this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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Best analogy I heard for it is if you put a load of dots on a balloon, then inflate it. Are the dots getting further away? Yes. Is there just the same amount of rubber between each dot as when you put the dots on? Yes. Can you measure the relative speed of the dots? Yes! But have they actually gone anywhere? No...ish?
Yeah, but in this case is the universe just the dots on the surface of the balloon or is it the whole balloon with its entire volume? Intuitively I think it's the latter (although there's probably no "hard" edge that's bounding the ends of the universe like the rubber of the balloon), and if that's true, you could measure the speed of one wall getting away from the centre or the speed of two opposite walls getting away from each other.
I could be wrong of course, I'd be happy if someone points out what I might be missing.
Hola, my other response was not meant to belittle you. I was just trying to explain how much I personally don’t understand about this topic and can only repeat what other scientists have told me. I do like listening to weird scientific mit lectures and stuff to fall asleep sometimes though. But im only an osmosis physicist myself. If I am average knowledge on this topic I would be happy but maybe I know slightly more, this is a dumb post. But I was reading through my past comments and I can see how my other response to this message may seem like I am belittling you which was not my intention at all
No offense taken. I'm not a scientist either, but I believe in the idea that anything can be taken as an explanation if it makes sense at the time, and later be taken apart, discarded and replaced with a better explanation when one comes along.
Yep I think you have to imagine dots suspended in space inside the balloon to better get what's going on, and you're right, the "edge" of the universe is definitely nothing like the surface if the balloon. Probably?
No, you completely understand quantum physics, you are one of the elite.
But in the analogy I don’t think we know what the air in the balloon is, we call it expansion. But I don’t know enough to say anymore
We are the dots on the surface of the balloon. Things really far away seem to be moving away from us. Hopefully we can figure out what gravity is because that would have a lot of gravitas I dunno whatever
I’m fairly certain that in the balloon example metaphor, we are two dimensional creatures on the surface of the balloon
Space time itself is expanding which means I will now blow up soon. Yay!
Yeah, when you put the dimensions implication in it it starts making a bit more sense - implying that we're two-dimensional and the third dimension inside the balloon is the things that we don't fully comprehend (yet).
I don’t know how accurate the analogy is though I’m not a physicist
Understanding this is the easy part imo
Great analogy, and yeah the "ish" is the fun part!
The fun of justifying a reference frame outside the universe. Sorry I'm getting a headache.