Where are we?

[Lt.Del]

Where are we in the scope of the universe? Or, as recent research may imply, "our" universe, for our's may just be one in a series of parallel universes, which in turn causes the term to be a misnomer.  Polyverses may be more correct. But, all that aside, this video shows where Earth is in respect to our known and thus far observed universe.


http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100120.html

[Stewart G Griffin]

That's pretty fascinating.   But the problem i have is, how do they/we know the universe is a sphere?   How do we know what shape it is, if in fact it does have a shape?

[Lt.Del]

yeah, and how many dimensions are there for real?  3, 4 6?  Einstein was on to something when he saw this thing on space/time which are in conjuntion with themselves, not independent.

How do they know it is a sphere?  What they have digitized is only what they have observed, nothing more, nothing less.  That is why you see two gaps when panned out from the Milky Way, and more space filled in on the left-most areas where the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth has done more observations.

what is seen is only what has been directly observed.

[overthepond]

Ya'll lost me at the thread title...ha ha

[smitty77]

yeah, and how many dimensions are there for real?  3, 4 6?  Einstein was on to something when he saw this thing on space/time which are in conjuntion with themselves, not independent.

And the limiting factor is we have not figured out how to get out brains to render thoughts in 4-dimensions, which we need to do to generate models in time.  I did some advanced calculus work in college where we actually DERIVED the equations used for calculating the volume of a sphere.  That was enough to make my brain swim circles for a few hours so I can't fathom the thought power required to do it in 4 dimensions.

This model is severely flawed in that the outer extents are modeled as they were 5 BILLION YEARS AGO.  Of course we have no idea what those same places look like today because we're limited by the speed of light.  It's been said that once the human race figures out how to think in 4 dimensions (the 4th being time) then time-travel will be a reality.

Thanks for posting this.  Just awesome.

[MohterTrucker]

^I was just thinking that the farther from earth on the 'map', the older the info would be. As accurate as we can currently get, though.

[Lt.Del]

I was just thinking that the farther from earth on the 'map', the older the info would be.

the further out we see, the older the 'image' is.  When we put our telescopes on Jupiter, for example, you are looking back in time by 45 minutes.  When you put your telescope on our nearest galaxial neighbor, Andromeda, (messier 31 -M31) you are looking back in time by 2.5 million years, since it takes that long for light to reach us from there--even though that galaxy is getting closer to us.  Milky Way and Andromeda will eventually run into one another forming one giant galaxy.

We cannot see back 13.7 billion years at the instant of the big bang, that would take a real time machine since we cannot see the instant the universe was formed because we are part of that universe--quite a paradox.  We have built a Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland that smashes protons and will, hopefully, mimic the instant of the Big Bang.  Perhaps it will quantify the theories of quantam mechanics and general relativity.

We can see other galaxies form, but, cannot see our own galaxy form because it is our own galaxy, we wouldn't be here to be able to see our galaxy form.  However, we can see images of objects that are 13.7 billion lt years away, which would be on the 'other side' of the big bang...kind of confusing, but interesting nonetheless.

Getting back to the sphere idea, recent quantitative measurements resulting in the confirmation of the theory of the Big Bang, leads all physicists to agree, like all pyrontechnics experts agree, that an explosion disperses material in all directions, unless blocked in a certain direction by something (ie: a bomb on the road will propel debris in all directions evenly except down into the road, in which direction, the debris field will be limited).  Since the universe was formed in a vacuum where there was nothing, not even space, debris was forced, and is currently being forced, in all directions, creating a sphere.