The infinite space of the Universe

Thank you for this analogy, cavediver. This helps me to picture inflation in a much better way than before (although the analogy should be obvious from how we observe our own respective positions on our own planet).

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea

It is difficult to comprehend. That is because we are used to thinking of things in terms of their physical or temporal space. That is why it is so hard for us to wrap our brains around the concept of "nothing" existing "before" the Big Bang (if that is the case...) or "nothing" existing "outside" of our universe.To drift for a second, I remember reading The Neverending Story as a child and the concept of "The Nothing" had me reeling. The movie, while entertaining, did this concept no justice, except, possibly by the rock-eater's description of the lake that wasn't a hole or an empty space because "that would be something." The Nothing wasn't pure darkness, it wasn't pure light, it wasn't a hole where space had been or a hole where future space could go, it wasn't anything describable at all. It was nothing."Empty space" would still be something. Nothing, however, is nothing.

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea

Precisely. Time existed before we decided to put physical numbers which we could understand to stand in as symbols for the concepts which demonstrate time.Just like the laws of physics, which existed before we came up with formulas to describe them.Time is not an invention of man, nor are the laws of physics which describe the other 3 dimensions of our universe. The words and the formulas are, rather, descriptions of what we know of these things.The concept of the 9-month pregnancy is based on how we, as humans, describe time. If we did not have this description of months, we would not conceive of a pregnancy as being 9 months. Just like all of the other physical laws existed before we defined them.If things were different, they would be different.What's your point?

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea

I think you're catching on. There is nothing to connect to, because there is nothing there.This is not a "back-door" to creating an infinite universe from a finite one or vice versa because what the maths produce is what describes our universe, nothing more. There is no solid theory surrounding what might be beyond what we know right now (although there is speculation). There is nothing. The singularity describes a point where our math breaks down. Nothing is known beyond that. Similarly, there is no "out there" beyond our universe because that question makes no sense. If it were known, then it would be a part of the universe (or of a multiverse if that was known).Just because we cannot fathom what is out there (if anything) does not make any idea "god." Nor does it make any a posteriori ideas based on the OT "true" no matter how you want to twist the words of Genesis to make it try to fit what you know of physics and cosmology.

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea