Religious

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by Actor

..the solar system cannot be at the center of the universe since the universe has no center for anything to be at.

Huh?

You've said that the universe has no center.
You've produced ideas supposedly supporting that.
Puzzling about that, I still find that sentence hard to comprehend.
Isn't everything "at" some place, if only empty space???

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

Huh?

You've said that the universe has no center.
You've produced ideas supposedly supporting that.
Puzzling about that, I still find that sentence hard to comprehend.
Isn't everything "at" some place, if only empty space???

P.S.
If the universe is finite there is a center.
If the universe is expanding in space, there is a center in that space.
If the universe is in some time ...warp perhaps, there is a center.
If something exists, there is a center.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

P.S.
If the universe is finite there is a center.
If the universe is expanding in space, there is a center in that space.
If the universe is in some time ...warp perhaps, there is a center.
If something exists, there is a center.

I will repeat what I said earlier.

The big bang was not an explosion in the ordinary sense happening in 3 dimensions like a bomb exploding from one central location. Rather all dimensions of space itself (spacetime) expanded.

The 2-dimensional surface of the balloon is an analog to our 3-dimensional space.

The 3-dimensional space in which the balloon is expands is not analogous to any higher dimensional space. Points off the surface of the balloon are not in the “universe” in this simple analogy.

The center of the balloon corresponds to nothing in our universe.
The universe may be limited in size and growing like the surface of the expanding balloon. But it could also be infinite. No one knows.

"We do not know whether the Universe is finite or not. To give you an example, imagine the geometry of the Universe in two dimensions as a plane. It is flat, and a plane is normally infinite. But you can take a sheet of paper [an 'infinite' sheet of paper] and you can roll it up and make a cylinder, and you can roll the cylinder again and make a torus [like the shape of a doughnut]. The surface of the torus is also spatially flat, but it is finite. So you have two possibilities for a flat Universe: one infinite, like a plane, and one finite, like a torus, which is also flat".... Professor Joseph Silk. Head of Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

[Greyfox]

Is that your answer?

[hcap]

Yes.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

You're a physicist so I suspect what you are saying is probably right.
But I'm having a hard time wrapping my limited brain around that concept.

Everyone has a hard time wrapping their brain around that concept because we live in what appears to be a three dimensional universe. You have to trust the math and the evidence that there may be more than three dimensions.

Try reading this book. It's a classic and your local library may have it. The math is not too hard. The "flatlander" in the book has a hard time wrapping his brain around a concept that we handle easily: a sphere.

http://www.amazon.com/Flatland-Roman...any+dimensions

[Greyfox]

It's available as an e book free at:

https://archive.org/details/flatlandromanceo00abbouoft

I see what the author is getting at, but after reading 90 pages or so rapidly,
I quickly concluded:
"Thank God I didn't buy this book."
It's just not the type of literature that I enjoy.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

Assuming you are not playing word games and that "heart of" means "center of" then the solar system cannot be at the center of the universe since the universe has no center for anything to be at.

It is not necessary for the universe to be infinite for it to have no center. It merely has to have a non-Euclidean geometry. See the link I posted in #14559.

The earth appears to be flat if you only observe a small portion of it. But we know it to be a sphere. Similarly, the universe appears to be flat, i.e., Euclidean, if you observe only a small portion of it, say a few million light years. The present consensus among astronomers is that the universe is non-Euclidean.

Of course, the universe has a "center" if it's finite. All finite things have definite and definable limits.

Boxcar

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

Huh?

You've said that the universe has no center.
You've produced ideas supposedly supporting that.
Puzzling about that, I still find that sentence hard to comprehend.
Isn't everything "at" some place, if only empty space???

"Empty space" is an oxymoron. Matter is what tells us that there is space.

Boxcar

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by boxcar

"Empty space" is an oxymoron. Matter is what tells us that there is space.

Boxcar

Of course, it depends how you use the words.
In the most technical sense you are correct.
Yet have you ever left empty spaces on a Government form?


The fact is there may be no space that is truly empty!

[YT="Empty Space?"]J3xLuZNKhlY[/YT]

[YT="Is Space Empty?"]y4D6qY2c0Z8[/YT]

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Of course, the universe has a "center" if it's finite. All finite things have definite and definable limits.

Boxcar

That statement is inconsistent with mathematical fact and incompatible with modern cosmology. I suggest you re-read #14559 and #14565, then read the ebook which Greyfox has so graciously provided a link to in #14572.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

Of course, it depends how you use the words.
In the most technical sense you are correct.
Yet have you ever left empty spaces on a Government form?


The fact is there may be no space that is truly empty!

[YT="Empty Space?"]J3xLuZNKhlY[/YT]

Let me add to that. Matter is constantly fluctuating in and out of existence. For some reason, that detail was left out of Genesis

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...l#.VBB6x2OubuA

It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations

Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.

The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons. These particles provide almost all the mass of ordinary matter.

Each proton (or neutron) is made of three quarks - but the individual masses of these quarks only add up to about 1% of the proton's mass. So what accounts for the rest of it?

Theory says it is created by the force that binds quarks together, called the strong nuclear force. In quantum terms, the strong force is carried by a field of virtual particles called gluons, randomly popping into existence and disappearing again. The energy of these vacuum fluctuations has to be included in the total mass of the proton and neutron.

Of course these fluctuations happen on a extremely tiny time scale and are called "virtual" particles. So the question is are they real?

http://io9.com/5731463/are-virtual-particles-for-real

...Throughout it all, you might be tempted to think that they really are just a math trick. They don't last very long, and presumably since they always come in pairs, the positive charges will always cancel the negative ones, so it's hard to imagine how we'd detect them. But virtual particles, or at least the net effect of them, really can be detected, at least indirectly.

One of the most famous measurements supporting the idea that virtual particles really are real is the so-called Casimir Effect Suppose you have a pair of conducting plates. Because they're conducting, you can't produce an electric field inside them. (In quantum field theory, the Casimir effect and the Casimir–Polder force are physical forces arising from a quantized field.) As a result, only certain wavelengths of "virtual photons" are allowed to exist. Net-net, this means that there is a lower energy density between the plates than outside, and the two plates are pushed together, because the universe really likes to make energy as low as possible. Hendrik Casimir actually measured this in 1948, but I warn you not to try it at home, since the effect is very small and requires a serious vacuum.



And low and behold Matter and energy are being created right now. 6,000+ years after BISHOP USSHER DATED THE CREATION OF THE FIRST DAY OF THE WORLDS as on Sunday 23 October 4004 BC

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

That statement is inconsistent with mathematical fact and incompatible with modern cosmology. I suggest you re-read #14559 and #14565, then read the ebook which Greyfox has so graciously provided a link to in #14572.

And what about the statement is inconsistent? Don't all finite things have definite and well defined limits?

Boxcar

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

Of course, it depends how you use the words.
In the most technical sense you are correct.
Yet have you ever left empty spaces on a Government form?

So space on a form = a fundamental component of the universe?

The fact is there may be no space that is truly empty!

Quite true. Even an empty room is not really empty.

Boxcar

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

And what about the statement is inconsistent? Don't all finite things have definite and well defined limits?

Boxcar

No.

Google elliptic geometry.