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[Sly]

Originally posted by Sebatianos@Jun 17 2005, 02:39 PM
But isn't the universe ever-expanding? So you couldn't actually reach the end of it - unless you were to travel faster then it's speed of expantion...

If the universe is expanding, what/or where is it expanding into? At the moment of creation or the big bang (depending on which side of the coin your on), time, space, and matter have to come into existence simutaneously.

This is totally mind-boggling from a big bang perspective, to say its an open system.

Take for instance, if you were able to be outside time/space/matter and freeze frame the big bang 10 seconds after it happened. Wouldn't the space, time, matter and energy that was expanding be a finite distance from its origin, contain a fixed amount of energy, and contain a fixed amount of matter? The same would hold true today if it were really expanding. At any given moment it would be at a fixed distance from its origin. No additional matter is being created. No additional energy is added to the system. Therefore it would be a closed system, even by big bang theory standards.

According to the Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, the amount of matter and energy in the universe is a fixed amount. Neither one is created nor destroyed.

There is no reason to believe that for evolutionary purposes that the universe is an open system, because something would have to be supplying the universe with additional energy, thus violating the conservation laws.