the reality it was meant to interpret.
 
It is easy to get carried away, taking our symbols for reality instead of as mere tools of description.  Are we uncovering a preexisting order, converging on the way the universe really is, or is it all just a human construction, just a fitting of the data into a carefully crafted mental framework? When are we doing physics? When are we just conjuring with numbers? 
 
It is becoming harder and harder to tell how much of the order is truly woven into the world and how much is imposed by the brain’s hunger for pattern.  We build these systems to represent the world, and then we are left to wonder what they mean. 
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@Sidewalker
its gone way beyond interpretation of observations to become a tower of abstraction that is completely detached from the reality it was meant to interpret.
Why do you think that?

That the universe is expanding is observation. The way space acts, is geometrically curved.  The mathematics of curved and expanding space is a description of what reality is actually doing - so in this respect it is actually very specifically tied to reality. 

As well as being a description that best matches the observations we see and offers a descriptive model that correctly predicts a multitude of other observations.

It is easy to get carried away, taking our symbols for reality instead of as mere tools of description.  Are we uncovering a preexisting order, converging on the way the universe really is, or is it all just a human construction, just a fitting of the data into a carefully crafted mental framework? When are we doing physics? When are we just conjuring with numbers? 

It is becoming harder and harder to tell how much of the order is truly woven into the world and how much is imposed by the brain’s hunger for pattern.  We build these systems to represent the world, and then we are left to wonder what they mean.
Physics is particularly complex because the most predictive, most accurate models of reality that we have accurately match what we see - have no intuitive corresponding analogy in our daily lives.

The reason for the complexity and the difficulty you see is not with the maths, or the equations, those equation can accurately predict events we see to very high margins of accuracy, and have predicted really strange and bizarre behaviour that have no business being true otherwise.

The issue is not the maths; it’s our tiny ape like brain that evolved to hit things with sticks, and to observe and survive in a very limited portion of the universes 4 primary dimensions - the universe doesn’t make sense to us on an intuitive level; and that makes it hard to really appreciate what relativity means, or what paulis exclusion principle is, and how it creates electron degeneracy pressure. But those things are both observable, measurable and conform to the predictable models of our world that we have - whether their implications are intuitive or not.
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Very well written article on talking about the limits or lack thereof of space
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@Ramshutu
As well as being a description that best matches the observations we see and offers a descriptive model that correctly predicts a multitude of other observations.
There are no predictions related to the "creation of time" or a "multiverse".

@Sidewalker Don't say "science does X" science doesn't do anything, science is rationality (logic + creativity) applied to natural phenomenon. It is not a person. It has no opinions and no failures.

It's a very small set of "science communicators" and psuedoscientific mystics who are spreading around this nonsense.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
There are no predictions related to the "creation of time" or a "multiverse".
There’s no mathematical model, or physical theory of either, either. 
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The universe is expanding into...


UR MOM gg get rekt
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@FLRW
there is nothing beyond the universe.

Correct answer.  The macro-infinite non-occupied space is what exists outside of  --meta/beyond--- our finite, occupied space Universe.

Finite = integrity {wholeness } --irrespective of short or long periods of time---.

Infinite = lack of integrity i.e. no wholeness is even considered

.....Eternal is to time as,

......Infinite is to space.
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@ebuc

Thanks brother.
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@FLRW
Thanks brother.

Give credit where credit is due bro. You earned it. :--)

35 days later

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@Ramshutu
its gone way beyond interpretation of observations to become a tower of abstraction that is completely detached from the reality it was meant to interpret.
Why do you think that?
Because we have confused the tools of science with the substance of science.

That the universe is expanding is observation.
No, Redshift is the observation, “that the universe is expanding” is one possible interpretation of that observation.


The way space acts, is geometrically curved.  The mathematics of curved and expanding space is a description of what reality is actually doing - so in this respect it is actually very specifically tied to reality. 
Reality is not actually doing Geometry, the geometry of Einstein’s model is only an abstract  representation of reality, it’s map, not territory.

As well as being a description that best matches the observations we see and offers a descriptive model that correctly predicts a multitude of other observations.
My point is that the so called “facts” of science have become conceptually inconsistent.  What you say here applies equally to our two best scientific models, Quantum Physics and Relativity Theory. We have our quantum physics and we think it explains matter and energy, the so-called standard model, which consists of the electroweak theory (QED) and the theory of the strong force (QCD) sitting side by side, only partially connected. And way over there on the other side of the room is the theory of gravity: Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a theory that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the standard model and it is pretty clear that they will never be reconciled because their basic presuppositions about the very ontology of existence.  To say that they are “what reality is doing”, is to say that reality is both discrete and continuous, deterministic and probabilistic, space and time are both stable and dynamic, even within one theory reality demonstrates the mutually exclusive characteristics of both particles and waves.

It is easy to get carried away, taking our symbols for reality instead of as mere tools of description.  Are we uncovering a preexisting order, converging on the way the universe really is, or is it all just a human construction, just a fitting of the data into a carefully crafted mental framework? When are we doing physics? When are we just conjuring with numbers? 

It is becoming harder and harder to tell how much of the order is truly woven into the world and how much is imposed by the brain’s hunger for pattern.  We build these systems to represent the world, and then we are left to wonder what they mean.
Physics is particularly complex because the most predictive, most accurate models of reality that we have accurately match what we see - have no intuitive corresponding analogy in our daily lives.

The reason for the complexity and the difficulty you see is not with the maths, or the equations, those equation can accurately predict events we see to very high margins of accuracy, and have predicted really strange and bizarre behaviour that have no business being true otherwise.
If truth is correspondence with reality, implicit in the term truth then, is a need for representation, truth is a matter of how we choose to represent reality to ourselves.  The maths are abstractions, they are not the reality.
 
Robert Frost likened scientific knowledge to a clearing in a forest, the greater the clearing the more contact we have with the unknown, it seems the more information we obtain through natural explanations, rather than less, the mystery of true reality becomes greater.

The issue is not the maths; it’s our tiny ape like brain that evolved to hit things with sticks, and to observe and survive in a very limited portion of the universes 4 primary dimensions - the universe doesn’t make sense to us on an intuitive level; and that makes it hard to really appreciate what relativity means, or what paulis exclusion principle is, and how it creates electron degeneracy pressure. But those things are both observable, measurable and conform to the predictable models of our world that we have - whether their implications are intuitive or not.
That is my point, and it’s why we can’t confuse the tools of science with the subject of science, the map with the territory.   We have no compelling grounds for regarding current theories as being anything more than a form of approximation to actual physical reality.
 
The last century brought the very nature of reasoning, deductive logic, and rational thinking into question; it was shown that the presumption that deductive logic, reasoning, and rational thinking directly correspond to the truth about physical reality does not hold in all instances.

Rather than recognize that our mathematics and our theories are practical tools that help us interpret experiments,  we decide that the standard model tells us what matter and energy are, the actual stuff of the universe is made up of waves of probability, a realm of pure possibility that goes unrealized until it is “collapsed” by an observer, who apparently conjures the particle into existence out of a mathematical haze.  We can’t ever see these particles directly of course, they are hypothetical particles acting according to theory, interacting with other hypothetical particles, whose existence is built on a very long chain of inferences, but at the end of this series of hypothesized reactions, matter and energy come into being.  We know the particles exist because they were verified by experiment; and we know the experiment was designed correctly because it found the particles. But we are too self-absorbed with our technology to wonder whether perhaps, just maybe, we are interpreting mathematical theory, instead of nature.


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@Sidewalker
According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, the Universe is temporally and spatially finite, and it is expanding. 

The question becomes, what is it expanding into?
The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time
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@Shila
According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, the Universe is temporally and spatially finite, and it is expanding. 

The question becomes, what is it expanding into?
The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time
Yes, and it's commonly referred to as the "Metric Expansion of Space",  it's space that is expanding, not the objects in space.  It also implies the violation of two of our most basic laws of physics, the 1st law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy), and the Relativistic principle that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
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@Sidewalker
The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time


Yes, and it's commonly referred to as the "Metric Expansion of Space",  it's space that is expanding, not the objects in space.  It also implies the violation of two of our most basic laws of physics, the 1st law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy), and the Relativistic principle that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Now here is something new that might confuse you, or might help. In the standard physics theory, the galaxies are all getting farther apart; that is the expansion of the Universe. Yet in the way the theory describes it (I mean in General Relativity Theory) none of the galaxies are actually moving. All that is happening is that the amount of space (vacuum) in between them is increasing.

No, you will not learn this in school, or even in college (unless you have an extraordinary professor). It is usually taught in graduate school, when you are earning a Ph.D. degree. At that point the language you will encounter is this: "In the Big Bang Theory, all galaxies have fixed coordinates. (That means they are not moving.) The 'expansion' is described by the 'metric tensor', which describes the distances between those fixed coordinates. In the Big Bang Theory, it is the metric tensor which is changing; that represents the expansion of the Universe, even though the galaxies aren't moving. The recent discovery of accelerated expansion means that the rate of expansion is increasing."

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@Shila
Yes, and it's commonly referred to as the "Metric Expansion of Space",  it's space that is expanding, not the objects in space.  It also implies the violation of two of our most basic laws of physics, the 1st law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy), and the Relativistic principle that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Now here is something new that might confuse you, or might help. In the standard physics theory, the galaxies are all getting farther apart; that is the expansion of the Universe. Yet in the way the theory describes it (I mean in General Relativity Theory) none of the galaxies are actually moving. All that is happening is that the amount of space (vacuum) in between them is increasing.

No, you will not learn this in school, or even in college (unless you have an extraordinary professor). It is usually taught in graduate school, when you are earning a Ph.D. degree. At that point the language you will encounter is this: "In the Big Bang Theory, all galaxies have fixed coordinates. (That means they are not moving.) The 'expansion' is described by the 'metric tensor', which describes the distances between those fixed coordinates. In the Big Bang Theory, it is the metric tensor which is changing; that represents the expansion of the Universe, even though the galaxies aren't moving. The recent discovery of accelerated expansion means that the rate of expansion is increasing."
Yeah, I know, that's why in the post you are responding to I said "it's commonly referred to as the "Metric Expansion of Space",  it's space that is expanding, not the objects in space. "
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@Sidewalker
--> @Shila
Yes, and it's commonly referred to as the "Metric Expansion of Space",  it's space that is expanding, not the objects in space.  It also implies the violation of two of our most basic laws of physics, the 1st law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy), and the Relativistic principle that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Now here is something new that might confuse you, or might help. In the standard physics theory, the galaxies are all getting farther apart; that is the expansion of the Universe. Yet in the way the theory describes it (I mean in General Relativity Theory) none of the galaxies are actually moving. All that is happening is that the amount of space (vacuum) in between them is increasing.

No, you will not learn this in school, or even in college (unless you have an extraordinary professor). It is usually taught in graduate school, when you are earning a Ph.D. degree. At that point the language you will encounter is this: "In the Big Bang Theory, all galaxies have fixed coordinates. (That means they are not moving.) The 'expansion' is described by the 'metric tensor', which describes the distances between those fixed coordinates. In the Big Bang Theory, it is the metric tensor which is changing; that represents the expansion of the Universe, even though the galaxies aren't moving. The recent discovery of accelerated expansion means that the rate of expansion is increasing."
Yeah, I know, that's why in the post you are responding to I said "it's commonly referred to as the "Metric Expansion of Space",  it's space that is expanding, not the objects in space. "
The expansion is just measured differently. But it is an expansion or they would have used a different word.

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@Sidewalker
It could be said to be expanding into itself. 
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@Ehyeh
--> @Sidewalker
It could be said to be expanding into itself
Is that your understanding of Metric Expansion of Space?
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@Shila
Yeah, space isn't expanding into anything beyond itself per se, its simply that the distance already contained within itself is getting bigger within itself.