A great list of Cosmology Questions Answered, including: Why do we think that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating? What is quintessence? What is the Universe expanding into?
Everything that we measure is within the Universe, and we see no edge or boundary or center of expansion. Thus the Universe is not expanding into anything that we can see, and this is not a profitable thing to think about. Just as Dali’s Corpus Hypercubicus is just a 2-D picture of a 3-D object that represents the surface of a 4-D cube, remember that the balloon analogy is just a 2-D picture of a 3-D situation that is supposed to help you think about a curved 3-D space, but it does not mean that there is really a 4-D space that the Universe is expanding into.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:45 am
[...] Cosmology Questions Answered – Quantum Mechanics Made Relatively Simple Podcasts – 10 Most Beautiful Physics Experiments – [...]
March 8th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Question: If Einsteins thinking were correct about gravity and space, that is, gravity warping space, then how do we know that we are not observing the same galaxy or other celestial objects from two or more different directions? And would this interfere with conclusions on the observed red shift? And would this interfere with the count of the number of objects seen from Earth? Could and would this interfere with all of our theories about the cosmos? Or, does this actually support modern concepts of the universe? If this actually occurs(spotting the same object from different directions)how can astronomers tell which one is the proper direction, and/or, if it is actually the same object? Would there be any magnification or diminishment of the image? What are the answers to these questions?