Looking into the past with a telescope

In article , Brian Tung wrote:

There are more complex cases, but they all involve the center not lying
on the universe itself, but somewhere else,

....and where is that "somewhere else" supposed to be?

I mean, isn't the universe supposed to be "everything that is, everything that
was, and everything that will be", instead of merely everything we could
in principle observe? If the universe really is *everything*, there cannot
be any "somewhere else".

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/

On Jan 28, 9:51 pm, "Greg Neill" wrote:
"Davoud" wrote in ...
Davoud:
I can think of no reason why the Universe can't have a central region
in three-dimensional space if the Big Bang theory is correct.

Greg Neill:
If the BB is correct, then every place in the 3D universe was
once co-located with the center. So there is no unique place
that one can call The Center, since every place equally
fulfills the role.

I have seen this argument in various guises. In /my/ /mind/ it breaks
down because of mixed verb tenses. "Every place /was/ /once/ co-located
in the center." OK, but "every place" departed the center when
space-time expanded, leaving the center behind. These "places" did not
all carry the center with them so that each one is now a center of its
own. Such a place -- a region that was denser than average due to a
quantum fluctuation and later became the core of a galaxy -- may be a
local center, but it is not the Universal center -- in /my/ /mind/ .Your difficulty with this seems to stem from your adhering to
a model where things exploded out from a center into a
pre-existing space or void. This is not the case in the BB
model where space itself expanded. There was nothing at
all (not even space) "outside".


Funny,funny,funny !,the poor guy will probably attempt to understand
it.

The antidote is to go outside and actually look on the celestial arena
where the great cycles and centers of rotations exist.He can now
appreciate the great Copernican insight using time lapse footage to
discern how the faster Earth overtakes the slower forward moving outer
planets to determine the axis of orbital motion around the central
parent star -

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

He can then try to move to the next level of rotation by using the
foreground stars and their rotation to the external galaxies,at least
in principle insofar as time lapse footage would take many,many years
to see how the local stars move like a giant galactic size carousel -

http://www2.tcworks.net/~djlewis/ast...essier/m81.jpg

Men are supposed to see these things but they bypass them for exotic
and nonsensical garbage.







Simple common sense says that the two-dimensional surface of a sphere
has no center -- I figured that out for myself while playing with a
solid-color, featureless rubber ball as a child -- but if you look
beyond the surface, inside the sphere, you will find a center.That's fine if you have the ability to look beyond the surface.
If you can't, then you're confined to looking on the surface.
The same thing holds for us, who can only point to things inside
the universe. There is no direction in all of space that we can
point to that is in the direction of a unique center in 3D space,
yet every direction points to the Big Bang (since we look back
in time as we look further out).- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -

We look out on the structure of the universe which is conditioned by
the Mora Luminis or Equation of Light as it was once known.It has
nothing to do with time but rather is a pure astronomical adjustment
that astronomers take into account when distances are beyond 186 000
miles.As the original discovery was based on geometry and the
heliocentric cycle there remains no basis for talking about 'looking
into the past' ,that is for idiots who know no geometry or know no
better.

The great heliocentric astronomers emerged from appreciating centers
of rotation,not just the central Sun and outr rotation around that
center but also the spinning Earth.There is even a larger and more
distant center of rotation as we participate in the motion of the
solar system around the galactic axis and maybe even greater centers
of rotation on scales on galaxies.

If men actually went outside and being real astronomers,started to
work off what they see in actuality rather than look at meaningless
nonn geometric equations.

Paul Schlyter wrote:
...and where is that "somewhere else" supposed to be?

I mean, isn't the universe supposed to be "everything that is, everything that
was, and everything that will be", instead of merely everything we could
in principle observe? If the universe really is *everything*, there cannot
be any "somewhere else".

From the context, I hope it is clear that we have been talking about the
universe as "a connected piece of space-time." Therefore, it need not
be "everything there is." If that piece of space-time is embedded in
some higher space (such as four-dimensional Euclidean space), which is
not actually necessary, then there can be a center to that universe that
does not lie within it.

--
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 Jan 29, 4:25 pm, (Brian Tung) wrote:
Paul Schlyter wrote:
...and where is that "somewhere else" supposed to be?

I mean, isn't the universe supposed to be "everything that is, everything that
was, and everything that will be", instead of merely everything we could
in principle observe? If the universe really is *everything*, there cannot
be any "somewhere else".From the context, I hope it is clear that we have been talking about the
universe as "a connected piece of space-time." Therefore, it need not
be "everything there is." If that piece of space-time is embedded in
some higher space (such as four-dimensional Euclidean space), which is
not actually necessary, then there can be a center to that universe that
does not lie within it.

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

A few months ago,the faster Mercury was overtaking the slower
orbitally moving Earth with the central Sun as a backdrop.

http://vt-2004.org/mt-2003/mt-2003-soho1999-normal.jpg

A chance to see how the orbital path of a planet conditions things
such as the seasons and how the orbital orientation changes against
fixed axial orientation -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...easonearth.png

Instead humanity is still subject to exotic early 20th century
nonsense,stuff that no longer interests people except those who bear
the symptoms of the 17th century celestial sphere disease.

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 15:28:41 -0500, Davoud wrote:

The problem is the edge.

Why? If you were close to the edge you would never even sense it in
any way since you only exist in our space-time, and any edge is by
definition outside of your existence.

Any edge is beyond our intuitive powers to comprehend.

Some theories even suggest the edge of the Universe is only a
sub-atomic distance from you at this very minute!

---
Michael McCulloch

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:31:04 -0500, Michael McCulloch
wrote:

Why? If you were close to the edge you would never even sense it in
any way since you only exist in our space-time, and any edge is by
definition outside of your existence.

Any edge is beyond our intuitive powers to comprehend.

Some theories even suggest the edge of the Universe is only a
sub-atomic distance from you at this very minute!

Indeed, just as if you were a 2D creature living on the surface of a
sphere, you are at all times living on the "edge". If you could only
figure out how to "turn" in that incomprehensible "direction". (I
remember an original Outer Limits episode about a being that could
"turn" in the fourth dimension, allowing it to appear and disappear
anywhere in the 3D world as if by magic.)

_________________________________________________

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

Chris L Peterson wrote:


(I remember an original Outer Limits episode about a being that could
"turn" in the fourth dimension, allowing it to appear and disappear
anywhere in the 3D world as if by magic.)

Indeed, my reading glasses and car keys perform this trick all the time...

Very interesting thread BTW.

"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
[snip]

Some theories even suggest the edge of the Universe is only a
sub-atomic distance from you at this very minute!

Indeed, just as if you were a 2D creature living on the surface of a
sphere, you are at all times living on the "edge". If you could only
figure out how to "turn" in that incomprehensible "direction". (I
remember an original Outer Limits episode about a being that could
"turn" in the fourth dimension, allowing it to appear and disappear
anywhere in the 3D world as if by magic.)

To me, it looks as though "the edge" of the universe around any individual
observer is simply a theoretical sphere of radius c*t where t is the age of
the observer and c is the speed of light.

[snip]

Chris L Peterson
--
I.N. Galidakis
http://ioannis.virtualcomposer2000.com/

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 15:31:04 -0500, I wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 15:28:41 -0500, Davoud wrote:

The problem is the edge.

Why? If you were close to the edge you would never even sense it in
any way since you only exist in our space-time, and any edge is by
definition outside of your existence.

Any edge is beyond our intuitive powers to comprehend.

Well, on second thought I will backtrack on this and say the actual
properties of any edge would be beyond our powers to imagine, however
we can use analogies to assist our comprehension.

Some theories even suggest the edge of the Universe is only a
sub-atomic distance from you at this very minute!

To expand on this in the context of "balloon world" just for fun:

Imagine that you are a transcendent being that lives in 3D space (God
of the balloon world if you will :-). You observe the inhabitants on
the surface of balloon world and see the boundary or edge of their
Universe. It doesn't appear mysterious or anything, just that the
inhabitants of balloon world only move around on the surface of the
balloon.

So the balloon world appears dimensionless for all practical purposes
in the 3rd dimension to you as God. For sake of argument though, let's
say maybe balloon world's surface does have a dimension, but it is
sub-atomic in scale. So the balloon world inhabitants do not sense it
at their macro scale (but their scientists have guessed that perhaps
this is the case).

In the course of scientific progress, the balloon world inhabitants
somehow come up with a theory that postulates a 3rd spatial dimension
beyond the two dimensions in which they exist. However, they cannot
visualize or observe the actual "edge" of their Universe. But, they
come up with an analogy: they think of "line world". The inhabitants
of line world only exist in one dimension, the balloon world
inhabitants would be Gods for them, and the balloon world scientists
use the analogy to comprehend dimensions beyond their own.

Furthermore, what if there are many balloon worlds consisting of
concentric balloon surfaces that never intersect but are only
sub-atomic distances from each other. As God I could see all of the
balloon worlds, but the inhabitants of each never sense the existence
of all the other balloon worlds even though they are only at
sub-atomic distances.

So as an astronaut in balloon world, I could fly my spaceship for
eternity and never find the edge of my balloon. What a waste, since
all that time the edge was just a sub-atomic distance away!

Many of you will recognize this as M-Theory. :-) Of course, most
books present it in the context of 'branes', whereby the analogy
becomes multiple Universes that exist on infinite sheets that are
parallel in a higher dimension. I prefer that form of the analogy in
some ways since it illustrates how our Universe could be flat (which
is what the current data suggests) and appear infinite in extent.

---
Michael McCulloch

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:39:30 +0200, "Ioannis"
wrote:

To me, it looks as though "the edge" of the universe around any individual
observer is simply a theoretical sphere of radius c*t where t is the age of
the observer and c is the speed of light.

You need to distinguish between the edge of the Universe, and the edge
of the observable Universe. They aren't the same thing. You are
describing the latter.

_________________________________________________

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