If the universe is always expanding, how come the sky never gets any bigger?
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really, i mean really? what are you superman and have supervision or something?
Do I laugh? Or do I cry? Oh, what the hell! Bwahahahaha!
Because, unlike prehistoric early life forms, your third eye has evolved into the pineal gland, so the sky keeps getting bigger but your pineal gland has no optic nerve anymore to be able to see it.
ok well just in case this is a serious question…
the “sky” is earth, not space. earth is not expanding. and also i think the claim that space is expanding is only a theory, therefore we have no way of knowing that for sure that that theory is true.
why is “psychology” tagged in the “Topics”??
Space & Time are the same thing & both are expanding. The sky is expanding & so is everything else, so we just don’t notice it.
@Jayne, was that a laugh or a cry?
@johnpowell we like to call this an “awkward starfish” moment.
I would call this a “Failed High School Science” moment.
The sky is just a huge bowl with holes punched into it so that that light can shine through.
(The sky is definitely not earth, which is that solid (sort of) blue and white planet)
The sky is getting bigger because we keep adding pollutants to it, good thing too, because air pollution reflects more sunlight away than water does so air pollution is slowing down Global Warming. No kidding unlike everything else I’ve said.
The sky is a gathering of “wanderers” that are all Gods according to the ancient Sumerians. So the sky is really just a bunch of Gods & the sky won’t get any bigger until you all get off your ass & invent some new Gods.
Electromagnetic radiation from the most distant galaxies take 13,000,000,000 light years to reach your eye or a telescope. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second.
Space; the final frontier.
What is meant by the sky getting “bigger”? Is the question actually asking why the ground isn’t receding to make room for space? Is it asking if space is expanding? What am I missing here?
The sky is the reflection of light off of the Earth’s atmosphere and back at ya. The Earth’s atmosphere isn’t getting any bigger.
@laureth not the atmosphere, there’s a theory that the universe itself is expanding. well, if this theory is indeed true and it is expanding how come we cant tell a differnce in the sky? why arent there more stars or less stars.
Right. The Universe is expanding. But the sky that you see is the atmosphere’s reflection of light.
It’s like this. Let’s say you’re in your bedroom, but they’re adding a porch to the back of the house (making the house bigger). How come your bedroom doesn’t look any bigger? Because your bedroom’s walls are between you and the addition. In a similar way, the reflection (sky) is between you and the far reaches of the universe.
Also: the expanding universe doesn’t necessarily mean that more matter is being created in it. A pair of shoes is still only two shoes, whether they’re in a shoe box or a walk-in closet. That said, new stars are being born (and old ones dying) all the time – with the matter we already have on hand.
That’s happening too slowly to notice with the naked eye, but it has been measured. Supernova in distant galaxies that we use to measure expansion are getting red-shifted. That means that they are traveling away from us and the light waves we get are getting stretched out making them appear nearer the red side of the spectrum. So, in that sense, the sky is getting bigger, and we have seen it, but that only occurs at great distances because gravity is too strong.
Thank you uberbatman!
So if the Universe’s space is getting bigger, but no new matter is being created, then eventually things are going to get kind of sparse?
Yup, that’s the big freeze theory. There will be a new golden age of life as more heavy elements are created by the stars, but then everything dies, the stars, then the black holes, and eventually this great big shining thing we live in will just sputters and fades to black desolation… Sad. I need a hug now.
By this time, hopefully humans will have invented Superstring Travel to another of the 16 dimensions unaffected by the Great Freeze, or will all quantum dimensions be affected as well? Is there any escape?
Perhaps we could invent a time machine and escape to the past.
I’d go back in time to when humans met the Beaked Aliens.
YES! We must! We could create a wormhole, drop one end into a particle accelerator, and it wouldn’t go forward in time (too much). We wait, then when things start being dead and cold and generally unpleasant, we just hop on through and not die!
The past of course. The end in the accelerator doesn’t age as much as the other end.
Because was are on the earth which has a fixed diameter.
@btko That’s exactly why the question threw me for a loop. I wasn’t sure if it was asking if the sky would somehow shrink the earth or something.
Yeah I wasn’t too sure either, but I think it’s meaning our “sky”... :o
And there are stars being “born” and dying all of the time. You don’t notice it because there are thousands of stars in our limited field of view, and they are relatively stable… as in.. they won’t be blowing up any time soon.
And you actually can see new stars if you look in the Orion Nebula. Look up at the sky and find Orion’s Belt, and then his sword which is somewhat perpendicular to the belt. The middle “star” of the sword is actually a star forming nebula.
The expansion of the universe is something different. It has nothing to do with how many stars we see in the sky because the scale is so big that it’s not even on the star scale of movement. When they say the universe is expanding it’s because from measurements it’s been shown that nearly all other galaxies are moving away from us and at an accelerated rate.
(there are a few moving nearer to us, because they are in the same “local” area and we are basically orbiting one another.)
Yes, we will soon have to call our galaxy “Milky Andromeda”.
@PVBMISFIT: The collision between the Andromeda Galaxy (M 31) and the Milky Way will occur in 3 million years, give or take a million. So we’d better start packing.
@gailcalled, actually it will happen in about 5 billion years. Either way, better get the suitcases ready.
@btko; Oh, man, and my hair is such a mess. Thanks for the heads-up.
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