What is Space?

This video is a direct sequel to 'What is Gravity?'.

There we found out that Gravity is nothing but a quality of Space Warp, that Space can be warped with or without matter and that Expansion might be a reduction of space warp. Also it is created by the same entity that creates space, time, matter and energy.


Now, to dive deeper into our question of 'What is Space?', we remember the clues that our previous episode about gravity revealed.
Is space warped by default?

Imagine looking down a long alley of trees. What do you think that space is? The straight line of your gaze? Is it possible at all to see space? Why are we so certain that space is straight? What if that which creates space is warped like this?

The same question applies to our method of measuring distances. Looking at our solar system, we measure by going the straight line, although we know that the underlying space is warped by the suns gravity.

It is a bit like corrugated sheet metal where we might not be able to see the corrugation at all...

The next important question is 'What is Expansion?'.
For that we go back to our Cosmic Horizon and ask: At what distance X is the expansion equal to the speed of light?

The expansion of the universe is defined by the Hubble Constant =74.2 km/s/Mpc. There is an uncertainty to this number, so don't pin me down on a specific value.
1 Mpc = 3.26 million light years, also the Speed of Light c =299792.5 km/s.
With that we can calculate X as 13.2 billion light years.

And as long as the speed of light doesn't change, this – our – Cosmic Horizon ‘bubble’ is constant in size!

We have to go on.
If space is warped by default, the stretching or unfolding of it would make the universe seem to expand.
If space has more than (3) dimension, it could only appear to unfold itself, but in it’s own dimension, it might not change at all.

Let's blow up our Cosmic Horizon a bit. We think that space goes straight (with occasional influence of matter that creates gravity).
That what creates space is – as discussed – warped by default. Now if this space stretches itself, our 'straight/3-dimensional' space seems to have expanded – or it seems to be more space now... … although the space inside our Cosmic Horizon stayed exactly the same.
If you would fill up a glass of water until it overflows, the amount of water in the glass doesn't increase too, it is unchanged.

At this point we learned an important detail and can go back to our 'What creates What' puzzle. We said that gravity is just a quality of space warp and now we discovered that space warp is just a quality of space. If being warped is in the nature of space, there is no need for space warp to be created by something. It's already there.

Of all the things left, it is still space that is our main interest right now. So what is it for? What is space for?
It exists.
It is empty so that things can be in it.
(The fun thing about this is that space wouldn't exist without anything in it. You can try to ‘see’ that, for example by stretching out your hand in front of your eyes and then trying to 'feel' what's in between...)
It is warped.
It expands.
It can have holes.
It is infinite. Well, Is it?

I'm truly sorry but there are more questions on our way of understanding space and this next one might make you go crazy if you don't pay attention.
What do you think is Beyond our Cosmic Horizon? Is there space?

Imagine an alien planet close to our cosmic horizon. At one point, they send out a message into the universe. This message travels to us at the speed of light, but effectively it moves only with about 50% of the speed of light since it has to fight against the universes expansion. This is a bit strange: the radius of our cosmic horizon is 13.2 billion light years but light from the outer regions requires two times that long to reach Earth.
The closer the light comes towards Earth, the less the expansion and so on. Please remember that this has nothing to do with relativity. Light still travels with the speed of light, we are only looking at the effective speed here.
As a side notice, this also means that what is in a 6.6 billion light year radius now, will be on the cosmic horizon radius by the time the alien message reached us.

In this thought model, we neglect a few minor things, for example the remaining lifetime or our sun which is much shorter than 26.4 billion light years. Anyway, we pretend that one day, the message will eventually reach Earth but as we look into the direction of the alien planet we see that it is gone... There is no way of telling what happened to it anymore. It might have been destroyed, or the aliens moved on to another solar system. We don't know. And because we don't know – and will never be able to, we can say that beyond the cosmic horizon, there are only Possibilities, that which is not being observed.
This would also apply to a Big Bang if it is outside of our horizon.

So Earth may be at the center of our universe, but
There is no center for EVERYTHING.
How can there be a center of something that isn't even observed?

Everything that is not being observed, where there is no conscious observer, exists in any possible state. Only in the moment of observation, one out of all possible states is manifested.
Possibilities means non-manifested. Non-manifested ‚things‘ do not exist, until they are observed because then they manifest.
This doesn‘t mean that everything behind our cosmic horizon is empty – or full.
It means that there is simply NOTHING, no space, or time, or matter, or energy.

This can't be understood by the mind. Maybe you remember, but the mind is just an illusion. And since we believe in this illusion, how should we believe in what's beyond?

The reason why is this so hard to understand, can be called
The Phenomenon of Separated Consciousness
which is scale confusion.

Scale Confusion is a human default setting. It is the error of not understanding the same ‘reality’ from one size scale to a different size-scale. In other words, planets expanding out of our visible universe is the same thing than hanging up the phone. The moment you hung up, the other person's life is just possibilities to you.
Or imagine watching a ship taking off from a harbor. The moment the ship is out of sight, it's merely possibilities to you. It can be totally fine, or sunk, exploded, obducted by aliens, and so on. Now if a friend of yours calls you from the other side of the globe, telling you that the ship is arriving at its destination, all the possibilities collapse and manifest in one version.

The Cosmic Horizon of us on earth might be 13.2 billion light years away, but your personal Cosmic Horizon is only as far as you can see. (or listen, taste, smell, feel)

So remember, every time you turn around, what is behind you just became possibilities.

At this point, our initial question of 'What is Space?' suddenly got somewhat secondary again.
Another, more powerful question arises, which is: 'Why Does Everything Exist?'