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Bryllant t1_j9qmb43 wrote

Ripples would require sound or light or gravity or something else. It is just empty space

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SaltyDangerHands t1_j9qntxv wrote

You're kind of right. We live in the expanding cloud of the "explosion" (not an explosion) and everything we can see and measure is really just facets and manifestation of that explosion (not an explosion) that could be just as easily though of as "ripples" as anything else.

Now, whether we're expanding "into" anything, or across the surface of anything is anyone's guess. We don't really know what lies beyond / below the universe, whether there's some larger "structure" that hosts the multiverse or not. M-Theory says there is, but we haven't any experiments to verify M-Theory, at least, not yet.

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decrementsf t1_j9qosrc wrote

Space wedgies is a better term for this phenomena. Better describes how the quantum foam gets into the void.

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solidcordon t1_j9qs59c wrote

The speed limit is the speed of light.

With that in mind the universe is infinite because the "edge", if there is such a thing, is moving away from us faster than that.

If you enjoy being anxious about things you can't prevent or even detect then how's this:

It's possible that our local presentation of the universe is just local, somewhere out there are other "big bangs" which occupy the same spacetime but at immense distances and their "edges" are approaching us at the speed of light.

We wouldn't even see them coming. We'd just be hit with an overwhelming amount of radiation before we know it.

(this is likely "not even wrong" in how wrong it is, but I do like a cheery thought)

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-imhe- t1_j9qshhy wrote

Replying to Bryllant (#1,948,267)

Not necessarily true. Gravitational waves are waves that travel through "empty" space. Very very recently they were the things of science fiction, so it is conceivable that the big bang and the resulting expansion, upon further observation, might indeed share properties with waves as we understand them.

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PogTuber t1_j9quwdp wrote

There are a couple physicists that are way ahead of you.

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dromni t1_j9qvksb wrote

Someone already posted the multiverse taxonomy and there are lots of alternative Big Bang models floating around trying to explain weird observations that have accumulated over the years (possible asymmetries of the cosmic microwave background, vast cosmological voids, old objects in the early universe, "Dark Flow", etc), and some of them postulate that what we call "the universe" is a sort of sprout from an older, larger universe. Conversely, our own universe may be sprouting. In those models the weird observations are explained either by the "history" of the universe as a sprout or by new sprouts in our own universe.

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Beneficial_Cold8729 t1_j9qwes3 wrote

I picture our universe like a bubble. I picture the everything of everything, like a kid blowing bubbles in the summer. Infinite.

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nsfwtttt t1_j9qzp9o wrote

It’s funny that there’s a concept on earth “finite”, and it’s the default for us and we can’t compare infinity… which kinda natural if you think of it, and the default for the universe or whatever is “beyond” it, incomprehensible in size

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Anonymous-USA t1_j9r1nrp wrote

The universe may well be infinite, but the Big Bang was the creation of our universe, not just the expansion of mass and energy into a preexisting space-time. The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation are the “ripples” you speak of, btw. If LIGO can be made with greater sensitivity, a goal of the project, it may well also measure those gravitational “ripples”.

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Melodicmarc t1_j9r7hs7 wrote

I don't think that makes sense. Ripples expand from a single point outward, much like an explosion with a burst of energy. The big Bang wasn't necessarily that. My favorite metaphor for the universe expanding is it is like a loaf of raisin bread in the oven. Imagine you are one of the raisins. As the bread rises and expands, every raisin gets further from each other. So rather than the universe expanding outward from a central point (like an explosion) and us riding a ripple along that explosion, what really is happening is everything is expanding away from everything else. Every galaxy is slowing getting further and further from us. And if you were to go to another galaxy, then every galaxy would still be slowing expanding further and further from us. The space between everything is what is really expanding.

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j9s8zdu wrote

There is the (mem)brane theory. Where “infinite”? Universa are layered closely together like membranes not touching. The Big Bang could have been two layers touching which resulted in a massive explosion/exchange of energy between two universes. Which could have been the latest big bang. Maybe not the first, maybe not the last.

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