From a Website/Chat Room-EXPLAIN LIKE IM FINE: Imagine yourself as a one-dimensional Dot that was alive and sentient. You live in a universe that is made of a line curved in on itself (a circle). Your universe has only two directions for you to travel in or see into: forward and backward. Your universe might be enormous but still, you can only exist in one physical dimension. But notice how this 1D universe maps out into two dimensions, which is necessary for it to be self-contained with no edges that are perceptible to its inhabitants. Inside the 1D universe there is no place that can be called the center. Even if it is expanding in size, so that all its living Dots are moving further apart even without effort, the center of expansion is not contained within the universe itself--it is a point outside of the universes curved finite Line but at the same distance from every point inside of it (ie the center of the circle). Now take one step up. Imagine a 3D sphere the size of the Earth. This is a 2D universe with four cardinal directions instead of two: North/South and East/West. The 2D universe that exists on this sphere maps out to a flat plane like a piece of Earth-sized paper that you travel around on, but you can only look just far enough ahead to see whats close by on the paper...you cant look up to see what else is there besides your flat world. The paper itself is not square with edges but connects with itself, like a paper-mâche globe. Now instead of a Dot you might be a Line or a Shape. You can travel around the world in a straight line and arrive where you started. So you cant find a center or any edges. But your 2D universe does have a center that is inside the sphere itself. The core of your globe-universe cant be seen or visited by you because it exists in a direction called Down. You cant even picture which way is Down because you only know North-South-East-West...and that covers everything! The best you can do is imagine how you could make a cross with five squares, with each square only touching one other square on the sides--then add two more squares somehow, that will only touch the main square on their sides. Stack them Up and Down, you say, but theyd have to go outside your universe to do it. By now your brain hurts. Now if your 2D universe is expanding, everything is moving further apart from each other--but everything is also moving away from the real center, which is Down from every possible point in your universe. Everything is expanding Up and away from each other, but since you cannot perceive the direction Up, all you see is the gradual spreading-apart of everything around you. Now take it one step further. You are a Being living in three physical dimensions. You live in a Space with North/South, East/West, and Up/Down. If you had the ability, you could travel in a straight line far out into Space long enough and arrive where you started. The 3D universe connects with itself in all directions, no edges or corners. It curves in on itself but you cant see it...it twists in the fourth physical dimension. Because light travels through the curve, everything looks perfectly flat and straight but it isnt. Our universe is part of something else, the skin, largest layer, or externality of a hyper-shape that has two more directions (one more dimension) than our universe does. This hypershape has a center, too, but you cant get to it from inside our curved universe. You might say the center of this hypershape was where the Big Bang happened...the universe started out very small and everything was closer together. If you could freeze time and could travel to every point anywhere throughout the universe you would always be the same distance Away From it. If you could measure the circumference of the universe (how far can you go till you return where you left), you might be able to solve for the radius of this hypershape. The hyper-shape is expanding which makes our universe grow larger--literally inserting more space everywhere. This makes everything move away from us. We are also moving Away From the center of the hyper-shape together with everything else, but we cannot see Outside of the universe to watch it happen. The expansion of space on a universal scale is evidence enough. Start with one cube and attach six more cubes, one on every side. Only their corners touch. Now take two more cubes and stack them over and under the central cube so they only touch sides with the central cube. You need two more directions (one more dimension) to do this with. But if you could do it, the centers of these extra cubes and the central cube would form a straight line pointing back toward the center of the hypershape and the origin point of the Big Bang. Now my brain hurts... permalink
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 08:35:25 +0000
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