I
found a good video on the size of the Universe and it raised some
questions. To recapitulate some points from the video…
The
observable Universe is 13.7 billion light years in size in one
direction because of the age of the star viewed (they did not exist
earlier than that). Of course twice that distance is the diameter of
the Universe, except because space itself expanded to as a result of
dark energy the actual distance in diameter is 92 billion light
years.
A
cosmologist named Alan Guth invented something called inflation
theory to explain how the Universe could have expanded to such a size
in such a time consistent with math. Inflationary theory is that
some sort of faster-than-light speed inflation of the early Universe
occurred in the first second of its existence. As a result the actual
size of the Universe beyond the observable could be a billion
trillion light years or more. Therefore the observable Universe would
be just a tiny bit of a far more vast Universe.
Most
people I ever talked with about the Universe thought it was infinite
in size logically, rather than of a finite size. One wonders how
there cannot be something beyond any conceivable edge. So the
cosmology discussion of today is really about how far the matter and
energy of space go rather than is there an end to an infinite empty
space (or perhaps not so empty).
Today
cosmology shows tend to expect to wow people with how they have
discovered how much bigger the Universe is than was known before, and
that people formerly thought the Earth rode on the back of princess
turtle-down who charitably turned in a circle each day to share the
light with the just and unjust too, perversely as that may be,
suggesting to Aristarchus and later, Kopernicus, the idea of buttered
popcorn. The heavens above were regarded as a sphere where
super-beings lived such as X-Men, The Mummy, Beverly Hillbillies and
Thor the Thunder-kid, although not those from the Kolobian star
system. As I mentioned above though many people have thought of space
as infinite even if not the local matter and energy.
The
cosmic background radiation charted by wmap of 2.8 degrees kelvin I
believe the number is, and its pattern across the early universe and
space observed in the most ancient light of the observable Universe
more than 13.6 billion light years distant (it took that long for the
light to reach today's Earth and surrounding telescopes), was in
theory imprinted across the entire inflationary Universe even beyond
the observable Universe. If one was a trillion light years from Earth
looking out at your own observable Universe (different from this
one), it should in theory look approximately the same with similar
patterns of development caused by the same nearly instant inflation
of the complete Universe.
One
wonders if the big bang didn't have unequal patterns that were hidden
by inflation in unobservable regions of the Universe. One also
wonders if physicists can make any sort of calculation of the total
amount of energy released in the initial big bang based on the age of
the observable Universe, its cosmic micro-wave radiation patterns and
quantity and the total mass of stars and matter perhaps plus dark
matter and energy.
How
much energy it did it take to drive inflation (that last for just a
few nano-seconds or so apparently), why didn't inflation break up the
cosmic microwave background pattern, and why did that inflation
affect space, matter and energy together without distortion. Did
inflation remove all of its energy from the Universe or spend it all
accelerating energy and space?