It's the big crunch

Man is the last being in the universe to state what is and what is not possible.

Maybe what's out there is a huge black hole. And maybe, since we are looking from within, yet at the edge of our own universe, we can't see that our own universe is also being drug right along with the others out there. :)

It's the celestial McDonalds, and all those galaxies are meeting for a quick lunch after the big game.

@ always amazed: As far as we know man is the only intelligent being in the universe, thus able to state what is and what is not possible, even though those two things keep changing on a daily basis thanks to science. Sure, there may be intelligent life out there, even a lot of it, but short of them using FTL there's little chance they're in our local space, otherwise we'd have seen them (and Fermi's Paradox indicates No), thus we're alone in our rather large corner of the universe. No massive stellar engineering, no green stars. I gladly say, under those circumstances, that man is indeed the first and only being to state what is and what is not possible.

That is where the Cleveland Browns are building their new stadium and they suck so bad it is pulling the universe in on itself.

@ Pennarin: did you reference Starplex, or is Sawyer's novel built on something outside of science fiction?

@Imagine

We would be able to tell if our universe was being dragged towards something, and right now we are getting dragged towards the nearest galaxy Andromeda.

The strange thing? I read that the galaxies were moving apart due to the expanding universe. Not closer.

Andromeda and the Milky Way are gravitationally attracted. Eventually the two galaxies will become one.

I can't believe that people are dismissing this idea...
However there are some flaws in the theory.

Our own universe exists. Yes a point that we can all happily agree on.
But what does it exist in?
Surely the place holder for our universe is soo vastly huge that we are just too small to even fathom its sheer size.
Surely ours cannot be the only one in the whole vastness of 'black stuff' that our universe sits in?
Taking the big bang theory as true, why would there be only one example of a super atom going bang. For this to be true then that 'back stuff' would have to have been designed specifically to fit around our universe only and I think I can safely assume otherwise.

If the 'black stuff' that our universe sits in, is infinitely sized (one can only assume this of course), then surely there must be more universes beyond ours. Billions of them even.

I believe that the correct question to be asking here is that, is the above image a picture of another Universe outside of ours?
Rather than re-explaining universal expansion, we already know this to be true and regardless of the physics, it really has no relevance here.

Personally, in answer to my question, I think probably not.
I think that any object existing outside of our known universe, is going to be so godam far away that any light would just not have a chance of reaching us. One would also have to assume that said light would have some means of travelling through the 'black stuff' in-between universes and then, by means of extra-ordinary odds, not be blocked by objects in its path in order to get here to us.

A fantastical picture for sure... but frankly there must a hundred other ways to explain it rather than it being another universe.
But, however unlikely, it still could be :o) hehehe

Where did you get that crazy-looking picture? I can't find it in the reference articles.
It must be some alien scientists that have accidentally caused some major rip in the fabric of space-time by using something like a large hadron collider or something, Lol!. (or not).

Ok, got it, there: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/140738main_pia03296-browse.jpg :-), cool!

I'm telling you, it's the big crunch. It's a super massive black hole at the center of the universe formed after the universe expanded so much that it caved in on itself. After every last atom in existence coalesces into the singularity in it will become so unstable that it explodes...again, meaning it will be another big bang...the cycle continues infinitely

I still think it's "the big crunch". It's a super massive black hole at the center of the universe formed after the universe expanded to such a large size that it caved in on itself. After every last atom in existence coalesces into the singularity in it will become so unstable that it explodes outward...again. This will be just another big bang...the cycle continues infinitely

See, the light universe just imploded, Lexx is on its way!

and we have no alien visitors because when they get close enough to catch our radio and television broadcasts they feel we are too crazy/dangerous/pathetic to make the final trip!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427345.000-mystery-dark-flow-extends-towards-edge-of-universe.html

Here you'll find more on the discussion...

@ Crapiola: I never read that novel, but the concepts of green stars (or any other color from an alternative photosynthetic compound) and such is a trope of the search of alien life from way way back. Smarter man than me or Mr Swyer thought of these possibilities in spotting intelligence from afar: infrared-emitting sections of the sky (indicating Dyson-sphere like object), structured clusters of stars, a star with a gree n color (indicating it is surrounded by trillions of modules with photosynthetic life), etc.

All you people are idiots. Everyone knows God is in the center of the one and only universe (ours...duh) and the big guy probably just sneezed. Those galaxies are not getting sucked, they're getting pushed. Commenters are so dumb.

@creelnib: you've just described a perpetual motion machine!

@menotyou
There is not reason to believe that the universe has a place holder and that the concept of "outside the universe" even has meaning. By definition anything outside of the universe is unobservable and thus cannot effect anything inside the universe. Thus anything outside the universe that is effecting the universe becomes observable and then is by definition part of the universe. Thus there is no "outside" of the universe.

@creelnib
There is no center of the universe, at least not in 3 dimensional space. If you're looking for the center of the expanding universe you'll have to travel to a 4th space dimension, the tesseract.

@dfoi
lol

all this space and we still think that there is no life in other planets then the earth..