Looking into the past with a telescope

cantseeboo wrote:
Starboard (Errol) e-mailed me the following replies. Said that the
board would not accept his post for some reason.. I'm posting for
him...

cantseeboo........................................ .................................................. .

I guess that's the same as asking where's the universe's center
of gravity....

The Universe has no true center. The frames of reference we are
used to on the earth are only illusions. In the universe at large
no two observers (people) can be expected to keep the same time
much less agree where to measure everything from.

When the universe came into being, it began expanding into, what I
first heard referred to by Prof. Hawking, nothingness. But suppose
someone viewed said expanse from that area of nothingness. Could he
say "I saw the universe expand away from some point in the universe's
interior."?

Would it be the same as asking "if there were a big crunch, to what
point in the universe would all matter crunch to?"

No. That's a nonsensical question. There can be no observer outside
watching. So there can be no answer. That's like asking, "Assuming the
earth is flat, how deep is the dirt you are standing on?" The invalid
assumption invalidates the question.

Imagine that you live on the earth but think it is flat. The
flatness of the earth is an illusion. For a person who sees the
earth in terms of this illusion, where then is the center of the
earth? Where is the center?

Seems obvious, but don't you think difficulties arise when one states
that the flatness expanded from a single point in the past?

I don't see your point. Mixing my metaphor back into the real picture
isn't useful.

In a very real sense the position of each observer is the center of
the universe. Relativity teaches us that everything is
relative--which means there are no absolutes.

Agreed that relativity does teach us that there is no preferred place
from which to take a measurement, however, isn't it also reasonable
to assume that the universe did expand away from some point in the
universe's interior in the distant past?

No, not according the current cosmology (which is the only one that
adequately describes the bulk of the available observational evidence).

In my opinion, astronomers do the world an injustice by describing the
Big Bang as something that happened long ago. The universe *is* the big
bang, expanding all around us; they are one in the same. And no, you
don't need a center in order for there to be an expansion, nor do you
need something (even nothingness) to expand into. Again, this is
earth-centered 3-dimensional thinking (see my flat earth analogy). In
the three-dimensional world that we perceive there is no center and
there never was one.

The flat earth analogy isn't perfect--an improvement is to imagine a
two-dimensional creature who cannot observe the third dimension at all
(in this case the third dimension is "up and down"; the creature can
only know north/south and east/west). It's not just ignorance that
would keep such a creature from "seeing" the center of the earth. To
observe the center of the round earth would require "seeing" in a
dimension beyond their direct reality, something they could only weakly
imagine--or describe using mathematics. It is important to recall that
these weak analogies are only important as a means of explaining the
mathematics to those who do not "speak" the language of mathematics. It
is in the mathematics that cosmology truly lies.

Greg

--
Greg Crinklaw
Astronomical Software Developer
Cloudcroft, New Mexico, USA (33N, 106W, 2700m)

SkyTools: http://www.skyhound.com/cs.html
Observing: http://www.skyhound.com/sh/skyhound.html
Comets: http://www.skyhound.com/sh/comets.html

To reply take out your eye

You are getting replies from people who look out on the celestial
arena like this -

http://www.opencourse.info/astronomy...ion_stars_sun/
celestial_sphere_anim.gif

Ask them to locate an external galaxy and they will cheerfully give
you a constellational reference borrowed from the cartoon framework
above.

What you do is start with basic centers of rotation.The daily cycle
determines that you are on a rotating Earth and has the most immediate
impact on your existence.

The next center of rotation is to appreciate your orbital motion
around the Sun.This you can do by looking at the following time lapse
footage of the faster Earth overtaking the slower forward moving outer
planets -

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...2000_tezel.gif

The next center of rotation is the motion of the Earth along with the
entire solar system around the central galactic axis.As this great
sweeping motion is so inperceptible,except in principle,what you
should see is that the local forground stars would move against the
position of the external galaxies.

There may be greater centers of rotation beyond this but that would be
for a different era.In this era they cannot even express the basic
rotation of the Earth on its axis in correct geometric terms.Every-
point-is -the-center-of-an -expanding-universe indeed !,do you ever
listen to yourselves.It is so anti-astronomy in denying cyclical
motions and at its core is the silly 17th century maneuver that paved
the way for its emergence -

"... our clocks kept so good a correspondence with the Heavens that I
doubt it not but they would prove the revolutions of the Earth to be
isochronical... " Flamsteed using Sirius as a celestial sphere gauge

Those who are perfectly happy to bypass all the centers of rotation
from which the great astronomers operated, to make a ridiculous
sweeping gesture about the rest of the universe simply have little
sense of how dumb their statements actually are .The great Copernican
insight which uses the observed motion of the other planets to
extract the concept that the Earth has an orbital motion turns into a
nonsensical principle in their hands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle

Personally I













On Jan 26, 8:39 pm, "cantseeboo" wrote:
Starboard (Errol) e-mailed me the following replies. Said that the
board would not accept his post for some reason.. I'm posting for
him...

cantseeboo........................................ ..........................*....................... ...

I guess that's the same as asking where's the universe's center of gravity....
The Universe has no true center. The frames of reference we are used to
on the earth are only illusions. In the universe at large no two
observers (people) can be expected to keep the same time much less agree
where to measure everything from.When the universe came into being, it began expanding into, what I
first heard
referred to by Prof. Hawking, nothingness. But suppose someone viewed
said expanse from that area of nothingness. Could he say "I saw the
universe
expand away from some point in the universe's interior."?

Would it be the same as asking "if there were a big crunch, to what
point in the
universe would all matter crunch to?"

Imagine that you live on the earth but think it is flat. The flatness
of the earth is an illusion. For a person who sees the earth in terms
of this illusion, where then is the center of the earth? Where is the center?Seems obvious, but don't you think difficulties arise when one states
that the
flatness expanded from a single point in the past?

In a very real sense the position of each observer is the center of the
universe. Relativity teaches us that everything is relative--which
means there are no absolutes.Agreed that relativity does teach us that there is no preferred place
from which to take a measurement, however, isn't it also reasonable to
assume that the universe did expand away from some point in the
universe's interior in the distant past?

Errol
pasnola

Starboard wrote:
Would you like to be the first to answer this question correctly.

You know that our solar system is moving with the rest of the local
stars around the Milky Way axis.

If you look at an external galaxy,say the Whirlpool galaxy,what would
you expect to happen after 1 million years ?.Remember the foreground
stars of the Milky Way are orbiting the galactic axis therefore we are
moving like a system on a giant carousel.

That seems true for indicating the direction to intergalaxy objects
with respect to intragalaxy objects, but is that true for indicating
direction of intergalaxy objects with respect to other intergalaxy
objects?


The motion of the local forground Milky Way stars ,including the
motion of our system,will cause the the position of the external
galaxies to change just as you would see external objects to change
their position against other objects on a carousel.

Of course you use constellational geometry to describe the position of
the external galaxies -

http://www.opencourse.info/astronomy...ion_stars_sun/
celestial_sphere_anim.gif

Where there should be an exciting astronomical attempt to show how the
foreground stars change by using the external positions of the
galaxies there is nothing.There are plent of guys looking for 'dark'
things and all the other kitch of celestial sphere concepts but none
given towards using actual celestial objects and their known motions.

There is an added complication based on supernova data and how the
effect Ole Romer noticed at the heliocentric level becomes enormous at
the level of galactic orbital motion and the position of the external
galaxies.Considering I have yet to receive an affirmation of how we
see our own heliocentric motion in a forum which cheerfully promotes
any recognition of astronomical centers,well....



Don't listen to me, I'm tired as old hell from staying up late putting
together the NEW XT-12 Intelliscope.... Yeee doggie!

Errol
pasnola

Errol
pasnola

On Jan 26, 9:26 pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
cantseeboo wrote:
Since the distribution of galaxies on the large scale is isotropic, ....

Where do astronomers think the Milky Way is *in the Universe*? Towards
the center? Close to the edge? Any idea?

Do astronomers know where the universal center is? I guess that's the
same as asking where's the universe's center of gravity....Maybe
not.... No Center
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/nocenter.html

Also see Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html

WMAP: Foundations of the Big Bang theory
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html

WMAP: Tests of Big Bang Cosmology
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest.html


Thanks for that Sam,every chance I can get to show that the original
reason for 'curving' the universe was the lament that light leaving
stars would go to waste -

" This view is not in harmony with the theory of Newton. The latter
theory rather requires that the universe should have a kind of centre
in which the density of the stars is a maximum, and that as we proceed
outwards from this centre the group-density of the stars should
diminish, until finally, at great distances, it is succeeded by an
infinite region of emptiness. The stellar universe ought to be a
finite island in the infinite ocean of space.
This conception is in itself not very satisfactory. It is still less
satisfactory because it leads to the result that the light emitted by
the stars and also individual stars of the stellar system are
perpetually passing out into infinite space, never to return, and
without ever again coming into interaction with other objects of
nature. Such a finite material universe would be destined to become
gradually but systematically impoverished. "

http://www.bartleby.com/173/30.html

The poor guy was speaking before they discovered these stellar island
groups we now know as galaxies,seeing him reject the idea of a stellar
center and there are billions of them sure looks funny to 21st century
eyes.

As for light leaving stars going to waste,people are supposed to laugh
themselves silly yet 100 years later the majority are still into
'curved space ' and making huge generalised statements about universal
structure.If they first recognised the celestial sphere core at the
center of Newton's work they would immediately recognise where this
exotic trash is coming from.

This is not hugely complicated material,this stuff as easy to handle
with familiarity however you can only remain with the exotic
celestial sphere symptoms of the last century for a short while.There
is too much productive work to do to wastee time on childish notions
of the last century.

On 26 Jan 2007 12:39:14 -0800, "cantseeboo"
wrote:

Agreed that relativity does teach us that there is no preferred place
from which to take a measurement, however, isn't it also reasonable to
assume that the universe did expand away from some point in the
universe's interior in the distant past?

You should purge yourself of the mental picture of the Universe
expanding from a point. The pretty animations you see in science films
of an explosion from a point flying outward in all directions is
frankly a terrible illustration. I wish film producers would stop with
that...

Think of the Universe instead as the expanding surface of a balloon.
Anything inside or outside of its surface is nothingness and doesn't
exist.

So as the balloon expands, where is the center on the surface? This
should help you visualize that such a center point doesn't exist, and
never existed. In fact, at the moment of birth of the balloon surface
when it was infinitely small, every point of the surface was
coincident.

---
Michael McCulloch

In three dimensions, there is no center.

Does it have a center in some higher dimension?

Errol

No. That's a nonsensical question. There can be no observer outside
watching. So there can be no answer. That's like asking, "Assuming the
earth is flat, how deep is the dirt you are standing on?" The invalid
assumption invalidates the question.


I didn't see it as a nonsensical question, but as a continuation of a
nonsensical analogy. I guess it's all relative.

Imagine that you live on the earth but think it is flat. The
flatness of the earth is an illusion. For a person who sees the
earth in terms of this illusion, where then is the center of the
earth? Where is the center?

Seems obvious, but don't you think difficulties arise when one states
that the flatness expanded from a single point in the past?

I don't see your point. Mixing my metaphor back into the real picture
isn't useful.

Simple. I'm terms of this discussion, I'm the flat Earth guy and
you're telling me that it all came from a single point in the past.
You can see how I would have a problem with that.

The response was meant to illustrate where I am intellectually with
this whole thing. I like to think that things can be expressed in
terms of three spatial dimensions and time as a forth. I have a real
problem letting go of that.

In a very real sense the position of each observer is the center of
the universe. Relativity teaches us that everything is
relative--which means there are no absolutes.

Agreed that relativity does teach us that there is no preferred place
from which to take a measurement, however, isn't it also reasonable
to assume that the universe did expand away from some point in the
universe's interior in the distant past?

No, not according the current cosmology (which is the only one that
adequately describes the bulk of the available observational evidence).

And that's fine. It's what the cosmologist should be doing - pursuing
a model that describes what they observe empirically. As far as
Relativity preventing there from being a universal center, I don't see
it. I only see that Relativity prevents us from finding it using yard
sticks and stopwatches.

In my opinion, astronomers do the world an injustice by describing the
Big Bang as something that happened long ago. The universe *is* the big
bang, expanding all around us; they are one in the same. And no, you
don't need a center in order for there to be an expansion, nor do you
need something (even nothingness) to expand into. Again, this is
earth-centered 3-dimensional thinking (see my flat earth analogy). In
the three-dimensional world that we perceive there is no center and
there never was one.

Fair enough. But in what dimension does the universe have a center?

The flat earth analogy isn't perfect--an improvement is to imagine a
two-dimensional creature who cannot observe the third dimension at all
(in this case the third dimension is "up and down"; the creature can
only know north/south and east/west). It's not just ignorance that
would keep such a creature from "seeing" the center of the earth. To
observe the center of the round earth would require "seeing" in a
dimension beyond their direct reality, something they could only weakly
imagine--or describe using mathematics. It is important to recall that
these weak analogies are only important as a means of explaining the
mathematics to those who do not "speak" the language of mathematics. It
is in the mathematics that cosmology truly lies.

Great, as long as what is observed coincides with the math model. I'm
worried that portions of the scientific community will begin to
propose/accept theories based mostly on mathematical models. Like the
non-falsify-able string theory.

This mess is so far over my head; my background is electrical. I only
got interested in astronomy a little over a year ago. Just trying to
get a slightly better understanding of the cosmos.

Thanks for all your feedback.

Errol

On Jan 28, 5:34 am, Michael McCulloch
wrote:
On 26 Jan 2007 12:39:14 -0800, "cantseeboo"
wrote:

Agreed that relativity does teach us that there is no preferred place
from which to take a measurement, however, isn't it also reasonable to
assume that the universe did expand away from some point in the
universe's interior in the distant past?You should purge yourself of the mental picture of the Universe
expanding from a point. The pretty animations you see in science films
of an explosion from a point flying outward in all directions is
frankly a terrible illustration. I wish film producers would stop with
that...

After telling the hapless reader of the terrible mental picture you
then forward this .....

Think of the Universe instead as the expanding surface of a
balloon.
Anything inside or outside of its surface is nothingness and doesn't
exist.


Funny,funny,funny, something like this -

http://www.opencourse.info/astronomy...ion_stars_sun/
celestial_sphere_anim.gif



So as the balloon expands, where is the center on the surface? This
should help you visualize that such a center point doesn't exist, and
never existed. In fact, at the moment of birth of the balloon surface
when it was infinitely small, every point of the surface was
coincident.

---
Michael McCulloch

To believe something like this you have to be a very 'special'
person,anyone else would be looking to find out what went wrong and
how astronomy descended into a celestial sphere bubble.The thing is
that nobody objects,nay,they promote this most ridiculous copncept of
the majesty of the celestial arena as if it is were the most profound
concept possible.

Is there nobody ashamed enough to burst this particular celestial
sphere balloon ?.

Starboard wrote:
Does it have a center in some higher dimension?

It might, but not necessarily. The universe need not exhibit radial
symmetry.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:57:16 -0800 (PST), (Brian Tung)
wrote:

It might, but not necessarily. The universe need not exhibit radial
symmetry.

Is radial symmetry a condition of having a center? I would think the
Universe must have a center in some higher dimension, regardless of its
shape and topology (even if that center isn't a simple point).

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com