I just had a thought... you know how scientists try to explain the expansion of the Universe on dark energy? What if space was like rubber? You can imagine two forces pulling at opsite ends and stretching it appart? Well the gravitational pull of galactic clusters would do the same thing to our Universe... One galactic cluster creates a dimple and another one does the same.. the space in between gets stretched and hence the expansion?

I think someone already came up with the idea and called it the "rubber-band" Universe..

There is a lot of doctorate-level research in the subject, and the google-science from people who aren't experts in the field is not going to be very useful.

If that is something you are interested in, perhaps you should go into those areas of physics and astronomy, or have a discussion with the post-doc researchers who actually know the field.

frob, you are right. we can now close down the internet. goodbye everybody.

I sometimes wonder if it's really "expanding". I take the term expansion as a metaphore when applied to space-time, since as far as I know, space/vacuum
isn't formed (or at least is far from being entirely formed) of regular (known by men) matter which is the actual thing we actually experience expanding.

One thought I have on this is that if vacuum is in some dimention comparable to a fluid, maybe it is flowing from somewhere else, and what is called an expansion is actually a "filling" of the universe with space and particles.

This change of terms may seem tribial (probably pointless), but to me, it replaces the philosophical aspect of the creation/destiny of the universe from "having an origin and an end" to "being perpetuously created". Thing that, to me, at least philosophically, feels very comforting.

Then I realised I'd have to expend my entire life studing to figure out how to kill the foundations of modern physics, thus I gave up.

2nd law ftw!

Quote: Original post by vetroXL
I just had a thought... you know how scientists try to explain the expansion of the Universe on dark energy? What if space was like rubber? You can imagine two forces pulling at opsite ends and stretching it appart? Well the gravitational pull of galactic clusters would do the same thing to our Universe... One galactic cluster creates a dimple and another one does the same.. the space in between gets stretched and hence the expansion?

It seems me not.When Edwin Hubble has discovered the "red shift" and scientists got enough data/statistic, "uniform" stretching of universe almost not depending from local clasters of mattery was a great paradox for them,for long time.Modern explanation is : vacuum "anti-gravitation" much stronger,thats why Hubble law begin to work from short distances.