This is a multi part question and it requires you read about three
pages from me before answering.
I don't want lots of math, just ideas that come to mind. This is for fun.
First:Is there a place to put these three pages on the web where
people might comment?
Here are the questions to answer after the three pages:
Assuming the universe that is expanding, could all of the matter in
the universe be expanding as well?
Could our position in the universe be described as traveling away from
everything rather than everything traveling away from us?

Here are the three pages:

I figure I?m going to write this and put it out there and see if it
draws any interesting conversation. It?s kind of an exercise or
perhaps exorcism. These thoughts enter my mind even though they have
no right to. My ignorance is the only reason they can exist. Still
there is some sort of logic in this pesky little clump of thoughts. 
For me it makes interesting conversation, but few people I know would
think so. The thoughts reoccur because they have to. When I understand
the flaws in them, the thoughts will go away. Sure, it seems dumb, but
here we go.

We used to think everything revolved around the earth. If you were
really good at math maybe you could still put the earth at the center
of everything and predict the movement of things?  Seems like nature
and the universe exist independent of us and we try to dress it in our
ideas to make it look good or make sense. Our ideas don?t change the
universe. We discard ideas that don?t fit and pick up new ideas when
they do a better job of describing what we see.

Now we are hot and heavy about relativity like it is the final thing.
We go down that road and follow that rigid structure because if we
don?t, by our definition, we are wrong. We keep expanding and
improving and getting more complex building a tower of facts with a
very skinny base. We seem to think we are the special ones at the
special time when the basic meaning of things has been figured out. We
just need to hang a few new clothes on it and it will be done.

That is just a little constricting and unreasonable. Our understanding
of the universe has become complex, perhaps explained more in the
language of equations then actual human thought. The tower of
reasoning we have built will fall one day. We will use the pieces that
still work and build another tower.

Its funny, but the statement ?the speed of light is constant?, can
sound a little like ?the earth is flat? or ?the earth is the center of
the universe?. This is the way things are and the way people think.
Currently, the speed of light is constant and maybe it always will be,
but then again maybe not.
. 
I don?t do ?high math? but I have to think, I must think because I have a mind. 

I like things that spin, I like gyroscopes. 

As a kid I thought I might make an anti gravity machine with a
lawnmower engine and gyroscopes.

Sometimes thoughts don?t go away until they are put in order with what
we know.  They keep coming back.

Frames of reference, inertia, gravity, things that spin, very big
things and very little things clump together in my mind.

The simple concept of reference frames are like an interesting toy. I
enjoy the thought that a rocket traveling through space can be silent
and still. It is almost a religious experience to think about the fact
that if nothing else is near the rocket, there is no way to tell if it
is moving.

The fact that you can tell if the rocket is spinning kind of ruins the
moment. Or at least it is a distraction. It doesn?t seem to fit with
the ?all alone in space? thing.

Objects at rest want to stay at rest. Objects want to travel in a straight line.

When you say objects travel in straight lines you are also making a
rule that frames of reference travel in straight lines. In other
words, frames of reference can not spin. Or put another way, there is
a cosmic grid independent of matter.  Sounds kind of like ?ether?, but
evidently that doesn?t exist.  It is simple to say things want to go
straight. Not so simple to explain why.

As a college freshman a physics major gave me a little book about
Relativity. The experience was a lot like when I was a kid and my
parents handed me the book ?Dr. Spock talks to children about sex?.  I
just did not want to imagine what the book said was true.

It bothered me immensely that frames of reference did not hold up.
What initially disturbed me were the things that bother everyone when
they first look at relativity.

But after making peace with the cold hard facts, what continued to
chafe me was that it seemed like everyone seemed willing to say they
understood it while I still had intuitive problems with it. It?s not
in me to believe I am dumber than everyone else.

I took a feeble stab at the people who understand. I went to the head
of the physics department armed with my little relativity pamphlet.
(Strange thing is the professor?s name was Dr. Strait.) Part of what I
said I remember like this: ?This little book says there are no
instantaneous events, everything takes time to happen. On the same
page it says light travels at a constant speed. Ha, if that was true a
mirror could not work because it stops light and sends it in the
opposite direction. The light would either have to change direction
instantaneously(not possible) or slow down(light doesn?t do that),
stop and take off in the opposite direction.?

He was nice to me. He explained that light ceases being light for just
an instant as it is reflected. He patted me on the head, suggested I
take physics for poets and sent me on my way.

Since the days of my lawnmower gyroscope inspiration, things that spin
enter my imagination(not too often) and won?t leave. There is
something about rotation we don?t know, no one knows. We explain it
with math, but I don?t believe anyone can really wrap their mind
around it. I should feel the same way about gravity, but I don?t.
Gravity is constant in our world so it is easier to forget about.

I liked the movie The Incredibles. The parents keep telling the little
boy that everyone is special. He replies, ? ya, which is another way
of saying everyone is the same?.

There is a funny idea I picked up at some point: 
Put a guy on a mountain top with a really powerful telescope and then
make it more powerful and even more powerful until he sees further
into the depths of space than anyone has seen before. Then take a
woman(just to be gender equal) and give her a powerful microscope.
Maybe if they could find the right place to look they could stare into
each others eyes. (If this seems unfair give the woman a more and more
powerful microscope and just give the guy a moderately powerful
telescope.)

Now, as I write, I am aware much of this stuff is explained with math
and theories I don?t understand, but this is for fun so one of my
rules is that I have to be able to understand it. It has to be
expressed in words.

I keep hearing that all of the galaxies are rushing away from us and
each other. In short, the universe is expanding. This brings many
thoughts to mind:

We can prove Galaxies are rushing away from each other. Could we
consider things at an atomic level might be rushing away from each
other as well?  If the things that make up atoms are rushing away from
each other would we be able to detect this? If at every level,
everything expands relative to everything else could we detect it?

Nothing can exceed the speed of light because the mass of the object
increases to infinity as the speed of light is approached. If the mass
of an object increases could it also be expanding in size? Could the
speed of light be related to the expansion of the universe?

Back to the movie, ?The Incredibles?. If we say everything is rushing
away from us, isn?t that the same as saying we are rushing away from
everything in the universe?

What is it like to be sucked into a black hole?  I?ve read that maybe
everything gathers in a big super heated clump in the center or maybe
everything spews out in another place. What if the matter just
collapses at the atomic level, sub atomic level and below? What if
there is no such thing as matter but just the forces that hold matter
together. Why couldn?t the matter in a black hole collapse
indefinitely? Isn?t there some logic in thinking the universe is
mostly space with planets and suns occupying a small part----Soooo
matter is made of atoms which are mostly made up of space and so on
and so on?

Dr. Strait seemed to suggest to me that light could be defined as
something that travels at the speed of light. That would be a handy
way of making it?s speed constant.

If everything is rushing outward or inward wouldn?t all objects want
to travel in a straight line? Wouldn?t that be a good reason for
objects to travel in a straight line?

Sometimes on cold days I am too lazy to scrape the windshield of my
car. I press the little button and squirt fluid on the windshield. The
windshield wipers clear all but a thin film of liquid from the window.
The fluid starts to freeze. From different points on the windshield
crystals spread in circles towards each other. If I made the surface
of one of those circles my own frame of reference it would seem like
the two ice circles were being pulled together by some invisible
force.

If all matter was expanding just as we know the universe is expanding,
it would appear some invisible force was attracting all objects with
mass together.

The only problem I?m having with all of this is if there is no matter
because everything is made up of space between things and if there is
no cosmic ?grid? and there really is no difference between going
straight or curving, I wonder if that leaves anything at all.

This is getting too long and I wonder if anyone will read it or if it
will make sense to anyone. The ideas are slowing down and I have to
get back to work. So to finish I guess my questions are this: Does
anyone know why it has to be just the universe that is expanding? Why
can?t all of the matter in the universe be expanding as well? Could
our position in the universe be described as traveling away from
everything rather than everything traveling away from us?

See ya.

---

Clarification of Question by jft-ga on 06 Dec 2005 20:29 PST

I'd like to clarify/comment. 
I've never done the Google Answer thing before, but it is cool.
I don't expect to be "right" or change the scientific world.

I consider the question answered by manuka-ga. Could you read to the
end and comment?

There is no other place I could easily ask a science question of folks
who actually get it.

I very much respect science, scientists, current & past ideas.
Calling accepted theory rigid is probably unfair.
Occassionally individuals are rigid.

I suppose a frame of reference can rotate. Isn't it strange how
different a rotational frame of reference is from the other kind? It
is weird that there is a non rotating position for everything and that
it can be measured for one lonely thing without refering to other
things around it.(this is true isn't it?)

"I'd expect the short-range attractive forces binding matter together
to be much stronger than any dispersive effect caused by the expansion
of the universe."

I am suggesting looking at the expansion of matter on an atomic scale
as another way to describe short range attractive forces. In other
words, atoms, planets etc. don't really attract each other with
gravitational force.  They expand into each other. This would get rid
of mysterious gravitational fields etc.

Expand a sphere with a 10 centimeter radius by 10% and the outer edge
moves 1 centimeter.

Expand a sphere with a 100 centimeter radius by 10% and the outer edge
moves 10 centimeters.

Expansion of matter replaces attraction.

I don't think it matters that from one point of view that the centers
of mass stay in the same relative positions.

Seems like there would be different frames of reference relating to if
you view the scenario as if you are part of the expanding matter or
looking from the outside.

Maybe  I'm wondering how the change in the relationship of the nearest
faces of these expanding spheres to each other is different than
surfaces of two bodies being drawn together by gravitational pull.

In both cases the outer edges of these bodies collide. I suppose we
can change the 10% expansion to match the acceleration due to gravity.
We would have to make density a constant because mass rather than
centimeters would be the measure of how much matter is in an object.
Okay, I said we couldn't use math. Maybe we should just try to use
just a little math - as simple as possible.

I would like it If manuka-ga  or any other charitable person who is
good with math and/or words can compare the gravity thing with the
expansion thing.

Sorry if my explanations are a little vague. I have enjoyed this.

Thanks for your good thoughts!

---

Clarification of Question by jft-ga on 06 Dec 2005 20:45 PST

Oops - I just read FAQ to see about accepting a given answer. Seems
like I don't have the option of choosing a comment as an answer?
Doesn't quite seem fair to the commenting party since I got a good
answer from them.
Am I reading this right?

:-) you could benefit from reading magazines like 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ 
  or 
http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns

for all that you said there is one thing that is worth responding to
"Currently, the speed of light is constant and maybe it always will
be, but then again maybe not"  Although there is (yet) no way to prove
this some believe the speed of light has changed with the passage of
time. You may enjoy reading
http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?sequencenameCHAR=item2&methodnameCHAR=resource_getitembrowse&interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=CA8BB6C3-EBDD-731B-51FFD31BEFDEE68E&ARTICLEID_CHAR=CAA2CE5A-9F85-62B2-114B9AF21D61A917&sc=I100322

their preview of the article (you need to buy it)
 Reviews: Was Light Faster in the Past?; April 2003; by Philip
Morrison, Staff Editors; 2 page(s)

Breaking the old speed limit posted by one Albert Einstein in his 20s,
this book deploys a racy and provocative text to convey its
popularized content of a new cosmology. Jocular, ironic, witty,
selfcentered, even indignant, Magueijo is all too ready to castigate
his adversaries, those comfortable gatekeepers of learning. The author
is no aspiring youth but a tenured professor of theoretical physics,
age 35. In spite of his own stature within learned gates-University of
Lisbon, then Cambridge on a prime fellowship, now enjoying tenure at
great Imperial College in London-his voice is embittered. This journey
of youthful success is recalled in complaint about the idiots, the
sexually deficient, the money wasters. The thin volume is studded with
familiar four-letter words, invoked with rude claims about the motives
of colleagues, shadowy referees, editors and others encountered.

Our current scenario for cosmology clearly opened its second act among
the high simplicities of the 1970s with two visible puzzles. Why is
3-D cosmic space accurately flat (like old Euclid's own), although it
lies within Einstein's universal 4-D curved spacetime? Why is its
content so uniform on large scale?

I enjoyed reading your thoughts.  You stated, quite nicely, some ideas
that I've had before and was never able to articulate.  I am not a
physicist or scientist of any kind, I am a math student with a taste
for philosophy and a strong curiosity about the rules that govern the
universe.

As my username suggests, I'm studing fractal geometry.  If you're not
familiar with it, it's a field of math that looks at geometric objects
that have infinite detail, are self similar on all scales, and have a
fractional dimension.  Fractals are a purely mathematical idea, they
are too perfect (just like cirles, lines and cubes) to exist in the
real world.  The things we learn from them can be used to observe the
world, however.

You may want to learn more about fractals, as they relate very much to
your idea of the universe being a collection of spaces.  I've thought
for a while that the universe dosent have matter at all, but rather
just a collection of forces and light.  When you clap your hands
together, the atoms aren't hitting eachother.  They simply get too
close and repel eachother.  Even if two electrons collided, would that
really count?  Or are the particles that make up the two electrons
just repelling eachother?  There isn't a way, at least not one I can
see, to prove or disprove this view.  It deals with scales
unobservably small, and is simply a matter of faith.

Frame of reference is a very important concept, especially when trying
to contemplate something as large a scale as the universe.  One
thought I like to dwell on is the idea of falling into a black hole. 
Actually, thats a rather unpleasant thought...what I like to imagine
is the view from the person being sucked in.  I've read many books
that use this scenario, where as someone approaches the 'edge' of a
black hole (the place where light is pulled back in on itself)
everything looks normal, time proceeds as usual, although certain
colors will start to disappear.  From an observers perspective outside
of the black hole his friend seems to slow down exponentially as he
approaches the edge, and he will never see the person go in.

Now, has time slowed, has light slowed, or has space expanded around
the hole?  It depends on perspective, and what view is more
convienient.  As I see it a graph can be viewed on a cartesian or a
polar plane and still be the same.  It just depends which formula
looks neater.  I wouldn't consider the formula itself to 'exist' in
any geometric plane at all, but it's a nice way to rationalize the
information.

I'm know there are people many times smarter, and more informed than
me on GA.  And I hope they respond to your question, its a fun concept
to play around with.


P.S. you posted a $20.00 price for your question(s)...exactly what do
you hope to get as an answer?  There's no way to give a 'correct'
answer to this.  The researchers here are very good at tracking down
information, I'm sure if you clarified and asked for articles
discussing each point you'd get your $20.00 worth and then some!

I'll just comment on bits and pieces as I go through. I don't know if
I can do much more, there doesn't really seem to be a unifying concept
here to discuss in detail.

"If you were really good at math maybe you could still put the earth
at the center of everything and predict the movement of things?"

Depends on what things you're interested in. For stuff near earth
(e.g. satellites) this is exactly what we do. On the scale of the
solar system it's usually more convenient to use the Sun as the
central point, and convert back afterwards. I'm not sure what the
usual practice is for larger scales; I'd expect that we'd still use
the Sun as the central point if we were looking at the local
neighbourhood, say up to a thousand light years (this may be
stretching the definition of "local" somewhat, I know). On larger
scales you're starting to look at significant fractions of the galaxy,
so it might become convenient to use the centre of the galaxy. I don't
think at this stage we know enough about the distribution of truly
large-scale structures (galaxy groupings) to make it worthwhile going
any higher for a frame of reference.

You talk about relativity and say "We go down that road and follow
that rigid structure because if we don?t, by our definition, we are
wrong." I don't think this is quite the case. We follow it because
it's been very successful in its predictions. At the same time, it is
well known that it has its shortcomings. In particular, it doesn't
harmonise at all well with quantum mechanics, which is an equally
successful and groundbreaking theory. It's quite frustrating that two
such hugely successful theories disagree in a very fundamental way,
and armies of theoretical physicists all over the world would like
nothing better than to be able to come up with a replacement that
combines the two into an integrated whole. Unfortunately nobody's been
able to do it yet.

"When you say objects travel in straight lines you are also making a
rule that frames of reference travel in straight lines. In other
words, frames of reference can not spin. Or put another way, there is
a cosmic grid independent of matter."
No, that's not correct. Frames of reference can spin, if you like, but
they become a lot trickier to handle mathematically. If we use a frame
of reference that is neither spinning nor accelerating, it is called
an inertial reference frame and has lots of nice mathematical
properties which make it useful for calculations; ultimately, we get
the equations of special relativity holding in such a reference frame.
General relativity makes use of accelerated reference frames, and is
*much* harder to get a grip on mathematically, but it can be done.

"We can prove Galaxies are rushing away from each other. Could we
consider things at an atomic level might be rushing away from each
other as well?"
I've heard the cosmic ray background described in these terms, but I
don't know enough about the subject to say whether this is true more
generally. As to whether we could detect it, I doubt this. I suspect
that in principle it would be detectable, but in practice the changes
would probably be too small to detect.

The increase in mass as objects near lightspeed is not associated with
any change in size. Whether the speed of light is related to the
expansion of the universe is quite a different question. I would think
much depends on whether the recently revived idea that the speed of
light may have changed in the past is eventually accepted or not. If
it hasn't changed then I would find it hard to believe that it is
associated with the expansion of the universe.

"If we say everything is rushing away from us, isn?t that the same as
saying we are rushing away from everything in the universe?"
Yes. Actually, it's a bit stronger than that. The best way to think of
it is that everything is rushing away from everything else.

Black holes are a bit tricky. The problem is that we don't really have
a good theory of what happens at the middle of a black hole. On the
way in it's a different story - relativity handles this well and
you'll find it explained in millions or at least thousands of books,
some of them even well-written. But at the centre itself, we don't
know. Relativity more or less breaks down at this point; it predicts
infinities (which is where the term "singularity" comes from). It's
possible that singularities do exist as some kind of flaw in
spacetime; it's also possible that something else happens, but until
we get a good theory of quantum gravity we can't really say. I will
mention that there is some evidence that other sorts of flaws in
spacetime exist, with the possibility that these are left over from
the Big Bang. (We can get some sense of this from studying really
large-scale galaxy groupings.) So there's nothing inherently
impossible about the idea that there's some sort of spacetime flaw at
the heart of a black hole, but we can't predict anything from that.

"... light could be defined as something that travels at the speed of
light. That would be a handy way of making it?s speed constant."
I'd disagree with that definition of light, since it would include any
massless particle. Also, we've already hit on a handy way of making
the speed constant - we now define the metre in terms of the distance
light travels in a set period of time, so the speed of light is in
fact defined to be a constant. Nice, eh?

"If all matter was expanding just as we know the universe is expanding,
it would appear some invisible force was attracting all objects with
mass together."
I don't see why this would be the case. If everything expands at the
same rate as the basic space, everything would look the same. It's
only if matter expands but space stays fixed that would produce this
effect, as was the case on your windscreen. Also, in this case you'd
only some things moving towards you. The near side of each object
would seem to be getting closer, but the far side would not (depending
on which boundary is moving faster - if they're at the same speed the
far edge will appear to be stationary).

For your final questions:
"Does anyone know why it has to be just the universe that is expanding? Why
can?t all of the matter in the universe be expanding as well?"

I'd expect the short-range attractive forces binding matter together
to be much stronger than any dispersive effect caused by the expansion
of the universe.

"Could our position in the universe be described as traveling away
from everything rather than everything traveling away from us?"
That's a valid way of looking at things, but I wouldn't describe it as
defining our position in the universe - that really isn't a
well-defined concept. Also, just saying that we are moving away from
everything doesn't say anything about how the other things move in
relation to each other, so it's quite a limited statement.

The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Science has a good
explanation for why rotation is so different -- in it's model, if the
entire universe decided to spin, it wouldn't have any effect... it's
just that when you're spinning, you relative position is oscillating
closer/further from other things, while straight motion is
closer/further just once.  There's hardly any information about this
on the net, but I can recommend a book (at the end).  Besides, I
couldn't possibly compete with your wordyness.

Also, as far as the universe expanding -- Acceleration and space have
a very close relationship.  An event such as the theorized "big bang",
accelerating all of the mass of the universe outward, created a whole
lot of space.  It seems that you've heard this before, but I'll
rephrase:

We've measured how far away galaxies are from us, and how fast they're
moving.  Each galaxy's speed seems to be proportional to it's
distance, as if they're all different firework sparks exploding from
the same single shell.  And the conclusion is inescapable; each
galaxy, in all directions, is moving away from us.  As if they all
left the Earth at the same time some 15 billion years ago, and are
heading out on momentium alone.

How can this be?  Are we the center of the universe?  Absolutely not. 
If you were to take the same measurement from any other galaxy, you'd
get the same results.  The fact is, while yes, things in the universe
moved, it all originated from the same place -- when everyplace was in
ONE place -- and then that one and only place has since stretched out
to the size of the universe.

Without the energy (acceleration) doing it's thing, there wouldn't be
any space.  Oddly enough, this space roughly equates to really being
the same thing as energy; the particles we think we're seeing are
really just this energy wave rippling around in currents of "space"
that failed to stretch out like the normal space we walk around in.

"Schrodinger's Kittens and The Search For Reality" by John Gribbin is
an *excellent* quantum-science book; by far the best I ever read. 
It's an excellent introduction, and it explains how confusing things
really are without really confusing you.  Don't bother researching it
or procrastinating -- Just get the book; I PROMISE you won't regret
it.  This book explains many Quantum Science interpretations,
including the Transactional Interpretation, without all the
school-booky mathematical headache.

Also, "Einstein's Brainchild: Relativity Made Relatively Easy" is
another excellent book, explaining a brief history of Einstein and how
he came up with relativity, as well as years of resulting implications
and tangents... the bogus universal constant, open/closed/flat
universes, why the universe is expanding, etc.

Both books cover a broad array of theories so you can form an opinion
of your own. -- At the same time, they make clear what is proven, and
accepted, and how, and why.