IMDB religious people..

[Molyneux]

It gets better!! His previous post stated the webpage, and also he said:

Like the song says, "If you find when you read It that there's something wrong, there's something wrong with you."

So, I question the website and state that his "song" isn't true, such as the fact that the Earth ISN'T the center of the universe, the Earth isn't flat, and there is not evidence for a year long global flood, . . . . he replies with this:

So you call into question the clear FACT that that reading is correct? You are worse than I thought. Then you make dumb statements like "the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe." Prove it. I ask you to prove it to me. Show a website, or even a reputable scientist's claim that it is proven. Then you say "the fact that there is no evidence for a world wide flood..." You are, like the Bible says, "Willingly ignorant." Like an intelligent man once said, "In the Greek, that means 'dumb on purpose.'"

Wow.

Note that he skims over "the Earth isn't flat" without mentioning it...

[wolveraptor]

The universe doesn't have a center, any more than the surface of a sphere has a "center". How do you even define the "center" of an entity with no boundaries?

But doesn't a sphere have a center? The universe, consisting of three dimensions, would probably be more analogous to the volume of a sphere, rather than just the surface.

[Molyneux]

The universe doesn't have a center, any more than the surface of a sphere has a "center". How do you even define the "center" of an entity with no boundaries?

But doesn't a sphere have a center? The universe, consisting of three dimensions, would probably be more analogous to the volume of a sphere, rather than just the surface.

Isn't the universe really 10-dimensional, though?

[Surlethe]

The universe doesn't have a center, any more than the surface of a sphere has a "center". How do you even define the "center" of an entity with no boundaries?

But doesn't a sphere have a center? The universe, consisting of three dimensions, would probably be more analogous to the volume of a sphere, rather than just the surface.

This is because, if I recall correctly, the universe, on a large scale, appears to be the same to every observer: i.e., everyone sees everything else accelerating away from him proportional to the distance away from him. If the universe were bounded, then it strikes me that the symmetry wouldn't hold for an obsever near or on the boundary.

Of course, there is an effective boundary, dictated by our location: at some distance from us, we see objects moving at c, so we can't see past that point, since they'll be redshifted out of existence (from our perspective).

[wolveraptor]

In a confusing sort of way, it makes sense.

[mr friendly guy]

The universe doesn't have a center, any more than the surface of a sphere has a "center". How do you even define the "center" of an entity with no boundaries?

But doesn't a sphere have a center? The universe, consisting of three dimensions, would probably be more analogous to the volume of a sphere, rather than just the surface.

Isn't the universe really 10-dimensional, though?

11 dimensions. 10 of space and one of time.

Obviously physicists forgot all about the dimensions of subspace and hyperspace.

[Magnetic]

The universe doesn't have a center, any more than the surface of a sphere has a "center". How do you even define the "center" of an entity with no boundaries?

But doesn't a sphere have a center? The universe, consisting of three dimensions, would probably be more analogous to the volume of a sphere, rather than just the surface.

This is because, if I recall correctly, the universe, on a large scale, appears to be the same to every observer: i.e., everyone sees everything else accelerating away from him proportional to the distance away from him. If the universe were bounded, then it strikes me that the symmetry wouldn't hold for an obsever near or on the boundary.

Of course, there is an effective boundary, dictated by our location: at some distance from us, we see objects moving at c, so we can't see past that point, since they'll be redshifted out of existence (from our perspective).

Perhaps I'm not qualified to understand this. No physics college classes. But as some have suggested, if the universe is like a balloon, and I suppose that would mean that we are on the perimeter of the balloon, then that means that there should be nothing "above" and "below", relative to the plane of the expanding "balloon" surface. There should be nothing seen in those "directions" because either the "balloon hasn't yet expanded there, or has pasted those point (from where the expansion began), . . . . and you'd never see what was on "the other side of the balloon". Seems to me, as well, that you'd only really be able to view stars/galaxies on a specific plane, "curving away" from our location as those stars/galaxies becoming more and more dim as the "curve" goes out of our current technology to see them. . . . . . .

By the way, when you mention objects moving at c, . . . . are WE moving at c, relative to another objects perspective?

[Dooey Jo]

Perhaps I'm not qualified to understand this. No physics college classes. But as some have suggested, if the universe is like a balloon, and I suppose that would mean that we are on the perimeter of the balloon, then that means that there should be nothing "above" and "below", relative to the plane of the expanding "balloon" surface. There should be nothing seen in those "directions" because either the "balloon hasn't yet expanded there, or has pasted those point (from where the expansion began), . . . . and you'd never see what was on "the other side of the balloon". Seems to me, as well, that you'd only really be able to view stars/galaxies on a specific plane, "curving away" from our location as those stars/galaxies becoming more and more dim as the "curve" goes out of our current technology to see them. . . . . . .

The balloon is a very simplified analogy. It is used to illustrate what actually is an expanding three-dimensional space as an expanding two-dimensional space (that is, the curved surface of the balloon). To show what an actual expanding three-dimensional space would look like would be much more difficult (it would be very hard to plot points like we can on the balloon, for example).

By the way, when you mention objects moving at c, . . . . are WE moving at c, relative to another objects perspective?

Nothing can ever move at or above c relative to anything. However, because of the expansion of space, the distance to very distant objects may increase faster than c. That is not true movement, though.

[NoXion]

I've always thought of the universe as a sort of three-dimensional Asteroids game where space is curved in on inself so that if you go off the "edge" of the universe in one direction you reappear on the opposite side - and that this space is expanding at the same time, all the galaxies getting further apart like raisins in a baking loaf.

Is this correct?

[Covenant]

Galaxies can run into each other. They're flying all over, but galaxies are bound into larger networks of objects just like starsystems are bound into galaxies. The balloon analogy is close, as was stated, but think of it more like a gobstopper. It's three dimensional, so even though we experience an increase in size at the outermost, we're also inflating at the center. A better analog would be that you never rest on the outer section of the balloon, but like a bug trapped in an inflating balloon, swim about on the inside as it expands. Suddenly, much later, it takes 10 seconds to crawl around the entire circumference when before it took 2 seconds, because it's gotten bigger. The raisin loaf analogy is useful here. But they actually moving too, not just sitting on a wave of expanding space.

Anyone know those cool spheres that let you morph them from a tiny compact one to a huge, expanded one? If you made one of those with like 10 increasingly smaller ones inside it, and slowly expanded them all at an equal rate, that's a better idea of the expansion. Like Jo said, it's more difficult to plot the points there, especially since space is also not a sphere, it's all distorted due to the presence of massy objects. And if you believe in Branes, then we have even more wierdness!

[Dooey Jo]

I've always thought of the universe as a sort of three-dimensional Asteroids game where space is curved in on inself so that if you go off the "edge" of the universe in one direction you reappear on the opposite side - and that this space is expanding at the same time, all the galaxies getting further apart like raisins in a baking loaf.

Is this correct?

The expansion is basically correct (though it is only already distant enough galaxies that get further apart. Gravity still works). However it is unlikely that you will end up in the same spot if you go far enough in one direction. Partly because the global geometry of the universe seems to be very flat (and not closed, which would have to be the case for this to work), but also because the expansion would most likely be far too fast for you to be able to "go around".