Cheat Engine

ipivb · Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2011 9:15 am Post subject:

You couldn't be farther from the truth.

If all matter was flying away from an origin, that origin would be considered the center of the universe.

The big bang wasn't an explosion at all. I don't just mean that there wasn't any sound -- I mean when you think of an explosion, you picture matter flying away in all directions away from a single point. This is not what the big bang is.

You are correct that matter was concentrated in an infinitesimal point smaller than an atom -- however you have to realize that it was infinitely dense. An infinite amount of matter was created, and the expansion of space itself (the big bang) caused that infinite amount of matter to grow less dense, but still infinite (infinity can cancel out infinity).

Lets ignore dark flow for a moment because it's relatively new. Lets just stick with the standard model for now:

If galaxies were flying away from a point of origin, we'd be able to see that. And we don't. Galaxies are actually quite still. But they are getting farther apart from each other. That is what we mean by the "expansion of space". Think of it as space creating more space.

It is not possible for matter to be finite and space to be infinite. It wouldn't make mathematical sense and doesn't fit our standard model. It's either one or the other, and right now, it's looking like space and matter is infinite.

To further explain the idea of infinity to you... this means that we are having this exact same debate, in the same situation... an infinite number of times! Infinity has no end.

If you don't believe me, look it up yourself. Google "what is space expanding into" and you'll see the answer. The easiest way to describe it is to picture a balloon with dots on it. As you inflate the balloon, the dots stay stationary, but the space between them is expanding. This is what our universe does. And 12 years ago we discovered that it's not only expanding -- it's also accelerating. We don't know why, but we use dark energy as theoretical force to explain why it is accelerating.

The balloon analogy represents a closed universe though. Since our universe is flat, it's better to imagine a bed sheet that is infinite, and has an infinite number of dots evenly spaced out on it. Now imagine it being stretched in every direction. If you were to focus on any single dot, it would appear that all the other dots are moving away from you, and your dot is the center of the bed sheet. But there is no center because it's infinite. It doesn't matter which dot you look at -- it will look the same. This is the cosmological principle. Our universe looks the same everywhere -- there are no special places (for example places that don't have matter, or have a lot of matter -- instead it's uniform).

And that's precisely what we see when we look out our telescopes. All galaxies appear to be moving away from us. The ones that are twice as far away are moving twice as fast, three times as far are moving three times as fast and so on. And that's exactly what you'd see if you were a dot on the bed sheet and the space in between the dots is expanding.

elpacco · Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2011 5:04 pm Post subject:

Now you're the one contradicting yourself. You're saying that galaxies are still, yet they're moving? You said that they're not flying away from each other, but they're becoming farther apart from each other?

I understand infinity perfectly well. I really am confused how you don't understand how an infinite universe with finite matter works. The thing about space is that it isn't so much infinite as it is...undefined. All space is is a massive empty void, and then there's some matter in it.

If you're saying that there's an infinite amount of matter, then me, being a chunk of that matter, also have an infinite amount of matter. Do you see why that doesn't make sense?

However, as long as there's an infinite universe, it really doesn't matter how much matter there is, as long as it's not 0 or infinite. You can figure out the density of the universe by doing mass / volume. Since the universe is infinite, the amount of volume of the universe that is taken up by mass is zero. Therefore, m/0 = inf, and that's how you can say things are infinitely dense. Technically, everything is infinitely dense because it doesn't take up any of the universe's space. Now, if there was an infinite amount of matter, the density would be 1, because infinity cancels out infinity, like you said. With a density of 1, that means that there is no empty space. Obviously that's not true, because even a single atom is almost entirely empty space.

ipivb · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 3:04 am Post subject:

Galaxies are not moving. The space between them is growing.

Dark energy causes space to expand. Since that expanding space is "pushing" on every galaxy from all directions (and we take the 3rd law of motion into account), the galaxies do not actually move. It's just that the space in between them is expanding, causing them to be farther apart from each other.

In quantum mechanics, there really is no such thing as "nothing". Nothing is really a bubbling, boiling brew of virtual particles popping in and out of existence. In fact, this is how the universe was created:

Because space is infinite, that means there was an infinite number of virtual particles, whose fluctuations lead to an infinite amount of matter. How could you even mathematically explain a finite amount of matter? For example, lets scale down the big bang for simplicity of explanation and say that the big bang created 100 atoms (a finite amount of matter). Why is it exactly 100? Why isn't it 80, or 150? There's no mathematical explanation as to why there would be a finite amount of matter.

Empty space was infinite, therefor virtual particles were infinite, therefor energy was infinite, therefor matter was infinite.

The energy density of empty space goes down by 1 over the volume. Your math is correct, but let me explain further:

The primeval atom (less than an atom -- infinitesimally small) that was in the beginning, was in fact infinitely dense. There was no empty space, because that point WAS the entire universe. There is no "outside the universe". In a certain sense, we are still inside that infinitesimal tiny point, because the universe itself has nothing outside it to expand into. The universe is everything.

The energy density was 100%, like you say, however due to inflation and the expansion of space, the infinite amount of matter was spread apart as more space was being created. Infinity is very weird to make sense out of, you can't really explain it with words, you have to use math.

The main thing you have wrong though is that you are confusing the words "universe" and "space". The universe consists of all space and matter. Space means the fabric which matter and energy can exist inside, and it's also where energy comes from: the separation of space into positive and negative energy.

Space is infinite, yet more of it is being created. Space has always been infinite, but it has expanded and that's why it's possibly to have "empty space", even though there is both an infinite amount of space and infinite amount of matter.