Philosophy Now Forum

I was watching a Brian Cox documentary earlier and he was talking about the universe expanding from the tiny big bang point. Fair enough, red shift and background radiation and all that. I always wonder "what the hell is the universe expanding into??" Whenever I ask this question I get the feeling it's a silly question. Yet however I think about it, the universe must be expanding into or "in" something. Anyone have any thoughts or scientific theories they may have heard of to answer this question for me? Thanks.

Great question, seeker36, and not at all dumb for a philosophy forum. I don't claim to know the answer, and I have a "stupid" question of my own: What was there before the big bang? There had to be something, right? Or can something come from nothing?

Hmm, maybe a Something we might call God really did speak the universe into existence out of nothing. But wait a minute, if such a God were there, maybe the universe is part of God or fashioned from something that was there with God. But where did God and that stuff come from? Have they been around forever?

Well, once again I'm left puzzled and with more questions than answers.

I'm no expert but the most likely is that is is not expanding into anything. There is nothing to expand into until the universe itself creates more universe. The expansion keeps occurring as more space/time is created. Apparently this expansion is happening at an ever increasing rate. It seems as though we live in a flat universe and unless there is some sort of mechanism to hold or reverse the expansion we will end up living in a cold dead universe sometime in the future.

Clearly stated, Ginkgo, but I'm still puzzled. Take the idea that the universe itself creates more space/time. Very clearly stated. And yet somehow I'm still puzzled. For example, where does the universe get more space/time, and how does it make it? And how can there be room for it? -- we're back to Seeker36's original question, it seems. Is there an infinite emptiness into which universes pop into being?

The big bang is based largely on a mathematical theory that starts with a point in time labeled with zero corresponding to the start of the big bang and based on physics theories. It says nothing about what was happening, if anything, at times before zero. Does time stretch forever into the past and forever into the future, with the big bang event stuck somewhere "in between"?

I've heard physicists say time itself started with the big bang. Even more of a mystery! Other physicists (Julian Barbour, for example), are trying out new theories that leave out the time variable.

So much for intuition.

Nothingness would violate the uncertainty principle. The net energy in our universe is zero, so it seems likely that it came out of a quantum fluctuation. What it is expanding into? No one knows for sure.

Thanks guys. I seem to recall reading years ago that there's a theory that everything pops in and out of existence from something called the quantum vacuum. Perhaps the universe is the same as a particle except on the macroscopic scale: One universe popping into existence among countless others in an infinite "soup". Of course this still doesn't explain anything. Maybe it's one of those "Look mate, you're an ape, a clever ape but your not that clever" questions.

I could be wrong, and as I am not an astrophysicist, I probably am, but here is my understanding.

By expression "the expansion of the universe" all that is meant is that clumps of matter are getting further and further away from each other.

On this understanding the term "universe" is referring just to the matter and the space that matter occupies and the space between clumps of matter.

If the term "universe" referred to the space that is not between bits of matter and the universe was unbounded ( ie space was insufficiently curved to bend back on itself ) then it would probably make no sense to say the universe is expanding because it would be infinite.

Unless of course something could only count as space that was part of - or in - a gravitational field between two bits of matter. In which case presumably there would be literally nothing, not even a vacuum, beyond the furthermost galaxies.

I think scientists are very confident that space is not empty. The space between galaxies is apparently far from empty. So when we look into the night sky and see all of this empty space we are actually looking at something like 70 or 80 percent of the mass that makes up the universe. I can't remember the exact percentage, but it is unbelievably high considering it looks as though there is nothing much out there.

So I guess this would mean that the universe is creating new matter as it expands.

It would be hard to know if the universe is expanding into something because we cannot see the boundary of the universe. It is possible it is expanding into something but we will never know.

As to how the universe creates matter? I think ForgedinHell's answer is right. Basically, matter pops in and out of existence (well that's my understanding). I guess there is room for it because the universe keep accelerating away at an ever increasing rate. No matter where you are in the universe every point will be moving away from the point you choose to occupy. It is a bit like getting a balloon and covering it with black dots and slowly blowing it up. As you do you will see very dot is moving away from every other dot.

There was no time before the universe because if the universe didn't exist there would be no time. Time and space started at the instance of the Big Bang.


When we look into the night sky we cannot point to a particular place and say, "Yes, that is where the Big Bang occurred". It didn't actually occur anywhere, while at the same time occurring everywhere. Where ever you are in the universe you are at the centre.

While a lot of this stuff defies our common sense. However, it is likely that common sense is not as common and sensible as we thought.

We know that galaxies are moving away at an increasing rate because we can actually observe this so it is more than just a mathematical possibility.

Non-expert opinion by the way.

You are quite right, but I was not claiming that what we see as space is empty, merely suggesting that the space that is not occupied by matter ( either visible,dark matter or anti-matter) and space which is not between any matter of any kind ( and therefore not occupied by a gravitational or any other kind of field ) could perhaps be considered as not just empty but not really existing at all - and therefore not part of the universe.

Hello Thinkers!

I feel the "stupid" questions posted in this thread are actually the basic questions that are still mostly un-answered. The questions about origin of universe got a fresh boost with the new near-discovery made about Higgs-Boson.

I think what we call and think Universe at persent might not how it actually is. If you stand at one end of Universe, what would you see? Now don't say that the Universe is endless! If we stand at a seashore, the sea looks endless to us, that is not because it is endless but it is because we cannot see the whole picture with our limited vision. Same is the case with the universe.

These theories that we see and hear are assumptions; some of which are based on facts. These assumptions can change when we'll get more facts. So, there is no point trying do "define" it until and unless we are standing on top of it.

I've written more at: http://rah-universe.blogspot.in/2012/07/is-it-created-or-evolved.html

"These theories that we see and hear are; some of which are based on facts. These assumptions can change when we'll get more facts. So, there is no point in trying to 'define' it until and unless we are standing on top of it"


If we are talking about the changing nature of facts then we are in fact talking science or trying to provide a scientific explanation. Science will never ever claim that one day it will be able to 'stand on top of it' so to speak. Once we stand on top of it to give an account then we are no longer doing science; we are actually doing metaphysics.

This means that we have only two choices. W can give a scientific account of evolution and creation or we can give a metaphysical account. Both counts are in opposition because of the methods they employ. Another way of saying it would be that science explains evolution using a crane(from the bottom up) while metaphysics explains evolution using a skyhook(from the top down). Or as you say from a person looking from the outside. It is a scientific explanation versus a metaphysical explanation.

I don't really know which explanation is right. The other possibility is they are both right. At the moment we have no way of melding metaphysics and science, They are incompatible, hence the disagree as to the best explanation.

http://www.orionfdn.org/papers/index.htm

The scientific community widely understands that expansion redshifts are the centerpiece of big-bang cosmology. What is generally unknown is the widespread confusion in the ranks of cosmologists as to exactly what they are. A minority equate them with Doppler shifts due to actual recession. A majority,h owever, claim: (i) “... the [expansion] redshift does not really have anything to do with velocities at all in cosmology,” (ii) “... it is common but misleading to convert a large redshift to a recession velocity using the special-relativistic formula 1 + z =
(1 + v/c)/(1 − v/c) ,” and (iii) “The truth is that
expansion redshifts are totally different from Doppler redshifts, and the velocities catalogued by astronomers are not the recession velocities used in the velocity-distance law.” Has the scientific community been victimized by astronomers as the foregoing implies? Or is it instead that the expansion redshift concept is flawed? This paper shows it’s the latter,that it was accepted without ever being tested. In fact modern physics knows nothing of expansion’s redshifts and their presumed origin due to expanding space rather than Doppler recession.

Redshift is simply a measure of the scale factor of the Universe when the source emitted its radiation....Thus, redshift does not really have anything to do with velocities at all in cosmology. The redshift is a ... dimensionless number which, as (1 + z)−1, tells us the relative distance between galaxies when the light was emitted compared with that distance now. It is a great pity that Hubble multiplied z by c. I hope we will eventually get rid of the c.”