What's the Fabric of space made out of?

was space created or was it just populated? if you can't tell {space} from {NONspace} would you know? if space is expanding wouldn't the rulers used to measure it also be expanding?one of the interesting things about the whole inflation of the universe thing is that the sum of energy and gravity and mass adds up to zero (gravity is negative somehow), so it is not so much a creation as a division of {stuff} into what we know as the universeand this kind of implies that everything in between is also a zero sum gamebut there are also other theories, like the brane theory, where 4D membranes ('branes') waving around in a 5D (or more) superuniverse collide causing the "bang" eventand these kind of imply that the 'brane itself is {something} as it is kind of difficult for {nothing} to collide with more {nothing}and this kind of implies that {something} exists beyond the sphere of the "bang" expansion as the 'brane is bigger ...I hope that helplesly confuses the issue .{{edit to fix typo}}This message has been edited by RAZD, 02-28-2005 20:37 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

thanks, and welcome to the fray. according to our frame of reference and with the assumption (which currently appears correct) that the speed of light is unchanged even by passage of such great distances (where one can envisage light never reaching from one to the other, and thus a limit to the knowable universe regardless of it's true size), butis that the only explanation?{added by edit} This message has been edited by RAZD, 02-28-2005 21:57 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

LOL. I wouldn't want to create too much confusion here (as the joker said to the priest), but I was trying to be a little more sensitive than the article ... (emphasis mine)from Space.com
'Brane-Storm' Challenges Part of Big Bang Theory
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writerheh.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

you have two galaxies departing for destinations unknown, and in the process the light from one is left behind such that at the time that it passes galaxy #2, the 1st galaxy is moving away from #2 faster than the speed of light ... and thus from it's own light as well ...... has it's light has sped up?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

before inflation space would not be populated with the seething particles yes?and at the end of all things when the clock of entropy has taken it's last tic, would not space once again be lacking the seething masses?one wonders if such empty space is more prone to inflationary episodes than our current space? is there a possible sequence of repeating universes, not so much from the {big bang \ big collapse \ big bang} type of old but a {bang \ rundown \ bang} where new universes continually occur within the dried husk remains of the previous one?is there anything that would prevent that from happening? is there any reason to think that only one can occur at a time?This message has been edited by RAZD, 03-03-2005 21:34 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Thanks Sylas, but I am having trouble with the concept that entropy does not affect the dance of particles "at the end of all things when the clock of entropy has taken it's last tic" for isn't this dance an expenditure of energy subject to entropy too? My impression was that the end result would be absolutely static dispersal of all matter and energy, broken down to it's absolute minimal components frozen in time and space.I was just wondering if that kind of "vacuum" of {mass\energy} could initiate an inflation event, actually act to help cause it.And my image was more like an onion with each new universe filling the void left by the previous one in the course of it's expansion. This is getting too much like the religious solipsist "god made it that way 1 second ago" kind of argument. It also seems more like a shrinking of perception rather than an inflation of a universe imho. Why would there be a barrier between these universes?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

good work Jon. I was going to refer buz to wikipedia, but your explanation is better than theirs (they never tie it down to examples of spectral shifts for the absorption bars - and assume a level of knowledge that is at least high school physics\science - in a way that could not be misinterpreted as buz has done)Redshift - WikipediaI remember doing spectral bar experiments in my high school physics (PSSC) class

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Hey buz,Let me throw in my two sense worth and see if we can shed some light ...There are two phenomenon's involved here that are partly related.Consider the problem of determining what the original wavelengths coming from a star are -- is the star naturally redder or bluer than the sun? If the star is very far away it could be a blue giant that looks more yellow than blue now that the light is redder than originally -- or it could just be a closer red giant -- how would we know?Now lets consider your cloud reddened sun and moon: if the light were shifted to the red end of the spectrum, then not only would the infra-red be shifted out of visible range, but the ultra-violet would be shifted in to fill in for the blue light that has been shifted to the yellows -- you know those pesky "uv" rays that cause sunburn right (and we know that the sun produces a lot too eh)? So it would not appear redder if all the light was shifted. What is happening is that light is being absorbed by the material in between the sun and the earth -- the atmosphere (which is thicker along the tangents for dawn and dusk than for perpendiculars at noon) or clouds (particularly chemical smogs).In this case blue light is being absorbed. Why blue? Because the elements in our atmosphere have a "preference" for those wavelengths (other elements have different "preferences").What this has to do with is the energy required to make electrons change orbits in an atom: each orbit has a specific energy level, so there are quantified levels needed to move electrons from one orbit to another, and the quantified amount depends on the orbits available which depends on the elements in question.Likewise (if memory serves) different wavelengths of light have different electron orbit energies associated with them (although energy is carried in the amplitude of waves) due to the harmonics of the wavelengths with the electron orbits. Thus each particular electron orbit in each element has a specific wavelength associated with absorbing and releasing energy. There are only certain orbits allowed in atoms, so there is a quantified energy "signature" for each orbit relative to each other possible orbit that each element can use.Now these atoms also release energy at the same wavelengths as they absorb them, but they do this in random directions, so they are not directed in the same direction as the original light.Result: orange or red {sun\moon (or even venus in some conditions)} ... oh, and blue skies too (it's the same process)Now here is where it gets a little tricky: that same absorption process is going on with the interstellar light: this is those black {lines\bars\areas} on Jons picture of light from the sun.So again, how do we tell distant star light is shifted? Well it has to do with the locations of the black {lines\bars\areas} within the viewed spectrum. Each element has a "signature" that has to do with the specific quantum energy levels needed to move those electrons up and down the orbit ladders. We know what these frequency levels are for all the elements, and thus we can look at the pattern of light from a distant star and find where in the spectrum the whole pattern of dark {lines\bars\areas} match up to the elements in question (they all shift together if the whole spectrum is being shifted right?) and the amount that this elemental pattern has shifted is what is know as the red shift.It has nothing to do with the actual light being observed (because again, it could be a red or a blue giant eh?)Does that help?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I graduated from HS in 1965. yeah the cars with the ticker tapes marked by doorbell ringers to measure acceleration, the wave tanks, waving slinkies in the halls ... lots of good stuff. (watch out for percy ...)

I think the question is, that if the absorption and emission of light is quantified by the energy levels of the electron orbits, then why is light more broad-band than the absorption bars?I notice your link goes on to spectroscopy
(harvaard.edu link)with a good view of absorbed and emitted light from the same element (the different bars being related to the different orbit energy levels)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

it also can only be measured between certain coordinates on the time line axis. before t=a there is no warehouse, and after time t=b there is no warehouse, so the warehouse has a time dimension of {b-a}

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

it's a way of thinking about it. one of the things that comes out of subatomic experiments is that anti-particles behave as if they are moving in the other direction in time compared to a regular particle. you can think of an anti-electron as being an electron going back in time ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

of course, and thanks. I was trying to clarify the question (the way it struck me) and the issues discussed so far (quantized light energy) with a seeming contradiction (broadband light).

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

if you have any trouble with any freeware, the best thing I find is to uninstall it and then download a new version.the freeware version of realplayer is available at
RealPlayer.com\Realplayer (click here for the download page}You want the one in the gray sidebar (the other is a premium version that costs money for some (to me dubious) upgrade abilities).These lectures are worth listening to, if for no other reason than to see what Feynman was like.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

it sounds like your problem is the buffering. try a different bandwidth setting on the realplayer (you need to match incoming signal to your bandwidth speed ability, this is another place that reinstalling helps, as some new software is able to sense the speeds rather than rely on hard input).you can also try downloading the whole clip to your hardrive and then playing it from there (you are usually given a choice of [open with default (realplayer)] or [save to hard drive] - if you do the later, save it to desktop and then double click on it to launch realplayer)you can also go to realplayer menus {view}{preferences ... } and the tab {connection} you can reset these values, and also set it to buffer the whole clip to memory before playing (takes longer to start, but should reduce the stutter)

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}