It's hard for me to guess what is just beyond our universe, since it would likely be nothing like our universe. I see the universe somewhat mathmaticly and can't visualize it. But in the spirit of the "flatland" book I will venture kind of a guess.
I see the universe as the outermost ring of a ripple in another dimension. The "splash" if you will, was the big bang, and as the ripple moves out over the surface of an underlying dimension it grows and creates itself. Outside this "ripple" is a dimension that has no counterpart in our 3 space dimensions and time. The ripple will eventually dissapate as the initial energy of the big bang spreads to a larger and larger area.
Well, that seems pretty lame when I re-read it.
Another analogy is that the universe, if were two dimensions, would be like the skin of a balloon which was being blown up. As the balloon gets bigger, any patch on the skin gets farther from other patches. Again what is outside that balloon skin is non-balloon so it doesn't make sense to go there, in a physical sense, since our universe's laws of physics would not apply. If we could telepathicly go there, I have no idea what it would look like.
(I can say somethings about an entity outside the baloon interacting with the baloon, they couldn't, that is any interaction may change the shape of the baloon skin, but would not be part of the baloon.) Then again maybe if God had a pin he could do us in with one prick.
the standard cosmological model predicts that the universe will expand forever.
sciam.com
What do you think? |
