True size(diameter) of the universe

[josepph]

Hi all, i have been doing alot of research on this so please bear with me. I've been reading from some sources that the universe is 15 billion years old. and since we have the age of the universe, we can thus determind the size of it.. however, i noticed that they measured the age of the universe by looking at how far away galaxy's were from us by looking at a pin-poiint area of the nightsky. The scientists thus concluded that the light we were receiving from them was 15 billion years old. and thus, the size of the universe is 15 billion multiply by the distance it takes for light to travel in 1 year. however. since parallel lines don't meet in a static universe, a straight line has a front and back to it. The galaxy's that astronomers were looking at 15 billion light years away were only in 1 diection! this distance of 15billion could far less be the Radius of this whole universe. However, we do not know how close we are to the point closer to the galaxies or behind us. Thus, i dont think that 15 billion multiply the distance travelled by light in a year could be the actuall distance of the universe. This is because like i've pointed out, what we have seen so far is only in 1 direction, how about if we looked at it from the other side of the globe, or rather, look backwards from where they were looking at. would we be see'ing another picture of galaxies 15 billion lightyears away, or the theory of our universe being static is false and the theory on inflation is to be deem'ed false. =/ Will be checking here often, hope to have a reply soon

 

[vogon13]

Hubble deep field images have been taken in at least two directions . . . . <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>

 

[josepph]

Well, i saw the picture that hubble took on the galaxies with the HDF thingy.. and it only showed 1 direction

 

[mooware]

Maybe the universe is a sphere, and we can only see to the horizon. Travel far enough and you eventually wind up where you started.<br />

 

[vogon13]

Each picture would be limited to one viewpoint. <br /><br />You comment is certainly confusing. <br /><br /> How many vantage points do you normally discern in photographs?<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>

 

[josepph]

er, sorry for it being so confusing.. in the photograph, there's only one vantage point. lets take for example, the galaxy's in that photograph to be A, we humans to be B and what lies behind us directly opposite A to be X. so what we have is that all 3 points, A,B and X lie on a straight plane.<br /><br />A------------------B-----------------X<br /><br />and X is an unknown because scientists have yet to look at a point in the sky directly opposite the point we have now looked at. My point being, i dont understand why scientists have put the universe's size to be 15billion lightyears km, when that could only be from point A to B, what about point B to X. and if the universe is somewhat static, not like what a reply was *that the universe is a sphere* then what we are looking at from A to B is just thr radius of a huge circle? and the total length of the diameter is A to X? I figure it would be easier if i could map this out on a paper and scan it in =/

 

[harmonicaman]

The diameter of the universe is a "0". The universe is a one dimensional singularity and you really cannot accurately use three dimensional values to describe the four dimensional expanding universe which exists within this one dimensional singularity...<br /><br />Take away the fourth dimension, being time, and the universe is a "0".<br /><br />Every point in the universe has the same relative perspective of seeing themselves as being located at the exact center and as the oldest point in the universe. And the edge of the universe is adjacent to every point -- at "c" (it's right there, but you can never reach it).<br /><br />It would be more accurate to describe the size of our universe by saying; from our relative perspective, the universe is about 13.7 billion years old.

 

[josepph]

ah, thanks! now i get a better picture.

 

[derekmcd]

no matter your location in the universe... everything will appear to be traveling away from you. (there are local objects that we will collide with, but the big picture...) As far as our current theories can explain... there is no center. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div> </div><br /><div><span style="color:#0000ff" class="Apple-style-span">"If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing." - Homer Simpson</span></div> </div>

 

[qso1]

I tend to think the Universe, multiverse, exists within the void of space. Space extends into infinity in all directions and other Universes or whatever one wants to call them now, occupy points in the void. An example being our own possibly coming into existence the way the cosmologists believe it did. Other Universes doing the same throughout. Universes we cannot see because they are so red shifted as to be impossible for us to see. A Universe 200 trillion...or 890 quadrillion Ly out would be red shifted beyond our technological capabilities. <br /><br />These Universes like our own, comprised of collections of galaxies banging into existence from singularities and eventually expanding into nothingness with lots of void separating them from us. Of course, this is only speculation on my part.<br /><br />What this would do however, is make it possible to see the same distances in all directions if we were at the center of our own Universe or...see in all directions in a Universe that is saddle or some other shape and we are not at the center, so long as we are limited by optical physics such as red shifting of extremelly distant objects. We would never be able to see the maximum boundry of our Universe as long as we cannot get past the redshift problem, and I am speculating for the most part. <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>

 

[josepph]

ohhhhhh i get it.. so now the universe is somewhat infinity =/<br />i think i'll now refer the size of the universe.. as.. 13.7billion years old. lol. it's like "What's your height?" "i'm 18 years old" lol <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> yeah but the point is there.

 

[nexium]

Astronomers have looked in all the possible directions, so we have looked in the opposite direction. Exceptions are behind the center of our gaxay as we see poorly in that direction. With a very few exceptions, we see galaxies in every direction more than 12 billion light years away. 13.7 billion light years is as far as we can see as the light has not arrived at Earth, yet from more distant objects. We can calculate that there are objects 27.631 billion light years away, but there is no way to test this calculation and there may never be a way, so we may never know the true size of the Universe.<br />We will likely adjust the numbers a bit over the years, but, likely half or more of the volume of our Universe will remain unknown, and unknowable. Neil

 

[qso1]

Remember that my comments on the Universe are speculation. I have no way to prove any of it. <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>

 

[josepph]

"The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide."<br />Taken from space.com<br /><br />http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html<br /><br />

 

[qso1]

And there you have it...of course, 20 to 40 years from now it may change yet again based on new research. <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>

 

[josepph]

so the universe is 156x billion lightyears wide, x being the rate of expansion which is called Hubbles Constant.

 

[josepph]

Yeah, it's weird.. the way we see it, galaxy's are moving away from us, and the further it is, the faster it is moving.. however, we are moving towards andromeda? means there's a certain distance that a galaxy won't move apart from us? as in why are we able to catch up with Andromeda? which is around 2m light-years away from us?<br /><br /> that bring's me to the next point, the universe can't be measured cos everything is moving away from us and the light that reaches us by far is 13.7billion lightyears old, and we don't know what's beyond the 13.7 billion lightyears cos the light might not even be able to reach us*what if galaxy X was 16 billion light year's away? and we can't see it's light yet. I think this would baffle all the cosmologists. So i don't think scientist's should ever think of measuring the size of the universe as it's.. impossible.

 

[kmarinas86]

<font color="yellow">Yeah, it's weird.. the way we see it, galaxy's are moving away from us, and the further it is, the faster it is moving.. however, we are moving towards andromeda? means there's a certain distance that a galaxy won't move apart from us? as in why are we able to catch up with Andromeda? which is around 2m light-years away from us?</font><br /><br />Yes. Yes. Yes. Not necessarily.<br /><br />http://www.google.com/search?q=300+km%2Fs+%2F+%2871+%28km%2Fs%29%2FMpc%29+in+light+years<br /><br />(300 (km / s)) / ((71 * (km / s)) / Mpc) = 13,781,561.7 light years <br /><br />Expansion velocity is 300 km/s at 13,781,561.7 light years

 

[qso1]

For that matter, what lies at say...389 trillion Ly away? <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>

 

[josepph]

The thing is.. we don't know. cos the light from that point has yet to reach us yet... We don't even know in the first place if there's something that far beyond our universe.. I wonder what we would see if we could go beyond our event horizon and took a peer into the world beyond it.. *might we even see a new universe? or the formation of the universe in slow motion? <br /><br />Another seperate question, am i right to say that light consists of proton's?<br />(Proton's never die, cos they travel at the speed of light where there's no time?) <-- is that true?

 

[qso1]

Your absolutely right in that we don't know, we really don't. I hope, as I'm sure astronomers do, that some of the ground based and spaced based telescopes being planned and built now will give us a look much further.<br /><br />At this point, the best available evidence is sketchy at best and one day will likely be superseded by a better model, but a model indeed.<br /><br />I'm not sure about light being made up of protons. They are massless particles called photons as I recall. Even if I could answer that, I doubt we can really answer whether they die because they are at SOL. <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>

 

[nexium]

I think mainstream opinion is: 90% of the photons emitted the past 13.7 billion years are still traveling at the speed of light. The other 10% have been absorbed, but many of these have been re-radiated at longer wave lengths. Only a small fraction of the total photons have been converted to matter. None have been lost, nor distroyed, nor died. Neil

 

[josepph]

So i am right to say that.. we will never ever be able to calculate the size of the universe.. even if we reach our maximum technological advances. Since the only way in which we can determind the size and the age of our universe is by looking at the light which've reached us, light waves slow down when they travel inside substances or any medium according to they're own wavelengths.. In space, there's such thing as dark matter which is blocking the view of cosmologists of what lies beyond it. Thus, the light we may be looking at.. has somehow been thru dark matter and thus, isn't a reliable source to determind our age/size.. Maybe another way of finding out this could be from other non-explored way's as light is considered.. a non-reliable source..

 

[alkalin]

Neil, good points, but I make the following observations not necessarily directed at you,<br /><br />Size does not depend on age. If one feels good about a fourteen billion year old universe, then inflation put everything where it is at that time, but extent of it we may not know. Yet the red shift based on Doppler notions represents something else entirely, like it all came from a point somewhere in the past, say about fourteen billion years ago, and requires expansion to best describe it. But inflation put everything far beyond where expansion can tell us anything, so there is no known boundary due to expansion either. So is the universe fourteen billion years old? C’mon, you math geniuses, I know you’ve got an answer.<br /><br />Don’t ya get the feeling that cosmological notions, especially in the math area, have created more problems than they solve? But since expansion cannot work without inflation, if we go into other paradigms of the universe we need to abandon both those ideas entirely, and discover that the universe is Quasi-steady state. Most who post here think any other universe idea is not very valid, however, so have fun.<br /><br />Big Bang enthusiasts may make many claims since it is currently accepted, but no real prediction by them has been found to be true. Good luck.<br /><br />

 

[thepiper]

Good post alkalin.<br /><br />I say its true size is unknown and will never be known.<br />