The ultimate q.
 

Hey, i have the ultimate question and no its not the meaning of life.
What do you believe is outside space. It can't just go on forever, there must be something that it is in! I would be interested to know peoples views on this matter.

Re: The ultimate q.
 

Space is infinite, there is nothing beyond it.

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that is what "space" is, a vaccum, an empty space, so the only thing beyond somewhat empty space is even emptier space, with the ocassional celestial body and alien spaceship.

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Infinity is such a hard concept to grasp, yet until someone comes up with a better explanation, I'll stick with 'space goes on forever'.

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For all practical purposes space is infinite. But it does make you wonder how it can be infinite when it's expanding...

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The end of Men In Black is quite a good explanation

I cant see a problem with the infinity of space.
But maybe some giant tub thats got a bit of mould in side in some lab or kids bedroom or something it all sounds daft but ya never know

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Space is infinite, that is why it is called space. Why wouldn't it be able to be infite? Just like time not everything has a start and an end, we just came up with that to make ourselfs feel more comfortable. Humans "need" to put everything in it's own little catogory and tag it but it isn't as simple as that.

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u know what? we'll never actually find out. so rather ask simple stuff like "why does dönitz sound similar to doughnuts"

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If everybody only asked simple questions, life would be a lot easier, :P.

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If we could travel at several million times the speed of light we could, in theory, reach the edge of the universe. What would happen there though? woild reality cease to exist as we know it?

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Assuming there is an edge. Honestly it's never going to happen in my life time, so I'm not even going to stress over it. I'm going to spend my time trying to better the world, since I'll be long dead before we even scratch the surface of that question. I find it better left to philosophers and astronomers ;)

Definitely would be interesting to find out, though. I just don't have enough information to make even an educated guess.

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more space??
or we could all be the imaginings of a dung beetle somewhere and its whatever it wants thats outside sapce :)

sorry just the ramblings of me lol

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Nothing - Put Simply!

I can't remember where it is, but there was someone who had a neat definition of it, something regarding a sphere and eternal roundless!!! - If that helps (if that person is still about, feel free to mention it).

Although the thought can be somewhat frightening, there is nothing anyone can do to find out. I doubt humanity ever will, we will probably kill ourselves first, or, if not, we wont be able to reach it.

Space (the universe) is growing, so whenever we thought we were at the edge, there would be more distance to travel. Another way of looking at it, is say we reach the edge, and enter it, we would just re-enter at the other side.

Think of it as a room with two doors, you walk through one and end up walking back into the room through the other!

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Out side of space? Paralell universes... But, realy, its infinite, it grows at a few million miles an earth day...

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It can go on forever, its just the human mind can't fully comprehend such a though seeing as nothing lasts forever in our lives. What lies outside the universe? Well theoretically nothing, seeing as the universe encompasses everything there is. Practically thought there was nothing there but empty space previous to the universes' expansion into it. However space can only be described in terms of the distance between physical objects (such as planets and galaxies). You can not measure the distance between nothing and nothing, nor can you observe any change in this distance if you have no point of reference. If we assume our universe contains all the matter there is, and we can observe how far away this matter is from the central point, from where it all initially started, than anything (empty space) beyond this matter is meaningless as we cannot measure it. Because of this we say there is nothing outside our universe. I'm not sure if that all makes sense, but hopefully it does.

If I'm not mistaken we are also not sure if our universe contains enough matter to sustain this expansion indefinitely, whether it will eventually stop expanding and remain that size or whether it will stop expanding and then begin to collapse back in on itself. That's why there's so much fuss about "dark matter", to find if our universe contains enough matter not to implode in on itself. (Although that wont be happening any time soon so don't worry! :p)

In short, we don’t really know but like to make theories and assumptions to make ourselves feel better and more secure. :)

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It's like Energizer, it just keeps going! Maybe, MAYBE, if you travel far enough, you MIGHT encounter other planets. But, as stated in other posts, we have no idea how far away the actual edge of the universe is.

Re: The ultimate q.
 

The answer is...



42

(Seriously though, I think space is always expanding. I think it will continue expanding for ever, whatever happens. (Except the case of someone setting up us the bomb))

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You mean if someone blows up space? I don't think that is possible...

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Not yet it isn't.

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I can't see why anybody hasn't mentioned this, but I thought I'd add this philosopihcal point of view in...

When you reach the end of the space as we know it, you travel onto white backing because either the film strip has run out or the black pencils are all broken. Simple really.

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:agreed

But yeah, you can't blow up space. If you managed to somehow, someway, even though its not possible, blow up space, it would just create a "tear" in space and lead to not only everything in space to die/cease to exist, but it would create a new "space" throught that "tear."

My theory on that.

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maybe they have somethings that are bigger than galaxies? maybe stars as wide as a galaxy? Maybe just infinite vaccum of space?

and if there IS a wall..what is behind it? more wall? then what? more wall? then infinite wall? and THEN more Vaccum AGAIN?

about the bomb..I heard if a large and strong enough explosion happens in a vaccum a wormhole might appear.

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Theres no wall, theres just nothing out there, I explained it a bit more above :)

or a black hole, like when a big star dies.

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Some people claim that it is possible that wormholes appear and disappear all the time. The only problem is that you need some kind of material filled in the wormhole to create a sort of tunnel which keeps it open for longer than a fraction of a second.

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the space infinite thing reminds me of a little theory I thought up(maybe lots of others think the same who knows) its about how the atom is the smallest building block of things. well what if it dosent stop at the atom? what if atoms, and the electrons, protons, and neutrons are made up of smaller things that are made up of mre smaller things and so on?

crazy and stupid idea? yeah but I like it. sorry for going off topic but I remembered it and had to post it.

If someone goes into a black hole with a space ship or something what would happen to him?

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You'd be ripped apart, the gravitional differnce from your head to your toe is so great that your body would be pulled apart towards the black hole where it would be crushed to an infinetly small dot. That is assuming you pass the "event horizon" this is a distance at which nothing, not even light can escape the black hole gravtionaly pull. For an nearby observer of this you would appear to forever remain on the event horizon, this is because the light that is travelling to you (at the speed of light) is beeing pulled in the opposite direction by the black hole (also at the speed of light on the event horizon) so it would appear as if time had frozen. If somehow you did manage to survive getting into a black hole then nobody actually knows what would happen, there's theory of "white holes", the direct opposite of black that spew out all this matter somewhere else in the universe but I have a feeling the idea isnt much liked by the scientific community but cant remember why...

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Well, sorry to disappoint you but someone else had that idea as well. Those subatomic particles are called quarks and are rather confusing :)

As for the black hole, your spaceship would be torn apart by tidal forces and added to the mass of the black hole. Over time you'd probably come out again in form of radiation.

Someone who would watch you approaching the black hole would get the impression that you get slower and slower the closer you come to the event horizon (a line surroduning the black hole where gravity is so strong that even light can't escape).

edit: seems as if IR15H was a bit faster :)

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According to the big bang theory, Space must have started from something, which we assume to be a very unstable containment "device" (used loosely to represent the fact that we don't know). Therefore, we can assume correctly that space does have an edge; it is continually moving at a rate too fast to comprehend. Therefore, we might possibly never know. However if space does have an edge, what exists outside?

More space. Or rather more universes. This theory stems from the idea that there is more than one universe in the area we know simply as everything (everything being...everything). Universes could be joined together through wormholes, which extend across interuniversal mediums (nothingness?). Or they could be connected in the sense that the Big Crunch may also lead to another Big Bang.

This is just a theory however.

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Big Brother.

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After we tackle this one, we can go on to answer more fun questions like, "What is the color of a second?" or "How does sound taste?" Then for the finale we can prove that black is white and get killed in the next zebra crossing[/PLAGARISM]

With all honesty, this question is impossible to answer. Emptiness has no edge. Emptiness is the lack of an edge. Perhaps it would be easier to consider the last object in space (some asteriod or such) as the "edge", and the infinite space extending beyond that as what is outside of space. We only define space by a lack of material, so there is nothing more nothing than nothing. Got it? No? Take an Advil, this is brain-hurtin' stuff!

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Good brain exercise to ponder things like this. If I had my way there would be a big sign that says, "You've Reached The End Of The Cosmos. Please Turn Around."

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Well, we could ask the same question about the internet.

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It would never be, you can't blow up space (as there is nothing to blow up) - You can blow up planets, nebulas, stars etc but not space!

A nice theory, but then, if that were the case here, the film strip or pensil would simply get replaced.

Good question... In theory you would die, but then, if you entered a black hole, as far as you knew nothing would have changed and you would not be aware of it (unless you flew into one on purpose) - Everything would just be slower than it should be, so say, you were in a black hole, wheras a minute would go past in your time, a week may have gone past in earth time!

Good theory, but there would be the question of what is at the end of them - Back to Square one!

Everything has some sort of edge! If the universe if growing (which is it) it has to be (in theory) growing into something else - Thus, there has to be an edge that is hitting the something else!

Good Point :p - But this question (with the right people) could be answered! :)

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How do THEY know sace is expanding anyway they could just be lying. Or it could have gone as far as it can and stopped. Not because it cant go on anymore but it just stopped. There are a lot of strange things out there and everything is just a theory of some dude with mad hair. How can they possibly know what would happen in such situasions if they cant go there and study it. Same goes for black holes.

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If it stopped, what was the reason for the stopping?

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cause it was board with getting bigger and bigger so it went screw this im not going anywhere anymore and thats that so there

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:rolleyes: Right, well then ut must have hit something! If so, then what? Besides, I *think* it's been scientifically proved that space / the universe is in fact growing!

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I said it got board not hit something
How did THEY prove it was growing what tests did they do im not saying it cause its bull I would genuinly like to know

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I don't know, I guess were going to have and wait till someone with the knowlege tells us!

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In theory, the answers given in this thread could be said for the internet as well, since no one can track everything online, and it's constantly growing, no?

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Your twisting my words :p - The Internet could collapse, the Universe can't!

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What makes you so sure?

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We observe something called a "red shift", A star for example will emit light at a certain frequency and if we detect the same fequency on earth then we know the object to be stationary, relative to us. If the two objects are moving away apart then a slightly longer wavelength will be detected, which has been observed thus we believe the universe to be expanding.

The universe could collapse, it depends on the amount of mass in the universe, something which we dont know.

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"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, thinking like me and wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
--Albert Einstein

dont remember woh said it but: "there are only 2 things we believe to be infinite space, and human stupidity. But we're not real sure about space"

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The universe is shaped in a way that when you go in a straight line you eventually end up back where you started. Some think that it is a 'U' shape, and that it is like the Earth - you could travel in a straight line and still end up where you started eventually due to gradients.

Another interesting point about the 'U' universe theory is that wormholes could be proven to exist - a wormhole could simply transport someone from one side of the 'U' to the other by going across the gap, which would take much less time and could explain why they lead to other sides of the galaxy in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

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My Sphere Theory?

Would this not be an O though rather than a U? an O is all round, wheras a U has a beginning and an end!

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Meh I wasnt disappointed, If I a not so smart person, typical person thought it up, then a scientist most likely did. do you know who he(maybe she) is?





I love space.

Re: The ultimate q.
 

All really good answers. Espicially the donitz doughnuts 1. I just thought i'd say that i didnt know that space expands all the time but eventually we must reach the edge of it but it'll be a while cos my mates physics teacher(Mr.T - Fool, wont let us eat in the radio room) said that there are more stars inthe universe than there are grains of sand on the earth! Not too many!
Interesting points

Re: The ultimate q.
 

As I have been reading your guys' posts.. I began to wonder myself...

How do you know space goes on forever? Where does that say anywhere? Its just an inference probably made by scientists... I mean Space could not even be really called space, it could end somewhere.. We just dont know it. IMO they should call it something else....Wheres the proof?

Re: The ultimate q.
 

but you dont understand. when we reach the edge. there is no edge, there is propably more and more space behind the current space we have. If the edge is reprisented by a wall. then the wall will keep going on forever because it also needs an edge. and if there IS an edge to this wall, there is certainly more space behind that wall.

thats just a way of looking at space as infinite.