Universe - open or closed?

Well?

Falafel-shaped.

We can't really even ascertain how big the Universe really is. How then, could we possibly know if there aren't even larger units of measure out there, such as many universes.

Just worry about this one. Is it open? or will it collapse?

If you're going to go off on some other theory you must must MUST explain it.

Please?

post transition in many explanations of how things work.

But I'm not having any of this 'impossible to explain' nonsense.

... not of the correct breeding, right?

The Universe is flat.

"The geometry of the Universe is flat. This means the geometry you learned in high school applies over the largest distances in the universe.
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/mr_content.html

I love this place.

:loveya:

That's assuming you are talking about our current 3D space-time Universe, not a larger multiverse.

I always liked Klein Bottles and the Mobius Strip.

But I Never could visualize "Finite, but unbounded" (ballon's do not do it for me!) Real world grows while what is not real world makes room for it?

You know -- that whole Flatland metaphor.

and in fact the rate of expansion of the Universe may be increasing (instead of decreasing as one would expect due to gravity).

Do any of you guys have links to websites that could help explain these open universe/ closed universe theories to me?

so I say closed.

It's neither open nor closed; neither expanding nor contracting. The universe simply is. We simply are. This tasty Coca-Cola simply is.

Thanks for playing. :hi:

Shoes and shirt required.

The universe keeps expanding. One by one the stars flare up and burn out into pale ghosts that gradually dissipate into a thin gas. Until all there is is a dark, cold void, lit every hundred quadrillion years or so by the tiny flare of a subatomic particle from a hydrogen atom decaying. But given enough time, even these will be gone, and there will be nothing, nothing, nothing forever. Everything is doomed.

Don't forget, neutrons with their half-life of billions of years will begin to decay, the resulting microwave radiation will fill what's left.

with half lifes on order of 10^31 years or so. Neutrons (by themselves) have a half life of about 10 min or so! :-)

Its' either IN or OUT.

I think it is round, so when you think you are going into infinite
space, it curves around to the same spot

If it's closed we'll never circumnavigate it so even if closed, from our perspective it might as well be open.

We must have been taught by the same great minds (albeit I was the C student!)

:-)

So now we disagree.
:-)

:-)

an oscillator...when the current universe collapses, it creates a new one, and so on...

The trouble is getting all those pesky photons & neutrinos back from 100 billion light years away after the neutron heat-death arrives.

.. there is not enough matter/energy for it to be a closed universe.

Then there is the mysterious repulsive "dark energy" to take into account as well. (an intrinsic property of the vacuum itself? Or Einstein's predicted repulsive gravity due to negative pressure? If so, where is this negative pressure?)

It's been recently discovered that the expansion is accelerating.. that also makes it seem like the universe is open and will expand indefinitely....

But hey, the jury is still out.

Heyo

This one and the post above it are why I just can't make up my mind!

.. the episode of the Simpsons where Steven Hawking was on.

Homer, you theory of a donut-shaped universe intrigues me..

I chuckled.. and there really is a theory of different shapes for the universe and one is indeed a torus shape. (donut shaped)

Heyo

gone fishing
back in five minutes
on vacation
just stepped out

The tenth door is real in that as you pass through any of the nine doors, the universe still has nine doors. It resets itself, so to speak. So the tenth door functions as a kind of place holder. It may be that the tenth door is an invention of consciousness, or it may be more of an emergent structure, or it may be that is a fundamental structrure of the universe which imposes itself upon consciousness. It remains forever indeterminate. It is not in the nature of the tenth door to allow itself to be revealed as anything but an empty place holder.

You could get all mystical about the tenth door. Many do. However the insights that can be arrived at by dwelling in the 10th door do not lend themselves to passage through the other nine doors. Concievably, topological algebras of the 10th door might approximately describe its placeholder function, and seem to elucidate its nature, but it would remain empty, if hyperdimensional. It cannot be transcended eidetically. It is too lucid for that. Paradoxically, the 10th door, the most open of all the doors, remains the most closed to knowledge.

by definition, the UNIVERSE encompasses ALL.

Anything you might conceive as being outside of the universe automatically becomes part of it.

Of course, if your definition of the universe is limited to the physical realm of far-flung galaxies which man can discern, then I would definitely say there are very likely components of reality beyond a universe thus defined.

But to me, the universe includes all physical, psychic, spiritual, and other forces which play a part in it -- whether discernable or even conceivable by humankind.

no basis, just like the thought of stellar recycling.

I have trouble with both the concept of something that goes on forever and the concept of there being something outside the universe--unless it's something like that sequence in one of the Simpson's openings.

Otherwise there'd be no gateway to E-Space. :D

Jerry Falwell's universe is small and closed.

I hope.

:shrug:

i guess it matters if it's prime. the universe. is it prime? divisible only by one and itself? universe.