All The Matter in the Universe

On the inside of that sphere, no, things behave "normally".

Your question really can't be answered because you can't be outside of the known universe for one. Two, outside of the universe light has not yet traveled, so even if it were possible to be there, which you can't, nothing would be there, yet.

Three, since the observer (you) is part of the universe, being outside where the universe will be, can't be, because you (part of the universe) would be there and therefore so would the universe. It's a catch 22 situation.

Now, your real question might be is the total mass of the universe great enough to capture light like a black hole does? The answer is that there is more than enough mass, but the mass density is much too small. However, we can readily see gravitational lensing within the universe.

That is why a black hole is "black". The mass is trivial compared to the universe, but the density is essentially infinity, so the gravitational gradient is so high at the event horizon that nothing escapes, not even light. There are exceptions to that last statement theoretically, which is called Hawking Radiation, but I digress.

So the answer is sort of the reverse of this witty remark. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read. Groucho Marx

As far as my brain goes its, too big a number to use ton or kilo as a comparative answer.

Say all solids = a & all not solids = b, it would weight ab!

Could ab bend light, not if you could see it.

Guest, Hero did a very competent job answering you. All I can add is that there was a time when it was thought that our universe is 'closed', with enough mass-energy to bend light back on itself (finite, yet unbounded, as Stephen Hawking said). So you could not go outside it.

Nowadays, with dark energy and increasing expansion rate, the universe is considered on the brink between being open and closed and possibly infinite in size. Light will not bend back on itself, except near black holes. Whichever is true, as Hero said, you cannot be outside it anyway!

One question that's bugged me for a long time is this: if too much matter is concentrated at one place (putting it overly simply), it suffers gravitational collapse and turns into a black hole, right? How then, at the very beginning when everything in the universe was smashed together into a space the size of a pea, for instance, did the universe escape this same fate? Why did the universe itself not turn into a black hole? Did gravity not yet exist at this early stage? If so, was the universe too big and was it expanding too fast by the time gravity debuted?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Ever heard of a white hole? Something i heard of years ago when i was a kid (i'm just under 40). As i understand it (which i don't-Figure of speech). When matter is sucked into a blackhole there is a corresponding whitehole either connected to somewhere else in our universe (maybe exiting inside a very large Sun -it makes the sun) by maybe a space/time wormhole? Or possibly into a different Universe.

Go for it guys. Blow this one out of the water.

Is this theory still kicking around or did Stephen H. destroy this too during a Lunch break in pre-school?

Guest, you asked: "How then, at the very beginning when everything in the universe was smashed together into a space the size of a pea, for instance, did the universe escape this same fate? Why did the universe itself not turn into a black hole?"

The best answer we have is cosmic inflation. It stretched space so fast in an almost infinitesimal time interval that particles could never move closer to each other.

Google or Wikipedia the term a bit and see if you can get your head around it. If not, I'll help you out a bit.

Jorrie

!). I am old enough to have seen Einstein, wondered about his theories, and others as well. This is what has guided along the path I've followed over the years (minus a few side trips). One point that still causes me to ponder long and hard without an answer that my mind can grasp is, 'if the universe, at the instant of the big bang, was a point (or a pea) when the raw energy spread out in all directions, why are we not able to see differences in velocity of objects at the same physical distance from Earth?'

Consider an explosion, material surrounding the point of center will move away from the center on a radial path from the center. A particle moving 'N' will have almost identical velocity as particles near by it.

Particles moving on vectors 90 degrees from 'N' will have distinctly a different angular velocity relative to 'E', 'W',... but should have simular velocitys when viewed at the same angle from the 'N' to 'S' axis.

The velocity of partivles moving in the direction 'S' should have the highest delta velocity when measured from the 'N' particle.

Based on this, the 'N' particle scientists should be able to determine just about where the 'N' particle is relative to all the others, as well as their relative velocities to 'N'.

I have not read anything that I can remember that would indicate in this expanding universt we happen to find ourselfs.

I don't have a problem with the red shift, nor 'looking back into time'.

2. What if some other universe imploded into a single supermassive black hole. Could it have burst out another universe??

Jim, you said: 'if the universe, at the instant of the big bang, was a point (or a pea) when the raw energy spread out in all directions,... ' Are you assuming that the whole universe was that small? All that we know for sure is that our observable universe was that small - the rest may have been anything up to infinitely large at that stage! The Big Bang singularity refers to infinite density, not zero size.

The 2nd part of your question: '…why are we not able to see differences in velocity of objects at the same physical distance from Earth?' is not quite clear, because we do not expect to observe different velocities at the same distance from us. Remember, our spot was in the center of that 'pea' and it's still in the center of our observable universe, so at the large distances things at the same range should travel at the same recession speed.

Although cosmologists talk about 'recession speed', what they really mean is that the expansion of space is carrying stationary things away from us, making it look like speed that increases with distance (Hubble's law).

Hope this helps. - Jorrie

I think the mass would bend light - but over what distance and to what extent I have no idea. I can guess by applying hindsight logic.

ie, within the limits of knowledge expounded by the Flat Earth Brigade (FEB), a person (on Earth) setting out on what was to them a perfectly straight line (and led to believe they would disappear off the edge of the World) we know today they would come back to the point they started before reaching the 'edge' - and totally mystified because the FEB would not allow the facts to confuse their theory.

So with today's theories (and tomorrow's telescopes) looking perfectly straight into space (in any direction??) - would we see the backs of our necks?

Horace wrote: "So with today's theories (and tomorrow's telescopes) looking perfectly straight into space (in any direction??) - would we see the backs of our necks?"

As I replied in post #3, today's universe is considered to be open and light will not bend back, but just carry on forever in an almost straight line. Looking in any direction we see to the horizon of the observable universe and no further because light from "over the horizon" has not had time to reach us yet.

Actually, there's a fog just shy of the horizon that stops us from even seeing even the real horizon. The fog was due to the extreme temperature after the Big Bang, which prevented electrons from binding to nuclei. This scattered photons like in a thick fog. Today astronomers observe and measure the edge of the fog as the cosmic microwave background radiation.

I think you are right about being able to side our backsides from all the way around the universe. I just finished my third Fog Cutter and looked through my telescope. I couldn't see the back of my neck, but I did see my ass. Boy do I need to lose weight! I had no idea! Or was that the moon?

Your question points up the silliness of modern cosmology. Thanks.

First of all, if light has magnetic properties, it's bend would be according to the right hand rule and would infinitely come in around itself, at some point, as if being recirculated in an ever-expanding shpere.

Secondly, your premise of finite matter within the universe is your first mis-calculation.