Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by viper15
ah but that deos not explain is space ends. when u think of it its hard to pickture it going on for forever.

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Do you find it easier to picture it just stopping? I mean, what happens then? A great big brick wall and past that just 'doesn't exist'?

[boring]

By definition space is the absence of matter. Fair enough, there are stars and so on, but in between there is absolutely nothing. No air, no gas, no little dead space creatures, nothing. And that's what would be at the end of the universe. So basically, space is the existence of nothing. So either you imagine that something else goes on forever (e.g. space... space... space... space... space... and then suddenly strawberry Pop Tarts ad infinitum) or there is nothing. Just an empty... space.

So yes, I believe that something, space or not, goes on for ever. It can't possibly end. What would happen if it did?

More to the point, I believe that it is space that goes on for ever, not Pop Tarts or milk or geography teachers (shudder). Why? Because it's so hard to visualise an infinite amount of matter, I prefer to visualise an infinity of space with a finite amount of matter.

I suppose it all depends on what it's easiest to visualise. If there was just a brick wall at the 'end' of space, and you smashed a hole in it and went through, what would happen? A new 'space'? Would you appear at the other side, like a huge 3D game of Pacman? I doubt it.

Though, thinking about it, if you take the Earth, and you walk, and walk, and walk, and walk, and walk, you will never come to the end of the Earth and fall off. That's because you're covering 3D space in 2D directions. Maybe space somehow becomes a 4D torus or sphere, where you can only cover 3D movements, so you can never travel in that 4th direction to escape. But then... there IS another way to go off the Earth... even if there weren't, there would still be stuff there... or, more correctly, the absence of stuff... oh, forget it!

[/boring]

So, um, what was the question again?