Lost Photons

[foodchain]

What happens to photons that never interact with matter, where do they go. I mean at the very edge of our universe, what happens to the photons emitted in the direction of nothing? Does spacetime curve so extreme as to not allow this? Do photons only emit in directions that spacetime allows? I mean if energy is being emitted to never interact with anything, does that mean the universe is losing information?

[JohnF]

Perhaps the photons at the very edge of the universe just keep on going and in so doing make the universe bigger. The universe stops where there is nothing. In that way we can never experience what is beyond the universe because by being there we make it part of the universe.

[Klaynos]

There's 2 main schools of thought on this one. Currently the first seems most popular with astrophysicists.

 

1) They appear on the other side of the universe, in a loop like manor like all those old games.

 

2) They keep going, expanding the universe as they go.

[foodchain]

There's 2 main schools of thought on this one. Currently the first seems most popular with astrophysicists.

 

1) They appear on the other side of the universe, in a loop like manor like all those old games.

 

2) They keep going, expanding the universe as they go.

 

Is there any actual way to observe any of this? Or to observe the edges of the universe, whatever they may be? I cant fathom the universe having some perfect geometry, such as being a perfect circle, I mean I think of it more or less looking sort of like a nebula really.

 

I think that such a place could provide new insight about nature/reality. When I think of it, I get caught up in the whole idea of space curvature, or basically some medium in which what we know of physical phenomena acts in, sort of self supported I guess, though I don’t know why I would say that:D

 

So my thoughts are that the light simply curves back inwards eventually, maybe at some point there is a photon based areas like sea floor spreading or something. Don’t take me to serious, as I don’t really have no clue and such is why I placed this thread in speculations. Though I could see how the universe could be reduced to terms you find on Atari games, I just don’t understand how that could be really. As for expanding the universe as they went along, well, I think with time then and the speed of light for instance the universe would have to be of a certain size based on the probability of the first appearance of light then and such would then be spherical? The shape of the universe that is.

[Klaynos]

Can it be observed directly, no probably not, and certainly hasn't been up till now.

 

This came up in a tutorial I had a couple of months ago, my tutor is a good astrophysicist, so this kind of thing often pops up, and he told us that most of the evidence suggest the looping idea, but I can't remember what evidence, it was some result of some curvature theory...

[Spyman]

Some clearifying links:

 

Wikipedia "Shape of the Universe" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_Universe

 

Scientific American "Misconceptions about the Big Bang" http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?cha...2383414B7F0147

 

Ned Wright's Balloon Analogy http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/balloon0.html