Another way one could argue that the universe has no beginning is if it is shaped in a funny, non-Euclidian way so that the matter and energy loops back on itself due to the curvature of space. Not all non-Euclidian shapes for space would allow it to do this, but some might.
Fortunately, scientists now have evidence that the universe is not curved. It is Euclidian or “flat” in the argot of astronomy. This was shown a few years ago by examining gigantic structures in the night sky that are too faint for the human eye to see.
That’s what the picture on the left is. It’s a section of the southern sky (think: Australia, not Dixie) showing enormous structures that we could see if our eyes were sensitive to the right frequency. To give a sense of how big these structures are, the dot that is inset in the picture is the relative size of the moon. Since the structures themselves are ultra-far away, though, they’re FREAKING HUGE.
They also contain clues about the geometry of the universe, and they reveal it to be Euclidian. So all that stuff Carl Sagan told you in Cosmos about the universe maybe being a weird shape appears to be simply wrong.
This also means that you couldn’t stand up on a high hill, use a pair of superpowerful binoculars, look out across the universe, and see the back of your own head. They may have done that in a way cool Land of the Lost episode, but that was their universe, not ours.
Land of the Lost ruled! 🙂
Perhaps the Ancient Sleestak developed an interstellar civilization and altered the shape of the universe?
“And that, my liege, is how we know the world to be bannana-shaped.”
Given the enormous scale here, couldn’t a curved surface look “flat” to us? The earth’s surface is curved, but looking at the horizon, the horizon looks flat. Same concept here?
I think there was a posting last month that the shape of the universe might look like a horn (bell-shaped).
“Given the enormous scale here, couldn’t a curved surface look “flat” to us?”
I am certainly no cosmologist, but as I understand it (and I may not) in a non-Euclidian universe angles measured at huge differences would not coincide to standard Euclidian shapes. For example: If a triangle shape was measured out at vast distances (using inter galactic obects as the “points” of the triangle) the angles would not add up to 180 degrees in a non-Euclidian universe. Apparently they do which further supports a flat universe.
I think I got that right, lol. 🙂
Actually we have no proof that they do or don’t, we just assume that they do, and even if the universe was curved, that it is large enough that the margin of error would be infinitesimal. But when you think of a curved universe don’t think of it as a sphere in its true state its fine to theororize with a sphere to make things easier, just as if you were to divide 300/10, if the problem was difficult you could just drop both values down a digit, and i’t would simply be 30/1, in the same sence we can drop a dimmension of everything respectivly, to make things easier to comprehend, but if you ask me we have proved that the universe is spherical, in the sense we can understand. Based on the exponentialy expanding state of it. Mass in itself is a force, just as gravity, electromagnatation, and strong and weak forces are, you could call it the particle force ^^, all forces are fourth dimensional, which is why they are able to act upon us as they do. so in an essence the most elementry particles themselves are fourth dimensional. And the best way to think of it is dark-matter, or as I like to call it dark-energy, is the surface of our sphere, or I think a better exammple would be a balloon, that is constantly being blown up, because as the universe expands dark energy increses its (weight) or force, while regular mass looses overall energy or (weight) and the universe begins to expand faster and faster, in its spherical state… I think “FREAKING HUGE” objects arn’t enough proof for a flat universe, when there is so much proving the oposite: expansion, background radiation, the state of time-space itself, and even the doppler effect, as weird as it may sound.
What proof do you have??????????? In Bill Brysons book “A short history on everything” it clearly states the universe is round. That is backed by NASA. And to be smart a pancake is round not flat, techniqaly.
HAAHAHAH
My superior Brain will outsmart you. AHA.
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It makes no sense to me that the Universe is essentially flat. If I were looking at this Universe from somewhere out in space then it would look curved, because it has been proven that the Universe started in one tiny spot and all its contents were spread out equally in all directions. There is NO essentially falt Univerese and there NEVER will be!!! Essential is in the eye of the beholder.
And that “proof” would be what?