Re: REVIEW: _Religious_

In article <cj7hc41bougdsoj0ocrggrf3gna2mpka7e@xxxxxxx>,
Ray <chigarayREMOVE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Maybe some of the deep thinkers here can help me with one that keeps
me awake some nights.

If the Universe is, by definition, everything and the universe is
expanding....into what (where?) is it expanding?

It's complicated.

First, read and be familiar with the concepts in the book flatland.
It's NOT complicated, but needs a little thinking. It's short & uses
small words & has lots of pictures, so is not difficult reading.

Now, imagine that we, in our 3 dimensional world, appear to 4D people
(gods?) as living on something of a speck of a piece of territory on the
surface of what would look to us 3D-ers as a partially inflated party
balloon. Now, our 3D Earth is just a tiny little speck on this balloon
and, if it were rendered so we could see it, what the 4D folk see would
look to us like a "flat" drawing of Earth on the surface of the balloon.

The rest of our universe is, likewise, on this balloon.

What you and I refer to as "all of 3D space, everywhere, the entire
universe", these 4D folk think looks like "the surface of the balloon."
(From this, the 70s gave us "space is a toroid" and wrap-around video
games where you fly off one end of the screen and back onto the other.
EXTREMELY lose interpretations, but they give the gist of it.)

Now imagine that someone inflates the balloon. Look -- the universe is
expanding!

Ok... it's about "a gazillion" times more complicated than that but, if
you can get your head wrapped around those concepts, then you're well on
your way to understanding this stuff better than 99% of the folks out
there.

(Just remember: 99% of a million people still leaves 10,000 who
understand it better than you -- and that's just the first million! ;)

--
Please take off your pants or I won't read your e-mail.
I will not, no matter how "good" the deal, patronise any business which sends
unsolicited commercial e-mail or that advertises in discussion newsgroups.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: expansion
    ... Therefore if you subscribe to 'expanding universe', ... This is not true of a balloon. ... Take the balloon analogy into another dimension. ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: expansion
    ... the most common example of something that is expanding, ... the two dimensional balloon surface world. ... Is the whole universe expanding? ... to imagine than the balloon, since it's not easy to think in 4 dimensions, ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: expansion
    ... the most common example of something that is expanding, ... the two dimensional balloon surface world. ... Is the whole universe expanding? ...  Maybe so, but that involves the 4th dimension, ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: expansion
    ... the most common example of something that is expanding, ... the two dimensional balloon surface world. ... Is the whole universe expanding? ... to imagine than the balloon, since it's not easy to think in 4 dimensions, ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Need some assistance
    ... a lot of the other things in the universe. ... General Relativity says that gravity is the curvature of absolute ... These balloons are expanding. ... when you expand the balloon. ...
    (talk.origins)