The bang theory and the edge of the universe?

Question

If the big bang theory is true, and the universe is constantly expanding (which means there must be an edge), then what would happen if you tried to go beyond that edge?

Answer 1

At the moment that's more a point of philosophy/belief than of science.
Some say the universe is donut-shaped, so you'd end up back where you started.
Some say there's no real barrier, so you could go on forever, you'd just leave all the matter behind.
Some say there's a brick wall there, but that's rubbish. Some sort of tiling would be far more cost-efficient.

Answer 2

The big band describes the origin and evolution of all space-time.

Just as you cannot talk about a time before the big bang since time began at that point, you cannot talk about a place outside the universe created at the big bang.

All of the universe is contained within the 'stuff' from the big bang. There is no edge.

The usual image to help out here is of an ant on the surface of and expanding balloon. As the balloon is inflated, each point on the surface appears to be moving away from each other point.

The ant is effectively seeing the balloon as a 2 dimensional analogue of our expanding universe - and it might rightly think it is at the centre of this expansion. The idea of an 'edge' would make complete sense to the ant.

But we know, looking from our 3-d perspective that the ant's universe is completely contained on the surface of the balloon - there is no edge. No matter what direction the ant goes it will always travel within the 'known universe' and it never risks falling off, no more than Columbus did when he sailed to discover America.

Our perspective on this universe is somewhat similar. We're in a 4-d world that is currently expanding as the after effect of the big bang. There is no edge. Everything is contained within this universe.

Answer 3

I answer your question with a question. If the big bang theory is true, why must there be an edge to the universe? If our evolution now enables us to question the edge of the universe - how Wonderful - when only a short period ago in our evolution, we were questioning if the world was flat and if we were about to fall off! As regards going beyond the edge of the universe......well personally, I think we'll have to wait until the next bit of our brains 'kick in', on the evolutionary scale, to answer that one.

Answer 4

When light is emitted from a Star it propagates radially in all directions. Part of the light is received on Earth the rest roams in space.
If the Universe has a containment it implies that it must have a finte dimension. Einstein confirmed this.alluding to a closed system.
In that case it has to have restrains to contain it. That means that any radiation hiting those restrains would be not be lost ;it would bounce right back in the Universe.
As far as Expansion is concerned ,it is caused by the mass increase of the Galaxies in question. And the temperature which is been obseved to exist between galaxies ,would be associated with radiation just roaming space.
If all the Galaxies were losing mass than the reverse occur, "an inverse expansion."
The Big bang theory refers to a singularity which went bad; it got out of hands.This singularity became a plurality spraying mass all over.How that plurality settled down again into complex atoms and Galaxies, is not really exactly told in the story.
In Short who can really Understand how the Universe was Created and how are we perceiving time since its begining. is time also contained ?
How many Theories will the world of science allude to. Is there a limit?

Answer 5

There is no edge or outside or before or after.
Everyone is conditioned to think in a certain way but the universe, relativity and quantum mechanics all work in a way that just does not fit with common sense.
If you imagine looking at the big bang exploding you are getting it wrong in almost every possible way.
It was not an explosion in space - it was a creation of space
There was no before - it also created time
There was nowhere to watch it from - space did not exist
Sounds stupid but it is (according to the best theories at the moment) just how things are.

Answer 6

The universe is finite,it is expanding where we are but the expansion has probably stopped at the farthest reaches.
The farthest galaxies we see probably don't exist to-day.
It expands into a type of cosmic interface that recedes as required but nothing can go by it.
When the conditions that produce the space-time pulse that launched this universe stop the expansion will catch up to the farthest reaches and the universe will go out of existence.

Answer 7

Going beyond the edge simply pushes the edge further. YOU are a part of the universe and if you go beyond the edge then you push the edge further.

Hence you can never cross the boundary without expanding the boundary.

Answer 8

The expansion of the Universe does not mean that it has an edge...You are trying to understand the Universe in terms of things that you can see and understand based upon your education and experiences here on Earth. That Earth bound education and the experiences you have had there do not necessarily apply "directly" to outer space.

In outer space, for example, distances are measured from object to object, not from a point in empty space to another point in empty space. When remarks are made about the "Universe expanding", that refers to the calculated distances between objects changing to larger numbers than calculation results of a few years ago (all math computations having been suitably reverified).

At this time we can "see" into outer space with our present designs of optical and radio telescope equipment to a distance of 40 Billion Light years - in every direction from Earth. Beyond that distance our equipment fails to give us any useable information, so the equipment itself is the limiting factor in "see-ability". That absolutely has no relationship to the idea of "fringe or end of space". The angles being used to make calculations just get so teeny, teeny small that you cannot resolve anything useable from the information. Maybe in ten or twenty years some new breakthrough in software or equipment designs will permit observation out to maybe 60 Billion Light Years, or so. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

As far as your question about going out beyond our seeable distance of 40 Billion Light Years... Think carefully about what you are asking...

Nothing manmade travels at the speed of light, but if it did (or came pretty close) even that device, whatever it might be, would take 40,000,000,000 Years to get to the point where we cannot see beyond (40 Billion Light Years). Remember the Sun is forecasted to burn out in only 4 - 5 Billion years. So what is the point of trying to theorize something so undefineable and vastly distant. Nobody will ever travel there. Nobody has ever been there. So there is not one person alive who can tell you from personal experience exactly what is out there. What you will get back in replies is Guesses, Estimates, Theories, and Humorous Nonsense. The result of all this is a total waste of everyone's time and energy. Our Solar System has been expanding outward for some 5 Billion Years away from the central point in our Milky Way Galaxy and away from other galaxies in the Universe for an "unknown amount of time."

Other than your struggle to understand the vastness of space in your own terms, what leads you to think that there is a defineable "end" to space? Have you ever read an article about some star or planet bouncing off of the wall at the end of space, or something like that??? Probably not...

Answer 9

there is no edge.the dimensions extend infinitely outwards and the universe expands and keeps on expanding without ever ceasing(until it's time for the big crunch).
an interesting analogy is the expansion of human population.we do not know any definite limit until which the human population will continue increasing or when it will begin to decline.it will at some point start to decline but we don't know when and how large it will be.this is just like the expansion of the universe and the big crunch.

Answer 10

One of the assumptions of the BB hypothesis (not a theory since it is not subject to the scientific method), is the Copernican principle. According to this assumption the universe has no centre and no edge.
Those that promote this notion do so for religious (atheistic) reasons.

In their influential but highly technical book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Stephen Hawking and George Ellis introduce their section on the big bang cosmology with the following general remarks:

‘However we are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology. In the earliest cosmologies, man placed himself in a commanding position at the centre of the universe. Since the time of Copernicus we have been steadily demoted to a medium sized planet going round a medium sized star on the outer edge of a fairly average galaxy, which is itself simply one of a local group of galaxies. Indeed we are now so democratic that we would not claim that our position in space is specially distinguished in any way. We shall, following Bondi (1960), call this assumption the Copernican principle’ [emphasis added].45

This notion used to be called the ‘Cosmological principle’.46,47 Note carefully that Hawking and Ellis call it an ‘assumption’ and an ‘admixture of ideology’—a presupposed idea not required by observations. Their phrase ‘we would not claim …’ is actually a dogmatic claim: the Earth is not in a special position in the cosmos. They go on to say:

‘A reasonable interpretation of this somewhat vague principle is to understand it as implying that, when viewed on a suitable scale, the universe is approximately spatially homogenous’ [emphasis added].48

‘Spatially homogeneous’ means ‘uniformly spread throughout all available space’. Hawking and Ellis are claiming that at any time space is completely filled with matter-energy. There never were any large empty volumes of space, and there never will be, they say.

They make this leap of faith because observations show that the universe is isotropic or spherically symmetric around us, meaning that from our vantage point it looks much the same in all directions. Ordinarily, Hawking and Ellis point out, this would mean, ‘we are located near a very special point’ 49—such as the centre. That conflicts with their desire that the Earth not be in a special location, so they seek a less troubling cosmology,

‘… in which the universe is isotropic about every point in space time; so we shall interpret the Copernican principle as stating that the universe is approximately spherically symmetric about every point (since it is approximately spherically symmetric around us).’49

As they then show, cranking this rather bizarre assumption into the mathematics of general relativity results in the various forms of the big bang theory.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1570/