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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Wafflemiesters <evamarie@**********.NET>
Subject: Re: High Speed Matrix er,
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 13:43:04 -0600
Robert Watkins said
/Uh -- yes there is. Any finite volume (and the universe is finite) has
a
/centre. We just don't know where it is. Oh, and I said such as...

The universe is not proven to be finite. And if it is, it is not
bounded : what would be beyond those bounds?
Not all finate volumes must have bounderies. They can "wrap back" on
themselves, or be self bounded. Without boundaries, there is no
center.
As ananalogy, must all finite AREAS have a center? Then tell me, what
is the ceter of the surface of a sphere? It has none, but it is clearly
a finite area.

Mongoose
Message no. 2
From: Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM>
Subject: Re: High Speed Matrix er,
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 16:44:49 -0500
At 01:43 PM 3/10/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Robert Watkins said
>/Uh -- yes there is. Any finite volume (and the universe is finite) has
>a
>/centre. We just don't know where it is. Oh, and I said such as...
>
>The universe is not proven to be finite. And if it is, it is not
>bounded : what would be beyond those bounds?
>Not all finate volumes must have bounderies. They can "wrap back" on
>themselves, or be self bounded. Without boundaries, there is no
>center.
>As ananalogy, must all finite AREAS have a center? Then tell me, what
>is the ceter of the surface of a sphere? It has none, but it is clearly
>a finite area.
>
>Mongoose
>
Actually, if I recall Hawking's correctly (I know at least one of you don't
like him, but he's still considered to be brilliant and a leader in
cosmology), the universe is considered to be finite but without boundaries.

Which I take to mean there is only so much universe out there (finite), but
as it continually expands, it won't ever run into a wall preventing from
expanding (no boundaries). It still, I think, has limits but not
boundaries in the sense that a fence is the boundary for a yard, limits in
the sense that the universe only stretches for so far, right now.

And the universe must have some sort of center; it all started with a
singularity, i.e. the big bang. So there may not be a center in the sense
that you can find the center of a geometric shape, but there is a
primordial center, which may or may not be a geographic center. Remember,
the universe isn't expanding evenly, so it's geographic center and starting
point (big bang) may not be the same. Probably isn't in fact.

As for what is beyond those bounds, who knows? It could be nothing. There
could be other universes. We CAN'T know, and so nearly all cosmologist
ignore that and focus on what we can know, which is what is our universe.
So that question is left to the philosophers.

Erik J.

Further Reading

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