Traces of One of the Universe's Oldest Stars Discovered

[FalloutJack]

Zoop

Question! What do you mean flat and not curved? Entire universe spirals out in all directions from a single point. For the universe to be flat in any way, Event One would have to be flat, given the way Zero-G can send things hurtling off into various directions in direct proportion to the force involved. As below, see above. If the small-scale of a human person bouncing in all directions in space goes, then so too does matter at large in the universe as per the forces governing it. That things generally circle in one direction (planetary orbits) may seem flat, but when facing this from the centerpoint it must be going in all directions. To wit, there must be a galaxy moving at a perpendicular orientation to the Milky Way, intersection points at the center of the universe.

Or uhh...am I misunderstanding what you meant? Could you clarify on the matter of flat and curviness?

 

[Altorin]

Zoop

Question! What do you mean flat and not curved? Entire universe spirals out in all directions from a single point. For the universe to be flat in any way, Event One would have to be flat, given the way Zero-G can send things hurtling off into various directions in direct proportion to the force involved. As below, see above. If the small-scale of a human person bouncing in all directions in space goes, then so too does matter at large in the universe as per the forces governing it. That things generally circle in one direction (planetary orbits) may seem flat, but when facing this from the centerpoint it must be going in all directions. To wit, there must be a galaxy moving at a perpendicular orientation to the Milky Way, intersection points at the center of the universe.

Or uhh...am I misunderstanding what you meant? Could you clarify on the matter of flat and curviness?

you're using the term "flat" to mean something falling upon a two dimensional line. When talking about 3d space, flat basically means what you think of as 3d space.. it basically just stretches out in all of the directions we can concieve of (up down, left right, forward back, and all the directions between them). I'll let someone smarter then me explain what a curved 3d space is. My brain can't quite handle that right this second.

 

[FalloutJack]

Zoop

Question! What do you mean flat and not curved? Entire universe spirals out in all directions from a single point. For the universe to be flat in any way, Event One would have to be flat, given the way Zero-G can send things hurtling off into various directions in direct proportion to the force involved. As below, see above. If the small-scale of a human person bouncing in all directions in space goes, then so too does matter at large in the universe as per the forces governing it. That things generally circle in one direction (planetary orbits) may seem flat, but when facing this from the centerpoint it must be going in all directions. To wit, there must be a galaxy moving at a perpendicular orientation to the Milky Way, intersection points at the center of the universe.

Or uhh...am I misunderstanding what you meant? Could you clarify on the matter of flat and curviness?

you're using the term "flat" to mean something falling upon a two dimensional line. When talking about 3d space, flat basically means what you think of as 3d space.. it basically just stretches out in all of the directions we can concieve of (up down, left right, forward back, and all the directions between them). I'll let someone smarter then me explain what a curved 3d space is. My brain can't quite handle that right this second.

You're talking about a subjective flat that I have not been exposed to yet in a space-related discussion, then. I see. Yeah, somebody else take this for a moment. I'm calling time on this.

 

[Maze1125]

Zoop

Question! What do you mean flat and not curved? Entire universe spirals out in all directions from a single point. For the universe to be flat in any way, Event One would have to be flat, given the way Zero-G can send things hurtling off into various directions in direct proportion to the force involved. As below, see above. If the small-scale of a human person bouncing in all directions in space goes, then so too does matter at large in the universe as per the forces governing it. That things generally circle in one direction (planetary orbits) may seem flat, but when facing this from the centerpoint it must be going in all directions. To wit, there must be a galaxy moving at a perpendicular orientation to the Milky Way, intersection points at the center of the universe.

Or uhh...am I misunderstanding what you meant? Could you clarify on the matter of flat and curviness?

As Altorin says, we need to distinguish between something with 2 dimensions and something that is flat.
Imagine a piece of paper on a table. That paper is both 2 dimensional and also flat.
Now imagine a piece of paper wrapped around a ball. The paper is still 2D, but it is now curved. The paper still has 2 dimensions but those dimensions have been curved through the 3rd dimension.
The same would be true of curved 3D space. It would still be 3D but curved through a higher 4D space.

Now curved 3D space is very hard to imagine but what we can consider instead are what properties it might have. For example. If you draw two parallel lines on a flat piece of paper those lines will never ever meet, no matter how far you draw them. Whereas, if you draw parallel lines on the surface of a ball, they do meet, while if you draw parallel lines inside a curved bowl those lines will in-fact diverge.
These things remain true for curved 3D space; in convex 3D space parallel lines will eventually meet while in concave 3D space parallel lines will diverge.

Another good example are triangles. On a flat piece of paper the angles in a triangle always total 180 degrees. While a triangle drawn on a ball will have angles greater than 180 degrees and a triangle in a bowl will have angles totalling less than 180.
Again the exact same thing would apply to curved 3D space; in convex 3D space a triangle will have angles totalling more than 180 while concave 3D space gives us a triangle with angles less than 180.

Flat 3D space, on the other hand, maintains the properties we "expect" onwards to infinity.

 

[Altorin]

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=714

This covers it at a fairly easy level

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/2011/07/25/what-do-you-mean-the-universe-is-flat-part-i/

That goes on a little deeper

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=171

that answers a few more questions and helps flesh out the idea of a flat universe

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

And snip

Guys, I have a problem with this. There are some very simple facts about the universe that make this confusiing. For instance, the shape and motion of things do not seem to follow. The most-efficient shape of things is a sphere and spiraling is the common motion of all things. There are things oriented above and below this planet (as in, you look from the poles and see stars, ergo systems). Galaxies 'collide' and overlap. I don't think it all adds up...

 

[Maze1125]

Snip

And snip

Guys, I have a problem with this. There are some very simple facts about the universe that make this confusiing. For instance, the shape and motion of things do not seem to follow. The most-efficient shape of things is a sphere and spiraling is the common motion of all things. There are things oriented above and below this planet (as in, you look from the poles and see stars, ergo systems). Galaxies 'collide' and overlap. I don't think it all adds up...

I believe that you're still confusing the concepts of flat with the concepts of 2D.
The obvious space with in our universe is 3D; that's undeniable. The question is if it's a 3D which obeys the "basic" geometrical laws (which we call "flat") or if it's 3D which curves and so allows oddities such as parallel lines to meet. As described above.

Neither cases of the universe being "flat" nor it being "curved" interferes with the full 3 dimensions of our universe being utilised by matter.

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

And snip

Guys, I have a problem with this. There are some very simple facts about the universe that make this confusiing. For instance, the shape and motion of things do not seem to follow. The most-efficient shape of things is a sphere and spiraling is the common motion of all things. There are things oriented above and below this planet (as in, you look from the poles and see stars, ergo systems). Galaxies 'collide' and overlap. I don't think it all adds up...

I believe that you're still confusing the concepts of flat with the concepts of 2D.
The obvious space with in our universe is 3D; that's undeniable. The question is if it's a 3D which obeys the "basic" geometrical laws (which we call "flat") or if it's 3D which curves and so allows oddities such as parallel lines to meet. As described above.

Neither cases of the universe being "flat" nor it being "curved" interferes with the full 3 dimensions of our universe being utilised by matter.

Personally, I would believe the latter. I am not a scientist, but even Stephen Hawking has had to change his theories from time to time. A straight line in the universe just isn't what it is down here on planet Earth.

 

[Maze1125]

Snip

And snip

Guys, I have a problem with this. There are some very simple facts about the universe that make this confusiing. For instance, the shape and motion of things do not seem to follow. The most-efficient shape of things is a sphere and spiraling is the common motion of all things. There are things oriented above and below this planet (as in, you look from the poles and see stars, ergo systems). Galaxies 'collide' and overlap. I don't think it all adds up...

I believe that you're still confusing the concepts of flat with the concepts of 2D.
The obvious space with in our universe is 3D; that's undeniable. The question is if it's a 3D which obeys the "basic" geometrical laws (which we call "flat") or if it's 3D which curves and so allows oddities such as parallel lines to meet. As described above.

Neither cases of the universe being "flat" nor it being "curved" interferes with the full 3 dimensions of our universe being utilised by matter.

Personally, I would believe the latter. I am not a scientist, but even Stephen Hawking has had to change his theories from time to time. A straight line in the universe just isn't what it is down here on planet Earth.

Remember that planet Earth is part of the universe and so any curvature in the universe would be visible on the planet too.
This is a topic which has been studied quite extensively and all the results have shown that if the universe does have any curvature it is insignificant at any distance smaller than the observable universe.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

Remember that planet Earth is part of the universe and so any curvature in the universe would be visible on the planet too.
This is a topic which has been studied quite extensively and all the results have shown that if the universe does have any curvature it is insignificant at any distance smaller than the observable universe.

For some reason, I am curious if this topic has been addressed from both sides; that is, have people tried presupposing that the universe is curved, and tried to imagine what would happen if it were flattened, rather than the other way around? Because I can tell that a 1-dimensional line on a curved 2-dimensional plane will probably have different attributes when the plane is flattened, thus it might be assumed that our perception of any dimension will be skewed by the possible curvature of the universe. Thus, if the universe is in fact curved, we might have no way of knowing, because all the math we developed for flat surfaces may be influenced by our curved existence, and thus not accurately represent what it's like in a flat universe.

Or something like that. I don't know, I just find these kinds of math/physics/philosophy things interesting.

 

[FalloutJack]

Snip

And snip

Guys, I have a problem with this. There are some very simple facts about the universe that make this confusiing. For instance, the shape and motion of things do not seem to follow. The most-efficient shape of things is a sphere and spiraling is the common motion of all things. There are things oriented above and below this planet (as in, you look from the poles and see stars, ergo systems). Galaxies 'collide' and overlap. I don't think it all adds up...

I believe that you're still confusing the concepts of flat with the concepts of 2D.
The obvious space with in our universe is 3D; that's undeniable. The question is if it's a 3D which obeys the "basic" geometrical laws (which we call "flat") or if it's 3D which curves and so allows oddities such as parallel lines to meet. As described above.

Neither cases of the universe being "flat" nor it being "curved" interferes with the full 3 dimensions of our universe being utilised by matter.

Personally, I would believe the latter. I am not a scientist, but even Stephen Hawking has had to change his theories from time to time. A straight line in the universe just isn't what it is down here on planet Earth.

Remember that planet Earth is part of the universe and so any curvature in the universe would be visible on the planet too.
This is a topic which has been studied quite extensively and all the results have shown that if the universe does have any curvature it is insignificant at any distance smaller than the observable universe.

As above, see below? Could very well be. Can't wait for all the science to be done on other planets, the stuff that we couldn't have machines to do for us. Great robots, of course, but it's like a boy scout. It has to prepare NOW and everything it can't take, it can't test for. What I'm basically saying is that this is all very confusing and I can't wait to hear more about our universe once we're more out in the thick of it, doing things.