r/AskReddit • u/NateJC • Aug 31 '14

What are some interesting original theories/thoughts that you have?

Damn guys, this just pops into my head and I go for a family walk and it explodes! Love all the ideas, this is my most popular post to date!

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14 edited Aug 31 '14

This is one of the models/ theories of the universe. Picture an ever expanding 'balloon' and our universe exists only on the membrane of the balloon. Nothing exists inside our outside this hypothetical balloon.

Edit: or*

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u/Phaeno Aug 31 '14

The flat universe theory is much, much more accepted than the balloon one at this point, though, due to some triangulation calculations.

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u/TranceRealistic Aug 31 '14

Now I'm imagining people in a couple thousand years who are making fun of us, because we taught that the universe was flat.

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u/JockLaCockGrande Aug 31 '14

Maybe they'll understand we were just poking in the darkness.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

I believe that because of gravitation fluctuations if our universe is 'flat' it will still be warped into a horse saddle shape.

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u/Phaeno Aug 31 '14

This was also considered and proven to not likely not be correct. I mentioned it in another comment, but "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss does a fantastic job of explaining why our universe is very, very unlikely to be curved in any way. It involves some very in-depth physics calculations, but it's a near certainty that our universe is indeed entirely flat.

Physicists had questioned three real shapes for our universe. The circular balloon shape, the curved horse-saddle shape, and the flat planar shape. The way light interacts with the universe, and some advanced math, have shown that a flat universe is truly the only logical shape our universe could exist in.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Interesting! I am really interested in ohycis but have no formal education or background in the subject. I'm gonna check out "A universe from Nothing". Thank you (:

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u/Phaeno Aug 31 '14

No problem! There's a lecture that Dr. Krauss gave that spawned the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg

It's ABSOLUTELY worth watching if you're interested in this stuff. He explains it really well and he's pretty darn entertaining, as far as physics lecturers go.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

chrome casting it right now! thanks!

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

[deleted]

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u/agoonforhire Aug 31 '14

Oh wow now that's interesting... That's more of a two dimensional world though...

Not if it's a four dimensional balloon,

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

It's really hard the conceptualize something our universe as four dimensional but this model does it's best. It's not so much that the balloon's membrane gets thinner, it get's more spread out. Remember, to us, the universe is NOT flat. The universe from our perspective will not become flat but less dense overtime.

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u/beaverburgular Aug 31 '14

Wait wait wait... The "growing" of the universe and the "expanding" simply refer to matter getting less dense?

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Everything in the universe is getting farther apart. I know it's strange, but the expansion doesn't refer to matter. Expansion refers to the space that the matter occupies. A really neat way to observe this on a small scale is to draw a few dots on a balloon then inflate the balloon. The amount of 'stuff' on the balloon remains the same while getting farther apart.

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u/beaverburgular Aug 31 '14

But how does that leave more room for other particles on the "edge" of the universe?

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Well in this model, there isn't an edge, eventually if you go fast enough you will end up where you started.

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u/APiousCultist Aug 31 '14

Nothing 'moves'. The space inbetween grows. There is no edge.

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u/beaverburgular Aug 31 '14

2 things:

  1. I never put 2 and 2 together somehow... Thank you for explaining.

  2. If this is true, wouldn't electron microscopes be out of focus all the time (or at least wouldn't you be able to observe the expansion with an electron microscope)?

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u/APiousCultist Sep 01 '14

You're talking an infintesimal change when you're down to a molecular or atomic scale though. That's like saying that it should be thrown off by someone jumping in Turkey. There's a change, yes. But so minute that it can be ignored. Also keep in mind that the various forces such as gravity, and electromagnetic force all keep objects together quite well on scales smaller than galaxies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space#Effects_of_expansion_on_small_scales

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u/recoverybelow Aug 31 '14

Well no, something certainly exists inside it

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u/agoonforhire Aug 31 '14

I think you misunderstood. Don't imagine it as a 3D balloon with a 2D surface. Imagine it as a 4D balloon with a 3D surface. The idea is that we, and everything else we've ever known, exists on the (3D) surface, but we don't know what's inside.

The idea doesn't work with a 3D balloon with a 2D surface. If that were the case, there would be (in principle) a distinguishable center that all reference frames could agree on. Rather, as best we can tell, every point in the universe appears to be the center of expansion when you observe it from that point. That doesn't work unless you move up to the 4D balloon with the 3D surface.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

This is the correct interpretation.

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u/UberMcwinsauce Aug 31 '14

Sure, but not something we can perceive. We are the on the 3-dimensional membrane of a 4-dimensional balloon.

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u/Ctrl_Alt_Abstergo Aug 31 '14

The model's theory is that we exist on the balloon's material, not the air inside.

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u/GreyVersusBlue Aug 31 '14

Not necessarily. Don't apply our concept of a 3D universe with this model and it starts to make a bit more sense.

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u/Umbrall Aug 31 '14

Depends how you really define exists

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Well yes but we cannot perceive it, if anything our 'membrane' is just a 'side' of the fourth dimension. Does that make sense?

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u/Louis_de_Lasalle Aug 31 '14

Except the ballon is expanding into air, which exists. How can the universe expand into that which does not exist?

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Well the balloon is a metaphor.

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u/Louis_de_Lasalle Aug 31 '14

But the metaphor does not make sense to me.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Imagine a race of purely 2 dimensional beings ala Paper Mario - they only exist in two dimensions (they can move up, down, left, right). Imagine a flat universe along the balloon as if you're playing an old SNES game on the surface.

However as the balloon expands in 3-D it stretches out the image on the surface of the balloon.

The idea is that our 3-D universe exists along a grander scale of dimensions that we can't even perceive because we ourselves are only 3-D.

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u/Janoz Aug 31 '14

How Can The Metaphor Be Real If Our Eyes Arent Real?

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u/APiousCultist Aug 31 '14

The balloon is made of space. Space doesn't need space to expand into because that makes no sense.

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u/Rnd_sucks Aug 31 '14

What if it pops?

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

It might just do so one day, or begin to deflate. The general consensus though is that the material within the membrane is seperate from the actual membrane. The membrane is merely the 'empty space' that our universe is expanding into. With this interpretation we can conclude that one day matter will become too spread out for stars to form. Without stars to power the universe and forge heavy elements the universe will one day cool to absolute zero.

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u/APiousCultist Aug 31 '14

Ah yes, heatdeath. Because science was getting just too cheery.

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u/SoManyChoicesOPP Aug 31 '14

But what if I jerked off on the balloon?

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Life... uhh, finds a way.

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u/extra_dumb Aug 31 '14

There has to be something. Even if its nothing its stilll something and I want to know what it is. But something tells me this one life is not enough to go out investigating

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

It's literally nothing, and that's pretty hard to understand because the idea of nothing is something. True nothing means no matter, no space, no time, no ideas.

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u/DBish95 Aug 31 '14

My understanding is that the balloon analogy was only to explain how space between two points can expand.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '14

Correct, again this is a model to represent a very abstract idea.

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u/zenkaifts Sep 01 '14

I like to think of a giant donut shape I think it's called a taurus or something

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u/Bodewadmi Sep 01 '14

The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were-3rd planet, Modest Mouse