
04-March-2004, 08:58 PM
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Senior Member
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Vail, AZ, USA
Posts: 1,086
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Pi Man
Well, technically there is a center, but it would be outside of our universe. Think of our universe as being spherical. In fact, think of it as a large, expanding balloon. Our universe has an extra dimension, so our 3 dimensional space is contained on the surface of the 4 dimensional sphere. It's basically like an ant on the baloon observing it's 2 dimensional movement capability (foreward, back, left, right) and seeing that the distance to the next ant on the baloon was increasing and concluding that this expansion had to have a center. It does, but it's no longer accessable. The center is not part of the baloon, it's inside it. Just as in this analogy, the center of the universe is not accessable to anybody in the universe, but technically there is a center. I cannot point to where the universe is, but I can tell you that if you go in one of two different directions perpendicular (spelling?) to all of our three, you will eventually hit the center of our universe. However, this would be impossible to do without some technology we haven't discovered yet.
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While I love to envision it this way myself, and was considering bringing up the example, is that true only of a closed topology universe? Or does an open universe have some way of having a center in higher dimensions as well? This is the kind of thing that gives me headaches whenever I hear more evidence mounting that the universe is negatively curved. #-o :P
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