What is our universe expanding into?

[sd01g]

(D) There are many more ways that other universes can exist. I refer you to the recent writings of Max Tegmark.

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.html

All these possibilites are well known in the literature, yet most people here, and sadly most physics books, seem unaware of these possibilities. I am at a loss to explain this.

Robert

Could it be that a lot of 'modern cosmology' not only is not physics, it is absurd. When someone states that there is no limit to how fast space itself can expand, that someone has entered the world of Alice in Wonderland. Space, itself, cannot expand faster than the speed of light, simply because space does not expand at all. When matter/energy move in space, they can create volumns that can be expressed mathematically, but no actual space has moved. Mathematics is the language of physics only when it speaks empirically.

 

[siroislaurie]

The premise of this question is sound. Nothing doesn't exist. It can't. For the universe to expand, it can't be surrounded by nothing. If nothing is even simply a container, or "empty" space, then it is something. Even to refer to nothing as anything means it is something that can be described, which means it's not nothing. Along with Robert100's question, my second favorite is: "Why isn't there nothing"? Here is where the observer or point of consciousness becomes important... Back to the Q - unless the definition of "expanding" includes an assumption I'm missing, or there are properties associated with distances increasing that I don't understand, I would like to see continued exploration of the question. Robert100, did you move this to the Cosmology forum and are you getting additional responses there? Maybe the question would make more sense if we go back in time: What was here before the Big Bang? It didn't expand into "nothing" - did it?

 

[russ_watters]

You're right in your characterization of what "expanding into nothing" means, but wrong about the implications for cosmology:

The universe isn't "expanding into nothing", it just isn't expanding into anything. Also, this is a 2 year old thread and really isn't a philosophical question anyway, so I'm locking it.