"EL" wrote in message
oups.com...
[George Dishman wrote]
In the balloon analogy, it is the (2D)
rubber that represents our (3D) space.
[EL]
I was under the impression that balloons have centres.

The 3D volume of the sphere has a centre.
The 2D surface does not.
[EL]
Are you in any way conveying the nincompoop

aside check "nincompoop" in your dictionary /aside

about a spherical shell 2D
surface (rubber of a balloon) that has no 3D sphere being contained
inside that surface!

Since the surface represents the three spatial
dimension and the radial direction is perpendular
to the surface, it follows that it represents
time in the analogy. Of course that means there
is a preferred time axis (just one of the flaws
with the picture) but you can associate it with
cosmic age, the time as measured by a clock
co-moving with the Hubble expansion, and it works
reasonably well. What is inside then is "The Past"
which of course is always increasing.

Well, there is a way out called "Hyperbola", but
believe me when I tell you that every mass MUST have a virtual centre,
which is not a virtual geometric coordinate.
The Big Bangers failed to realise that the cross section of the
universe must be hyperbolic to explain all their contradictions that
they did not explain. Einstein did know it but he either had not the
time or was just reluctant to argue with imbeciles shoving CMBR
empirical data in his face, so he gave up.

There are many problems with the analogy but it
is usually used only to convey the idea that
something can be finite yet unbounded. Prior to
the discovery that the expansion is accelerating,
it could be shown that a finite universe would
produce a "Big Crunch" because being closed in
space also implied being closed in time. With the
non-zero cosmological constant, that is no longer
true and any combination is possible.

There was a paper showing that last year IIRC but
I didn't note the reference so if anyone knows of
it, I would appreciate a pointer.

Where is the centre of the Balloon Universe?

13.7 billion years in the past ;-)
[EL]
Are you now confusing the where with the when, shame on all those
Minkowski charts you drew. ;-)

I am confusing nothing, I gave the right answer,
you just asked the wrong question. (Spot the wink)

I do know that you are just being clever to avoid admitting that there
is no answer to such a question.

Since the centre is in the past, you have to run
time back and see which point in space was at the
centre at t=0. Since cosmological age is represented
by the radius of the balloon, your question becomes
which point on the surface is at the centre when the
radius is zero. The answer of course is all of them
or "everywhere".

Not because the universe is a 2D surface that as no volume but because
the universe is bounded and infinite rather than finite and unbounded.
Topologically speaking, only infinity can have a centre anywhere, but
where is that brave- heart who can stand tall and say that Einstein was
wrong on things and very correct on other things?

Einstein thought the universe was static which is
why he added the cosmological constant in the first
place. He was wrong and called it his 'greatest
blunder'.

As I said above, we can no longer be sure. However,
the most recent best value results for Omega_total
is 1.010 +/- 0.009 which suggests it is just over 1
but I think most people expect it to be exactly 1.

The thread in question ran for
months and included hundreds of posts. You
would need to catch up a lot to follow this.
I'll try to find the subject line later if
you want to.
[EL]
No need for that, as I believe me to be the 1994 fire- starter. :-)

The main thread had the subject line "Red shift
and homogeneity", Nov 2003. I think there were
other threads around that time on the same lines
but that one had 165 messages:

http://tinyurl.com/7vax8

My only criteria for superiority are fit to
experimental data followed by Occam's Razor.
If you could develop a steady-state model that
gives accurate predictions for the shape of
the frequency spectrum, the intensity and the
angular power spectrum of the CMBR, I would be
most impressed. Check the WMAP results if you
aren't familiar with these tests.
[EL]
Thank you George, I am humbly doing my best.
I believe in my work as the meaning of my life.
I hardly care to impress anyone, and I certainly do not believe in
vanity affairs.
Naturally, I must verify the consistency of my model and explain the
readings accordingly.
The big difference between the classical steady state and mine is that
there is absolutely nothing steady in my model other than the topology,
which encapsulates the dynamic structure. That is how the topologically
peripheral galaxies are always slower than any inner ones, which
renders light emitted by the said outer ones Red Shifted as received by
any inner ones as the distance increases over time. The background
microwaves are significantly constant but insignificantly variant
because of the extreme relation between the micro-scale and the
macro-scale. No significant changes can be expected within a time
window of 100,000 years.

You seem to be suggesting the CMBR could be
redshifted light from galaxies. If so, that
has been ruled out because the spectral shape
is incorrect. Galaxies aren't black body
emitters. I thought Ned Wright had a graph
showing the deviation but I can't find it at
the moment.

I do have such a model in my TKTODO that I shall publish back soon.
Stay tuned, my friend. :-)

I'll be here. So will many others.

George
[EL]
That is the spirit, but not to the extent of holding your breath.
You know, because of time dilation and all. :-)

Odd thing is, it seems to go faster as I get older.

George