is space magnified?

[soft_rain]

Maybe what we see looking into space is already magnified, but we just don't realize it. The universe may not be as big as we think it is...sort of like getting beyond "the earth is flat" way of thinking.

 

[kmarinas86]

Perhaps. I'd favor that we are so ignorant about the universe, that we don't realize that the sizes we see in the universe are distorted by a sort of optical illusion effect.

 

[vogon13]

Euclidian geometry has been used to estimate the distance to a supernova in the Megellanic Clouds, ~160,000 light years away.<br /><br />Your effect, if real, is only operable beyond there, at the very least.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[qso1]

The heart of your question seems to exhibit a kind of discomfort at the idea of such a large Universe. I know of no optical effect or evidence for one that would make it smaller.<br /><br />However, the one thing I have found is that beyond parallax measurements of nearby stars. The percentage error of other methods of measurement becomes larger the further out one measures. The most reliable of the measuring technicques I can recall is "Cephied variable" stars. <br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheid_variable<br /><br />If you measure the distance to say, a quasar thats estimated at 12 B light years out, the error rate could be in the hundreds of thousands to millions of LYs either way. Not too long ago, astronomers measured the distance to either the LMC or SMC with Hubble. The result was 169,000 Ly as opposed to the previously held 170,000 Ly. This implied a smaller Universe. Just recently, can't find the link just now. They announced the Universe to be larger than previously thought based on some new measurement.<br /><br />Galaxies sighted at extreme distances in some cases are similar to those nearby. They exhibit no magnification phenomenon that I'm aware.<br /><br />In the end, we really don't yet have a verification as to the Universe size based on the furthest known object. The furthest known today puts the furthest observable part of the Universe at 13.5 B light years. The Universe may still be larger by a significant factor. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[soft_rain]

I guess what I'm getting at is...you can take an ordinary camera and zoom out and then zoom in and the effects are startlingly different. The image moves and gets bigger (or smaller). Just wondering if space could be similar to that also?

 

[spaceinvador_old]

<br />Yes, the universe may be much... smaller than most of us "can imagine." Light has to pass through invisible gasses and I'd guess gravity such as the affects from black holes. The light we see in the universe is more altered the further the light source is from us. IMO <br /><br />I've heard there are as many stars as there are grains of sand on the earth's beaches. Nobody knows what they can't imagine... even when they think they can.<br /><br />

 

[oscar1]

If we would imagine a cluster of black holes at some reasonable distance from our solar system, and, at again some reasonable distance away [from that cluster], a nice bright star behind it, we would be unaware of that bright star being where it is. Now, if the light of that star would pass many another black hole, or other intense sources of gravity, that light may actually reach us via a detour, giving us the impression that there is a bright star out there, in the, for example, opposite direction from where it actually is, looking like being some one hundred times farther away than it actually is. I reckon therefore, that a possible magnification is the least of our problems when trying to figure out what is out there and where.

 

[qso1]

soft_rain:<br />I guess what I'm getting at is...you can take an ordinary camera and zoom out and then zoom in and the effects are startlingly different...<br /><br />Me:<br />Anythings possible to be sure. But for now, one of the things I look at is galaxies. We can get pretty detailed images of M-31 (Andromeda) because it is the galaxy closest to us. But when Hubble deep fields are examined, a lot of far off spiral galaxies similar to Andromeda and our Milky Way can be seen and they are proportionally much further out. So far away Hubble sees them as whole and apparent distant galaxies. For this reason, I don't think we have any magnification phenomenon. Camera zoom lens are deliberately designed to achieve the zooming they are built for.<br /><br />I'm not a professional astronomer or scientist so someone else may come along with a better answer.<br /><br />There is a well known effect called gravitational lensing which results when light waves of distant objects are bent around closer objects. This allows extremely remote objects to be seen.<br /><br />Who knows, perhaps one day we will discover something like what your proposing here. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>