"Jim Greenfield" wrote in message
om...
"George Dishman" wrote in message
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"Jim Greenfield" wrote in message
om...

First things first:

What is it's age?

13.7 +/- 0.2 based on the WMAP probe measurements of the
CMBR:
:

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest3.html

Lets assume 13.701 for the sake of this discussion.

Can a being at position 13.7 bly west of here, see one 13.7 east?

(I assume "west" means in some arbitrary direction and "east"
means in the opposite direction. A being 13.7 billion light
years away is unlikely to share our definitions of east and
west.)

If we look 13.7 bly west, we might see a clump of hydrogen
and helium gas as it was 1 million years after the 'bang'
that would later become a galaxy. A being living there then
could only see 100 million light years in any direction
where they would see the CMBR that we measure, and within
that region they would see little more than clumps of gas
that would later become galaxies.

Yes! That IS what we Should see, but photos of very distant galaxies
Don't show that. We Don't see 'clumps of gas', but galaxies which may
be similar to our own.
If they were 13 b years younger, one would expect them to look
different.

They do. As several people have said, you should read
up on the subject or you will embarras yourself.

A being (called Jim) living in that galaxy 13.7 billion
years later could look east and see a clump of hydrogen
and helium gas as it was 1 million years after the 'bang'
that would later become our galaxy.

What do they observe when they 'look beyond'?

Jim would see the same as us, galaxies distributed evenly
throughout the whole region he could observe. If he looked
west he could see a patch of hydrogen and helium gas 13.7
bly away, as it was 1 million years after the 'bang', that
would later become a galaxy. That galaxy's light has not
yet reached us. A being (called Sheila) living in that
galaxy 13.7 billion years later would see the same as Jim
and us, galaxies distributed evenly throughout the whole
region she could observe. If she looked east, she would
see the patch of gas destined to become Jim's galaxy as
it was 1 million years after the 'bang', and if she
looked west, ...

STOP RIGHT HERE! Why didn't you elaborate?

The ellipsis indicates that you should continue the
sequence. I have written almost identical text three
times. You should be able to see the pattern and
repeat it as often as you like for yourself.

What are the dimensions of the universe?

Very much bigger than the patch we can see, possibly
infinite. Imagine repeating the above series of beings
seeing clumps of gas that would become galaxies containing
other beings at least billions of times.

This is Exactly My Point! I to believe the universe to be infinite--
not constricted by the boundaries and limitations of some sudden past
singular event.

Until a couple of years ago, "Big Bang" theory also said
the same. Space and time are related in GR and unless the
universe was going to collapse in a "Big Crunch", it had
to be infinite, and there wasn't enough matter to do that.

The acceleration of the expansion detected a few years ago
came as a bit of a surprise and a recent paper suggests that
it is possible for the universe to be finite without ending
in a crunch so infinite size is less certain but still quite
likely.

Has light from one side of the universe reached the other?

The universe doesn't have sides.

Sooner or later some Big Banger will go on about living on an
expanding 'membrane' similar to a balloon. That would represent the
sides I refer to here.
I agree; there are no sides because the
dimensions are infinite.
George, the concepts of infinity and BB are oxymoronic and
incompatible.

With just the observed density of matter, space in BB theory
could only be infinite in BB theory, and that has been known
since long before I joined this group many years ago. You
really should find out more about it before embarrassing
yourself with remarks like that.

George