Please understand I am not clowning in this question or proposed theory. I started thinking about this more after reading the following:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/myst...day_040712.html

It deals with the dark force, dark energy dilemma.

Here is my question, could what we are calling our Universe, in essence be a super galaxy that contains many, many galaxies and stars? Is the real universe so big we are no where near realizing it, and it is made up of millions of super galaxies? Each of these super galaxies most likely started with a big bang.

I have problems accepting that our entire universe began with one big bang. I can buy that happening to create a super galaxy and all that it comprises. I personally believe the real universe has neither an end nor a beginning. These are elements that we have installed to ease our own nervousness. We often slide back and forth between theology and cosmology and an infinite forever universe is just too much to handle.

Please, I am not being critical I just feel we are somewhat desperate to hang a handle on all of this, but I think the handle should be within the realm of a super galaxy. All the laws, observations, phenomena, etc, etc. would still apply.

The kicker, we may never, ever see beyond our own super galaxy. It is so immense that to imagine it as just one small player in an infinitely large, infinitely existing real universe is just too much.

Problem is I do not know how to prove I am either right or wrong and that makes it even more distrubing.

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<span style='font-family:Arial'><span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:blue'>setiman
If I had a cousin, his name would be Yoda.</span></span></span>

setiman, this is very interesting!

Re-Well, if there is now way to prove it either way, then it could be possible. To tell you the truth, I Like the idea of a bigger infinity, the old infinity was starting to look kinda small.

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
&quot;It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues.&quot;

Carl Sagan

Setiman,

Thanks for bringing up the subject..I'm no expert. These are my 2 cents.

If a super galaxy exists I would think it should be rotating in some way just as our
Milky Way is doing. While Earth moves at about 30 km/sec in its orbit about the Sun, it, likewise, is moving in its galactic orbit at 220 km/sec..

Just as Mercury has a precession in its orbit, our solar system likely precesses in the galactic orbit and, in turn, the galaxy is precessing in our local group.
I'm inexperienced with the math of GR and, perhaps someone else will step in to this discussion with enough background to illuminate what the possibilities are for
a precessing super galaxy.

You might be hypothesizing if the universe is both rotating and precessing..

If it has had enough time to form spiral arms like our galaxy, I would suspect that we should see some enormous effects of gravitational lensing occuring. There should be great walls of it and it should be seen through our telescopes. Maybe, if you are correct, there hasn't been enough time for spiral arms to form yet.

I have a few problems with an unending universe that is ageless. While with a
BB/inflationary model we measure the oldest age by distance, with a static state universe, distance would not determine the oldest age.

There should be some very old matter in our vicinity that has had eternity to show up. Micro-meteorite dust should be showing us matter that is several trillion years old. In fact, there should be matter that is 10 ^6000 years old..Where is it?
Maybe it decayed into dark matter or dark energy..Yet, the proponents of a static state universe are against the existance of dark matter and dark energy. I think they would need it to explain the beginning of this paragraph.

In fact, if there was just one grain from each year that is observable, but added to all the infinite number of years that exist, it should be the majority of what we are breathing and walking on every day...I would think we should see proton decay constantly. And, I do believe that proton decay is supposed to give off gamma
radiation..That last statement might not be true but I do recall hearing that or reading it somewhere. Ask Tim Thompson..

I think that if the universe is infinitely large, then it should be infinitely small and continuosly subdividable. Quantum physics should not be a reality..yet it is.

There might be a universe of universes..There might be other dimensions curled up that we cannot detect and mingle with. If string theory holds up, we will be able to detect more accurately the rate of spatial expansion, if it exists. An inverse proportionality must exist ( assuming string theory is true ) between the expansion of our 3 dimensions and the shrinking of curled up ones. We may be able to detect and measure the rate of shrinkage of curled up dimensions in the future. That wil give us the rate of universal expansion ( providing universal expansion holds up ).

I'm sure someone will jump in and add more.

blueshift

We could be one of millions or billions of other super galaxies whilst the other super galaxies existing as parallel "super galaxies" rather than parallel universes.

blueshift,

For such a BIG subject, you made some good points. I was almost afraid to read this topic further because I thought my head would hurt. But I could follow what you were saying.

Great!

And, charles1- Also, nicely said! Hmmm, maybe it isn't too late to learn new things. :P

__________________
Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
&quot;It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues.&quot;

Carl Sagan

I agree with your idea, Setiman. Not from any hard scientific evidence but as a vaguely informed amateur, I think a single universe and a single big bang seems a bit too limiting.

Just as we thought there was only one sun but then found that its just one from millions of other ones out there in the universe, so I think there could be a large (or infinite) number other universes, of which we're an interesting but not unique specimen.

My understanding is that there are attributes of our universe that appear to be "just right" to support the existence of stars, galaxies and human life. If you don't subscribe to divine creation, then why are things just right when the odds are more likely that they would not be right. The most likely universe is probably cold, empty and dead.

Obviously everything must be as it is so that we can be here to observe it. (I think this is called the weak anthropomorphic argument.) But if you have an infinite number of universes in a "meta-universe", they can all have different attributes and only those universes that happen to be just right (rare but guaranteed when you have an infinite set to choose from) will contain life that can reflect on its own existence.

But will we ever be able to prove this one way or the other? I think that other universes are probably never going to be accessible to us but maybe evidence will mount up as we gain a better understanding of the basic building blocks of this universe.

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Spike
:)

i gotta tell ya i ask my self this question about 10 years ago now i desmiss it coz i figer if the unverse gos on 4 infinity id accept in regres it regeses infatly and I have a hard time accepting infinity. as a wiled thinking lil kid i was thinking what if the universe is like an electon obiting some kind of super proton and so on and so on.... hay i was like 12 or 13. but i cant believe things like that any more!!!

Well, I am just happy that I am not alone in thinking we have something a little different that what we know right now. The important thing in my mind is that we ask the questions. Our entire realm of science is carried forward by two key groups the wonderers and the experimenters. Both are absolutely essential.

The key here is that there is always a pretty big lag between the wonders and the experiments. This is not because we have lazy scientists but because sometimes
how to prove or disprove a wonder is a challenge in itself. We are still working on some of the experiments associated with Einstein's many theories.

Someone made the observation here in a post that we are so big and so far apart that we may never make contact with any other civilization. Now that is not to say they do not exist. Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be for right now. I mean think how surpised our early explorers were to find: (a) earth was round, (B) there were strange, intelligent and highly functional civilizations that we had no idea they existed.

So why should things be any different in space?

I tell you what. I think we will eventually go way, way out in space - slowly but surely and the discovers will be third of fourth generation of the original crew. They will arrive at an inhabited planet far away and will send a message back.

Big question will anyone here remember that they ever went and why? We must make sure that someone does and replies to that message.

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<span style='font-family:Arial'><span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:blue'>setiman
If I had a cousin, his name would be Yoda.</span></span></span>