Size of the Observable Universe

J

Jade Squirrel

Impassioned Atheist
Registered Senior Member
I have read basically two different explanations of the size of the observable universe.

1) The diameter of the observable universe is 13.7 billion light years, determined by the distance light has travelled since the Big Bang. It seems that most of the sources on the Internet give this explanation.

2) The radius of the observable universe is 13.7 billion light years, since we can see that far in all directions. This one makes more sense to me though.

Can anyone elaborate on which one is correct and why there is so much ambiguity on the subject?
 
Because their not really seeing 13.7 billion years of light space at all.
Light in our dimension in being bent into a circle, it's something to do with the speed of time here being different than the rest of the universe.....we are in some kind of a slow-motion time warp.
A temporal differential.

Don't think three-dimensional, think four...
hieght, width, breadeth..and time, (or frequency, creating diiferent dimensions stacked up and down, on different plane of existance. The root of the word "planet" is "plane".

There are heavens and earth, the stars and planets....and right here, on the same stars and planets, there are different "worlds" The Word says: "He "framed" the worlds also"....That dimensions."

The ones above are faster, the ones below, well I'd rather not know, but anyway thats it.

The bible says: "a day to god is a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day"....

Heaven is a dimension right here in us ...around us, but its faster than this.....Vibration...frequency...motion.
This ratio would mean 365,000 to1 ...light (here) travels at 186, 000 miles per second.

186,000 X 2 + 372,000....the dimension where God is speaking of is traveling at a frequency, or vibration of just under two times the speed of light...(for us) That would make them right here where we are but out of phase with us enough so we can't perceive them....

Our senses in this world have adjusted to the same frequency and thats all they usually can register...But sometimes, when the body is weakened the man inside, can see through.

When Man fell, from being an immortal creation.....He fell into time from eternity.

The ratio would be 365,000 to 1...one day is a thousand years.
The bible said this is the beginning of the 7th milinuem.
It's been 7000 years not 13.7 billion.

Take 13.7 as the radius.....divide this by our "temporal" differential of 365,000 to 1.

See what you get.......37,503 years and thats light space now, not including movement of expansion, which would make the figure much less.




TheVisitor
 
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:eek:

Don't mind TheVisitor, he's just a guy I stupidly invited from a theology forum.
 
OK, Visitor...
I'll bite.
AGAIN.

(one of these days I will learn my lesson)


Originally posted by TheVisitor
The ones above are faster, the ones below, well I'd rather not know, but anyway thats it.
Click to expand...
Why do you think we have "stacked" dimensions?
Why do you think the ones above move faster?
Is there any way to observe or test this idea (I refuse to call it a theory, or even hypothesis)?

Originally posted by TheVisitor
Heaven is a dimension right here in us ...around us, but its faster than this.....Vibration...frequency...motion.
This ratio would mean 365,000 to1 ...light (here) travels at 186, 000 miles per second.
Click to expand...

Where does the 365,000 come from?
If one day is 1000 years AND 1000 years is a day, then why would you multiply rather than divide?
Or why don't they cancel each other out?
How do you know if and when iot is faster and/or slower?
Do you think that maybe this was not meant literally?

Originally posted by TheVisitor
186,000 X 2 + 372,000....the dimension where God is speaking of is traveling at a frequency, or vibration of just under two times the speed of light...(for us) That would make them right here where we are but out of phase with us enough so we can't perceive them....
Click to expand...
Please elaborate on what makes you think it is just under 2c.


Originally posted by TheVisitor
The ratio would be 365,000 to 1...one day is a thousand years.
The bible said this is the beginning of the 7th milinuem.
It's been 7000 years not 13.7 billion.
Click to expand...
But if the bible was God's word spoken to man, and you are arbitrarily deciding to factor time here by 365,000 wouldn't you want to be consistent and then it then be 7000 years times 365,000 or 2,555,000,000 years old?


Originally posted by TheVisitor
Take 13.7 as the radius.....X 2 = 27.4 billion divide this by our "temporal" differential of 365,000 to 1.
See what you get.......7506 years,
Click to expand...
Temporal differential, huh?

Have you published this yet? :rolleyes:
 
A prophet of God said this when speaking of Einstien's theory.
The man had revelation from God...but didn't always explain himself.
He said heaven is a dimension faster than this.
He went there for a few moments in 1955, it was not a vision but real...people hugging him, shakeing his hand, all young and beautiful. He said it was only a few feet above this one.

He said ( in the early 1960's) "They'll find out some day, there not seeing 150 million years of lightspace..it's bent around in a circle.
I have thought of that for nearly twenty years and not knew what it means...

Then I did some calculations. 365, 000 to 1 is the differential if you assume 1000 years is a day.
Now take the speed of light in this dimension "C", and the observed total light they say has traveled 13.7 billion light years,
At this ratio....13,700,000,000 % 365,000 = 3753 years....from heavens perspective, which is where God was speaking from when he gave the revelation to His prophets.

Heaven is a faster dimension than this.....just under 2C from "our" perspective. The ratio....2xC=372,000 miles per second.
This is all movement by them, not just linear travel...so it's a vibration or frequency to us...365,000 is just under 372,000 which is 2xC

Now Hell is below, it may be slower....You heard it said you will be in torment for ever and ever...that is not eternity, but a very long time....the word used in the greek mean done away with..to the vanishing point.
So the same time difference between heaven and earth...is also between earth and hell, making it out of phase with our senses to...and incredibly sloww compared to us

The rich man in hell..lifts up his eyes..."please send Lazarus to bring me a drink, remember.....and was told "theres a great gulf fixed lazzarus cannot go to you or you to him..
A day to God is a thousand years, ......AND....a thousand years is a day..... Earth or this dimension of it.....is in the middle.

365,000 to 1.................1 to 365,000

Thats 1000 years ....3651/4 (actually) X 1000 = 365, 250 for heaven's time differential to earth.
And one day in hell is like a thousand years.....Jesus said something like that....said you would give your entire life, everything to trade just so your sins could be one less.
One day 1 to 365,250......each day of your life would be a thousand years in hell to pay...(thats why I said I'd rather not imagine it....)

I also saw a episode of "VOYAGER", where they get stuck in orbit around a planet with this same kind of differential.
They are only there for a few days, while the planet below goes from primitives to space travel, time on the planet passing thousands of years.

The bible doesn't repete itself for nothing...every word has a proper meaning.
God created the heavens and the earth...it says in genesis, and it goes on to say, "and He framed the Worlds also".
Thats not speaking of the same thing.

It's clues are all through the scriptures..For example: To receieve the revelation of God a believer is "Quickened" up into heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
In another place it says: "He is the judge of the Quick and the Dead."
 
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Thank you for your very clear concise logical explanation.
Seriously.

It makes sense to me now.

Not that I necessarily agree, but I do understand why you think that and where the idea comes from.

Thank you.
 
Don't mind TheVisitor, he's just a guy I stupidly invited from a theology forum.
Click to expand...
Not at all. In fact, I have to say that I am quite impressed with the amount of thought he has put into combining scientific ideas of the past century with Xian ideas. I think he has a great imagination. I suppose it probably gets tiresome after awhile though. :D

So, anyone have any useful feedback on my original question?
 
Ya its number 2, but remember this is all very theoretical the actual nature of the whole universe is still hypothetical. We still don't have the answers and there are many things that don't click. Still it is better for us to not yet know or understand then to make it up and believe in mythology. You can believe in a divine force but don’t you dare say religion is right over science.
 
Big Bang?

Hey Squirrel,

I thought it would be more interesting to find out what actual astronomers say.
This is "Ask an astronomer" at Cornell.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=151

Can I calculate the size of the Universe by converting light years to
kilometres?

My bright teenage son, after considerable calculation, has concluded that the universe is approximately 68 sextillion miles wide. He based his calculation on the basic 186K mi/sec speed of light x the estimated 15 billion year age of the universe. When I pointed out that 15 billion years of expansion is not the same as 15 billion LIGHT years of expansion, he asserted that I was in fundamental error on that point. I don't mind being in error, but do mind that one of us, now, has clearly gone astray in his basic understanding. If it is me, please set me straight!

From the current rate of expansion of the Universe, astronomers infer that the age of the observable Universe is about 15 billion years. In other words, if we assume that the Universe has been expanding at a constant rate since the Big Bang, then the rate of expansion tells us how far back in time the expansion started, which we take to be the beginning of the Universe. If the Universe is 15 billion years old, then light has had 15 billion years to propagate, and so the statements "15 billion years old" and "fifteen billion light years apart" are completely equivalent.

The catch is going from light-years to miles. In the local Universe, we know the conversion, since for all intents and purposes we live in a locally flat, spatially "euclidean" Universe ("euclidean" just means that the three angles of a triangle on a surface add to 90 degrees; this is true for a sheet of paper (which is flat), but not on the surface of a sphere or a saddle (which are both curved)). However, when we look at large distances we have to take the 4-dimensional curvature of the Universe into account. In essence, your son has calculated an accurate "radius" for the observable Universe provided that the Universe is flat (a sort of 4-dimensional sheet in spacetime in which light travels in straight lines), and that the rate of expansion of the Universe has remained constant.

Today, we think that half of your son's assumptions are right. Observations indicate that the Universe is either flat, or so big that the curvature is negligible. However, there is recent evidence that the rate of expansion of the Universe is increasing with time; that is, galaxies are moving away from each other *faster* today than they were in the past. This means that the observable Universe is *more* than 15 billion years old. It also means that the energy density of the Universe at present is dominated by "dark energy", a substance with "negative mass" that pushes the Universe apart rather than pulling it together like regular matter does (sound like science fiction? It still is, for the most part, since scientists don't yet have any idea what dark energy is...). The presence of dark energy also affects the curvature of the Universe in the past, which then throws off the conversion from light-years to miles. This is perhaps the best reason why cosmologists avoid using actual distances altogether, unless they are trying to figure out precisely what that conversion factor is.

After 15 million years of expansion, is the universe 15 or 30 million years "wide"??? My son asserts that because the expansion is one of space rather than matter, its total dimension = its time of expansion. This logic escapes me. If is is "expanding," surely it is doing so in all directions at once, thus yielding, to my (admittedly fallible) logic the necessity of its "furthest limits" moving diametrically away from each other. I.e., being two years separated in one year's expansion. Am I confusing time and distance here?

Note that in the above paragraphs I have been careful to use the term "observable Universe" rather than Universe. The Universe itself, or the maximum amount of space that we will eventually be able to see given an infinite amount of time, may well be infinite. In quoting a size of the Universe we infer how far we can see in one direction (15 billion light years), and how far we can see in the other direction (15 billion light years) and add the two to get a size (30 billion light years). An age of 15 billion light years in each direction therefore leads us to infer that we are at the centre of a sphere with radius 15 billion light-years, and hence that the Universe is 30 billion light-years "across". The trick, however, is that because the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic, every observer must measure a size of the Universe that is 30 billion light years... even ones that are at the "edge" of our observable Universe! This means that either the Universe is sufficiently curved that space doubles back on itself (like on the surface of a sphere), or that the actual Universe is much larger than the observable one.

(Actually currently something like 13.7 Billion * 2 = 27.4 Billion lyears across.)

I don't believe a lot of this. As you'd have to believe that nothing exists past the end of the non-observable universe.
If The observable universe is roughly 30 Billlion light years across.
What happens when we travel 15 Billion light years in any direction?

This is also a good article by a High energy nasa bloke.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/971124x.html

None of this really matters to me.
You are asking a bunch of cavemen why it rains. Sure they all have interesting theories, but the theories will probably not be proved in our life times.

The way I personally think of it is we are walking along a beach with a high beam flashlight at night. Anything not illuminated in the flashlight doesn't exist.

Even though we can look back and see what appears to be the formation of the Universe I can't help but imagine we are just looking at a soap bubble of a structure on top of a much larger structure.
I think what we are observing is the birth of the local universe.

It seems the highest form of hubris to assume we know anything at all yet. Check back in a few thousand years and perhaps we'll have learned the answer.

Thanks
PT
 
What going on? You know I’m starting to get sore on my @$$ from all this kissing.
 
WellCookedFetus said:
You can believe in a divine force but don’t you dare say religion is right over science.

========================

Ok, but your going to be well cooked over this one.....

Let's just compare the two, Science...and The Bible.
Let's go into the history of the Bible just a minute and see where It come from. It was written by forty different writers. Forty men wrote the Bible over a space of sixteen hundred years apart and at different times, predicting the most important events that ever happened in world's history, and many times hundreds of years before it happened. And there is not one error in the entire sixty-six Books. . No author but God Himself could be so accurate. Not one word contradicts the other. Remember, sixteen hundred years apart, the Bible was wrote, from Moses to John at the Isle of Patmos: sixteen hundred years. And was wrote by forty different authors. One didn't even know the other one, and they never had It as the Word. Some of them never even seen the Word. But when they wrote It, and was understood to be prophets, then when they put their prophecies together, each one of them dovetailed one to the other.

Look at Peter, who announced on the day of Pentecost, "Repent every one of you and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins." Paul had never heard nothing about it. He went down to Arabia for three years to study the Old Testament to see Who this Pillar of Fire was that spoke to him on the road, saying, "Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" How could he be wrong? He never even consulted the church at all. And fourteen years later when he met Peter, they was preaching the same thing, word by word. That's our Bible.

What if we went now and took sixty-six medical books that deals with the body, wrote by forty different medical schools, sixteen hundred years apart? Wonder what kind of continuity we'd come up with?
When George Washington, our president... About two hundred years ago for pneumonia they pulled his toenail out and bled him a pint. What if we took... Let's go a little further on some things that we so attracted to today; that's science.

What if we took forty different scientific journals from sixteen hundred years apart and see what we'd come up with? A French scientist three hundred years ago proved by science, by rolling a ball, that if any terrific speed was obtained over thirty miles an hour, the object would leave the earth and fall off. You think science would ever refer back to that? Is any continuity with that now, when they drive down the street on the road here, hundred and fifty miles an hour? See? But he scientifically proved that by the pressure of the ball rolling across the ground, that at thirty miles an hour, that any object would lift up off the earth and go away, fall off in space.
No, there's no continuity to that......

But not one word in the Bible contradicts the other. Not one prophet ever contradicted the other one. So.... the Bible is the Word of God to all true believers.
Now, you couldn't get no accuracy in what doctors would agree upon. You can't even get accuracy of them now. You can't get accuracy in science now......
The wisdom of man....is but foolishness to God.


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"Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"
 
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Oh please your killing me I can't breath... need oxygenating fluid... must stop laughing!
 
TheVisitor:

There are a couple of problems with your thesis.

1. The bible is a <b>compilation</b> of writings. If you were compiling a book, would you select writings which contradicted each other (unless you wanted your book to be a compilation of opposing views)? The compilers of the bible selected books which they thought fitted well with each other. They deliberately left out writings which contradicted the included writings in a major way. Nevertheless...

2. They didn't do that great a job. The bible is still riddled with contradictions. I don't know where you get the idea that the is "not one error in the entire sixty-six books". Demonstrably, there are many errors, and also blatant contradictions.

You compare the bible to the development of medicine. The thing is, though, that medicine is a science. As such, it is open to change as our knowledge increases. The bible, on the other hand, allows for no change. You are required by the fundamentalists to accept the literal truth of every word (and, presumably, to use double-think where it contradicts itself). The bible never changes, and anybody suggesting it is wrong is a heretic.

<i>A French scientist three hundred years ago proved by science, by rolling a ball, that if any terrific speed was obtained over thirty miles an hour, the object would leave the earth and fall off.</i>

I'll call your bluff on this one. Which French scientist? Where can I find this "proof" you refer to? Do you in fact have any evidence for your statement at all?

<i>But not one word in the Bible contradicts the other. Not one prophet ever contradicted the other one.</i>

You only have to read the first couple of chapters of Genesis to find two contradictory stories of creation, and things don't get any better after that.

<i>You can't get accuracy in science now......</i>

The period of the a particular binary pulsar system has been measured to an accuracy of at least 0.0000000000000001 seconds. For an object many hundreds of light years away, I think that's pretty accurate, don't you?

For comparison, the bible thinks the value of pi is 3.
 
originally posted by James R
Demonstrably, there are many errors, and also blatant contradictions

---------------------------

There are no contrdictions.
I find more truth from it every day.
It's like an onion riddled with multi-layer paralells and truths in shadows and type so deep they stretch beyond the capacity of human understanding
Thats why Jesus said "you must be born again, or you will in no wise "see" (understand) the kingdom of God.

No scholar or seminary student can do anything but scratch the surface of whats there, and blindly guess at it's meanings.
Thats the source for the so-called contridictions.
It is only mis-interpretation, through men reading it with the human spirit, not the spirit of God.

The truths are spiritually discerned as they were written spiritually.
 
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Visitor,

You must also take into account that there have been many translations in the Bible's history. To get the original text of God's word, you must read it in the original language. Language is a very delicate thing. Translations never mean the same thing.

The mathematics in the Bible, I am guessing, are probably consistent, but take Genesis or Revelations for an instant. Think about if the translator misinterpreted the text over a concept. There might have been an overall theme that the translator didn't catch due to syntax change or some other part of grammer.

All I am trying to assert is that the Bible is the all-consistent, pure, and flawless relic that you make it out to be. If you look at it from my point of view, it might help you sort through some issues.

Thanks.
 
<i>It is only mis-interpretation...</i>

So, at the very least, the bible is ambiguous, because people can interpret it differently.
 
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