Lauren Lavoie
Katie MackIf you ever get awed and overwhelmed by the incomprehensible vastness of space, just keep in mind that it’s expanding, more rapidly minute by minute, and to the best of our understanding it will never ever stop
Dan@AstroKatie thanks that really, really helps
@dan That’s what I’m here for
CherylBlueWaveShould I even mention the nebulae?
🌟 💫
CharlieG@AstroKatie Is it possible to say where we are in terms of the centre of the universe? Presumably at the centre of the *observable* universe, but overall?
@Charles We have no reason to believe there is a center
@AstroKatie Gah. It really is hard to think about. Does that mean it goes on forever, or that the concept of “centre” makes no sense?
Big fan of your work, by the way.
sbi@AstroKatie @Charles That is confusing, to say the least. In my common reference frame, every expansion can be reversed (at least in a thought experiment), and then leads to a center which things expand from.
I absolutely hear you saying this isn't true for space, but I utterly fail to wrap my head around something that so thoroughly contradicts my everyday experience.
I absolutely hear you saying this isn't true for space, but I utterly fail to wrap my head around something that so thoroughly contradicts my everyday experience.
Pierre Massé@sbi @AstroKatie @Charles imagine you're a 2D person living on the surface of a balloon and someone's blowing up that balloon. your universe is expanding, you can observe it doing so, but that doesn't help you define the "centre" of the spherical surface that is your universe ('cause there isn't one). the balloon has a centre, sure, but it's also got one more dimension than you.
so we might be living on the 3D surface of a 4D torus, if that helps.
transcendentape@Charles @pierrotechnique @sbi @AstroKatie There’s no inside, and while that’s a reasonable question to ask if you’re considering a model of the Universe being the 2d structure of an expanding balloon, it’s important to remember that it’s a metaphor.
“Where is the center of the Universe?” is not a question that can be answered. We can answer when the Universe began, but it began in all “wheres” and continues to expand.
@pierrotechnique @AstroKatie @Charles I know the balloon parable, and while it helped me to understand that every place feels like it's the center of the expansion, but isn't, you can still reverse the expansion (in your head) until you arrive at a balloon that's a singularity, and get the "real center".
@sbi @AstroKatie @Charles remember that as a 2D balloon surface dweller you don't have access to the 3D reference frame we're imagining the balloon blowing up in. all you can see when playing back the tape is the stuff that makes up your 2D universe getting closer and closer together.
🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦@sbi @pierrotechnique @AstroKatie @Charles
The "Real" center in the balloon analogy is unreachable and imperceivable to anyone on the 2D surface.
Adding a dimension to everything, we live in a 3D space 'surface' of a 4D space-time universe, and the "Real" center would be...
OVER THERE->
(Imagine that I am pointing backwards in time... )
@grumpybozo @pierrotechnique @AstroKatie @Charles Yeah, but this, basically, just says "You cannot understand this!" and calls it a day. Which is very likely true, but does, inevitably, lead to replies like my first in this thread.
@sbi @grumpybozo @AstroKatie @Charles well we can "understand it" mathematically 'cause math is awesome (extra dimensions and all than) even if we can't probe it physically
@sbi @pierrotechnique @AstroKatie @Charles
Not exactly. "The Center" no longer exists as a spatially localizable point in space.
~13.7Bya everything was within micrometers and milliseconds of The Center, but what *was* that tiny dense volume is now spread out across more space than anyone anywhere "inside" can see due to the inflation of space.
Points in space aren't persistent entities. They're only "points" because we cannot perceive the time-cones through space-time that they represent.
Jenny@AstroKatie that feels strangely comforting to me, for some reason
Patrick Fessenbecker@AstroKatie It is every bit as awe-inspiring as the human capacity of consciousness to look past selfish desires and serve a good greater than ourselves.
unfunk@AstroKatie TIL: I am also space
Wolfie Rankin@AstroKatie Just like my tummy
Andrew Perfors@AstroKatie And for the vast majority of that nigh-infinite time, atoms will be too far apart to support life; and at the beginning (near the Big Bang) they were too close.
We're absolutely privileged in the most universal sense possible. The sweet spot of life.
@AndyPerfors do you believe there’s life outside of earth?
@anatsymbol Life? Yes, of course.
Intelligent life: not sure -- nor am I sure if we could recognise it as intelligence if it were there. Probably it's somewhere, though, given the vastness of space and time.
Intelligent life that we will ever be able to interact with? Given the vastness of space, unlikely. We're on our own.
@AndyPerfors agree. I feel interaction would be inevitable but could take millennia or more and I don’t know if humanity necessarily has that kind of time
Pyperkub@anatsymbol @AndyPerfors Just like UFO's are 100% real
(by definition - Unidentified Flying Objects are always this until they are identified :) )
So, yeah, the ISS shows there is life outside of Earth ;)
David ‮ yensiR@AstroKatie Total Perspective Vortex: now available as a toot!
James Purser@AstroKatie I think Eric Idle said it best
Galaxy Song - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
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yady@purserj @AstroKatie That was exactly what came to my mind when I read the original toot.
Craig@AstroKatie And the incomprehensible vastness we perceive is just the tiny sliver of spacetime that exists within our light cone, right?
Peter Janes@AstroKatie And I thought it was a long way down the road to the chemist's! Mindboggling.
ghostdancer@me Here's a fedizen that knows where his towel is. A hoopy frood . @AstroKatie
ThomedySci@AstroKatie What if we made the area outside of space slope upwards?
dxzdb@Hylobatidae @AstroKatie yeah! Fun to think about what is there before it expands😳
@AstroKatie And there may be an infinity of spaces.
@AstroKatie I wonder if you'll get any (wait for it...)
..."push back" on that claim ;)
David Slack@AstroKatie Even so, sometimes I still like to think about how absolutely fucking bananas it would to witness a Big Crunch first-hand.
Lukas Simonis
danwest@AstroKatie AstroKatie brings gravity to the expanding vastness of social media.
René ☀️ Hoffmann 
@AstroKatie I like the representation of vastness over at Wikipedia https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth%27s_Location_in_the_Universe.jpg
areswhat force is making the expansion speed up
osmanthus@AstroKatie just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s revolving…
Bob Jonkman
Orc@AstroKatie Alas, there's no cure for mortality so people can't just watch the universe for a billion years to see what the dickens is going on.
jwz@AstroKatie Thanks I hate it!
Kapitän Clownfeuer@AstroKatie no ultimate crunch then? disappointed...
Sandzwerg@AstroKatie i don't think that helps but I've stopped trying to image the vastness of space since I was a kid and that helped tremendously
The Duality of Xan@AstroKatie Really, we’re quite lucky to live in an era when other galaxies are visible at all!
LR@AstroKatie since time and space are one, i sort of wonder what acceleration is even supposed to mean on a cosmic scale
Vlazgax@AstroKatie just like my belly it seems!
William Hamilton@AstroKatie
“The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
“In all of the directions it can whiz;
“As fast as you can go — the speed of light, you know —
“Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is;
“So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
“How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
“’Cause there bugger all down here on Earth.”
Galaxy Song - Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Dom Brasted@AstroKatie
Last year, my 8yo son asked, "How can the universe be infinite? If it's constantly expanding , it must have an edge. "
Last year, my 8yo son asked, "How can the universe be infinite? If it's constantly expanding , it must have an edge. "
T L Holaday@dombrasted @AstroKatie Born in an inland region, it was eight years before I saw the ocean from the shore. The horizon was the edge of what I could see, not the edge of the ocean.
If that is an unsatisfactory answer to your eight-year-old, here’s Sabine:
What does the universe expand into? Do we expand with it?
@tlholaday @AstroKatie Thank you.
We actually discussed how there is more than one meaning of infinity.
We actually discussed how there is more than one meaning of infinity.
Donty@AstroKatie and I hear doing so faster than the speed of light so the stars (galaxies) will appear to fade out as they zoom away... take quite a while though...
Torstein@AstroKatie So, I should be even more overwhelmed and scared since it's all gonna end in ice-death of the universe. Every star and galaxy distancing themselves more and more from each other, burning out and leaving an eternal pitch black, ice cold and dead universe. I need something to cheer me up now 😔
Ian Davis@AstroKatie
I like to think this is because it's simply the quality of awareness playing out.
I like to think this is because it's simply the quality of awareness playing out.
mattvogt@AstroKatie I was at the American Museum of Natural History this past weekend, just staring in awe at many of the space / universe exhibits. Also wondering how often they need to be updated :)
@AstroKatie @shaninthewoods From the photons’ perspective, nothing is changing. What’s to stop? Nothing ever started 💡🤷