Re: Looking back in time

[maskedman]

Cosmologists don't hold with this idea, but it's fun to think about.Einstein’s field equations describe only local properties of spacetime, not its global properties. The topology of the greater universe could consist of a variety of interconnecting geometries and still not contradict theory or any current observational evidence.If the universe is small compared with its age – say half its visible dimension – but still 14 billion years old, then light from very distant galaxies could have made several circuits around the universe since the big bang and, given our present technology, we would be none the wiser. The light of many of the galaxies seen in images like the Hubble Ultra Deep Field could have, for all we know, encircled the universe many times, providing us with unwitting views of the same galaxies at various stages of their evolution. We could, in principle, even see "snapshots" of the Milky Way from its inception, infancy, and youth. A closed, curved universe would be something like a barbershop with mirrors on opposing walls. It really wouldn’t be infinite, only appear that way.

 

[bbrock]

True, this is fun to ponder, however, this reflective closed universe theory has largely been disqualified. Someone came out with a new dimension for the Univers , being ~~ 150+ billion light years in diameter. At the same time, everyone agrees that the latest and best estimate for the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years. The speed of light is fixed at 183000 miles per second in a vacuume. It seems to me that the accepted theories are far more profound and mind bending then the un-accepted theories, considering that none of this latest stuff adds up. I can only resolve these concepts by imagining that time is not constant through out the universe, and our error in thought process is because we are trying to fit all of this within our reference of time and space. <br /><br />Bill