In philosophical writings, I’m used to the term universe referring to the totality of existence. On this definition, there cannot be anything that is not part of the universe.

In the context of cosmology, talk about 'our universe’ tends to refer to a subset of the universe in the philosophical sense.

Our current scientific models of the world run into problems when we try to 'rewind’ all the way to the origin of our universe. At the moment, the events during the first Planck time unit, are invisible to science. We can be confident though, that our intuitions about how the world works certainly don’t apply to whatever happened during that period.

Time (as we know it) may not exist independently of our universe. If it doesn’t, then it makes no sense to ask what happened 'before’ the big bang in the same way that it makes no sense to ask about what’s north of the North Pole.

As to whether anything exists independently of our local universe, I don’t think anyone can do anything but guess about that at the moment. My guess is yes.

Posted: December 24th 2009

See all questions answered by bitbutter

I do not have enough understanding of the existing research regarding what we know or not know about the universe. I am always meaning to read Brian Greene in more depth. But when I do encounter some perspective of his on the topic, I just get goose flesh all over. It seems that understanding the universe is our intellectual 'new world.’ Like explorers once focused on finding unknown lands on earth, we are pushing our mental/emotional/physical limits in order to increase our understanding of the universe. It is a magnet for our creativity and problem solving. I am tempted to say if it did not exist, we would have to invent it!

Like many, I await for research news from the LHC experiments.

Metaphorically, the universe is like a flower to me. Exotic at times, but also familiar, beckoning but also a bit dangerous (think of man-eating flora), beautiful but oblivious to our existence, and opening its mysteries to us just to suddenly clam up (like a morning glory, of course!).

Posted: December 23rd 2009

See all questions answered by logicel

“Universe” was always supposed to mean the entirety of existence. With the possibility of a multiverse, however, “the universe” or “our universe” has narrowed its definition to the entirety of observable (not actually observed) existence, such that there may exist equivalent portions of un-observable stuff. Therefore, if what we think of as the universe didn’t exist, there might well be more out there.

“Before” becomes a dodgy concept when we may be discussing the beginning of time itself. Personally, I think the reality will turn out to be an eternal multiverse of some sort, of which our universe is just one event.

Posted: December 22nd 2009

See all questions answered by SmartLX