What is the Universe Expanding Into?

By popular Space Fan request, I offer this video to help answer some of your questions regarding the expanding universe. Many of you consistently ask: If the universe is expanding, then what is it expanding into? This concept is non-trivial to try and explain in a 5 minute YT video, but I do my best. I hope this helps! Thanks to all of you space fans for watching this channel, it means a lot to me. Music from Kevin MacLeod: incompetech.com

Related posts:

  1. Speculating about the Universe as a quantum fluid
  2. From the Plank Length to the Observable Universe and beyond.
  3. MIT Prof Says Universe Is ‘Large Quantum Computer’
  4. MIT professor: the entire universe a quantum computer!
  5. The Quantum Apocalypse of The Holographic Universe

{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }

silveryashkul July 24, 2010 at 4:11 pm

@gregrutz - not Allah, I am creating the universe prove me wrong.

Frankyyourpimp July 24, 2010 at 4:13 pm

there is no “edge” to the universe, otherwise we would ask, well whats beyong the edge..

GlobalModders July 24, 2010 at 9:56 pm

What if the universe is a giant organism. Like that 1 cartoon show Osmosus jones or something. where they are organisms in the human body living like little humans. That show always made me think that we could be like that. but not likely.

Battery9876 July 25, 2010 at 5:15 pm

@GlobalModders I have been thinking about such a idea too. Leonard Susskind sees the universe like a sort of “creature” with a sort of DNA, among billions and billions of other universes with different “DNAs”.

breaneainn July 25, 2010 at 6:12 pm

@857frank There is no void, you are standing in the centre of the universe because you are right at the front of time, look anywhere else and you are looking backwards. The edge of the universe is the edge of time, not space.

breaneainn July 25, 2010 at 6:15 pm

@MistahFen No, I don’t wonder “who created” it, I wonder “what is it doing”. Ever asked yourself what the universe does? Didn’t think so.

breaneainn July 25, 2010 at 6:25 pm

@Battery9876 The multiverse idea makes each universe a “possibility machine” that generates every possibility limited by its initial conditions. The universe has to be big enough to contain everything that is possible for that universe. The limit is information, not time or space. headache now.

Battery9876 July 26, 2010 at 4:58 am

@breaneainn Yes but apparently space time has an amazing ability to spread, a bit like living cells.

Wouldn’t it be possible that over very large distances you start having sort of “mutations” in the properties of space time? Maybe some parts of the universe are beginning to “evolve” different properties.

Maybe that ability to spread started a very long time ago and has improved progressively “genetically” in the multiverse and now space-time is very good at spreading.

FmMan33 July 26, 2010 at 5:02 am

16 People are out dated nomads who enjoy reading nomadic tribal books.

breaneainn July 26, 2010 at 5:29 am

@Battery9876 I could go with that, there’s a similar idea that the universe gives birth to daughter universes through black holes, and they can evolve that way. Not keen on the universe slowly changing over long distances, but could see it over long time maybe.

Battery9876 July 26, 2010 at 9:52 am

@breaneainn I have heard about that theory yes.

What I was thinking was that the accelerated expansion of the universe is maybe due in fact to a sort of mutation that would make space-time more and more effective at spreading.

I’ve heard that they have found that the acceleration of the expansion has started 6 billion years ago. I was thinking that maybe it is caused by a sort of mutation that would have made space time even more effective at spreading. Very far-fetched I agree .

DoMiNaToR2465 July 26, 2010 at 10:33 am

How do scientist know that the universe is 13.5 billion years old. Can someone educate me.

breaneainn July 26, 2010 at 2:19 pm

@Battery9876 oh, i get what you mean, like whatever type of space it was, 6 b years ago, the spreading reached a point where it developed into a type of space that was extra good at developing and spreading, and had a kind of a growth-spurt. Never thought about it but I recon you’re not far off the money. Maybe dark energy/matter had something to do with it.

Battery9876 July 26, 2010 at 3:03 pm

@breaneainn I just had the idea from the theory of internal inflation. Maybe space time becomes better and better at expanding by a sort of phenomenon of natural selection.

The “mutation” of faster expansion would have had to appear well before 6 billion years ago because it would have had to “take over” a good part of the universe.

The universe is full of mysteries that’s for sure..

TehEpicFish July 26, 2010 at 10:32 pm

@DoMiNaToR2465 its a guestimate

titanicdbog July 26, 2010 at 11:46 pm

@jvandervalk don’t you just ahte when that happens? golly Gee whiz

TheTripp09 July 27, 2010 at 2:10 pm

16 now. 16 Morons.

Diabolic845 July 27, 2010 at 7:30 pm

Here is what i think about a finite universe: What if intelligent life, in a future generation, if ever reproduced, happens to be near the “edges” of a finite universe, would it then be able to see “beyond infinity”? Or detect the edge of the finite universe? If their range of detection is farther than the farthest distance we have ever seen, shouldn’t they be able to detect the out limit of the universe, where space/time doesn’t continue, I know they wont be able to see “nothing”.

Diabolic845 July 27, 2010 at 7:37 pm

But, won’t this intelligent life be able to understand what we have been trying to figure out since human life came to be? Won’t all this be possible if the Laws of Physics allow it? Will this form of life be able to answer the questions: “Why are we(in this sense, “them”) here; how did all this begin; and how will it end?” If the universe is truly finite, this form of life will be the first and probably the only set of life ever to understand the origins and us and them and maybe even spacetime

Diabolic845 July 27, 2010 at 7:41 pm

This life would detect what cannot be seen, and will know where it all comes to a stop. We may not of observed a boundary to the cosmos, but maybe, only maybe, a super-intelligent form of life will learn of things we never dreamed feasable, things we never new existed. They may truly know how the universe had begun, and how it will ultimately come to end.

turningspikeinfinite July 28, 2010 at 3:09 pm

@nimasha83 make that 16 ^_^

maddoxhell July 28, 2010 at 6:33 pm

@DoMiNaToR2465 The Universe is expanding all the time, so if you freeze it at a certain point and started playing it in reverse, you will come to a point where their is no more universe (point of the big bang) Scientists can measure the age of the universe by knowing the rate at which the universe is expanding, a rough estimate of how the big the universe is now and reversing it back to the point of the big bang!! This isnt 100% accurate but gives us a good estiamte to how old it is!

Leave a Comment

Previous post: Science: Maxwell-Quantum Theory

Next post: Ultra-Strong Interaction Between Light and Matter Realized