An exploding star is called a supernova.
A collapsing star is called a black hole.
Most stars explode, and then collapse in on themselves, creating a black hole.
And please! Don't skip over long posts, because I had a long, highly discriptive post a ways back, and people have been arguing about, and posting similar info.
QUOTE(Laser_Dude @ Sep 4 2006, 09:04 AM)
Now, according to string theory, forces are given out by "particles" gravity uses the graviton, electromagnetism uses the photon, The weak force uses the Z and W particles, and the strong force uses the gluon, these are the tiniest little bundles of energy you can get.
In a 1-dimensional world let's say there's these beings (how they manage to function is of no importance) they have two "eyes" one on each side of their body, but they're continually looking at their neighbors, because there's no way to pass each other and get to the other side. Now, in between their eyes is the insides of their bodies, well there's no way to get to the inside without going through the eye, so the eye is like an outer shell to them. A doctor would perform surgery through one's eyes. Now, let's say that they try to imagine a universe where, people can get past each other, they would never of course be able to imagine this. Now if they were to enter a 2-dimensional world, they could of course get past each other. But now their insides are showing. A doctor could perform surgery by simply going up to the side of one of these beings, wouldn't even need to make a cut.
We can always imagine things several dimensions down, and still have symmetry.
Now, let's say you have a meeting, in a big corporate skyscraper. To get there they have to give you several peices of info. Like the street, the avenue of course, but what about the floor, and the time? these are all dimesions we're familiar with. Now, let's say you get to the right floor, of the right building at the right time, and there are numerous conference rooms? What would you do? You're missing a piece of info, and that's equivelant to another dimension, you go in, and he hasn't told you where to sit, of course, these are all areas within space, in the universe, you would be at one point in space, time, and several other dimensions, but these other dimesions are incredibly tiny, so we don't notice their influence.
In a one dimensional universe, to get to a meeting you would need one piece of info, where on the line?
In a 2-D universe, you need 2 peices of info, i.e. width and length
In a 3-D universe you need 3 peices of info, i.e. width, length, and height
In a 4-D universe you need 4 peices of info, i.e. width, length, height and time.
In a 5-D universe you need 5 peices of info, i.e. width, length, height, time and point in another dimension i.e. strings at every point in the universe
In a 6-D universe you need 6 peices of info, i.e. width, length, height, time, latitude and longditude on a sphere...
...In a 9/10/11-D universe you need 9/10/11 peices of info, point in space(3), point in time(1), and point on a calabi yau shape(they're at every point in the universe)(5/6/7)
According to many famous scientists, we live in a universe with 9/10/11 dimensions
NOTE: my examples of info are just examples, since the entire universe is symmetrical, you could swap any parameter for any other, i.e. a 2-D universe with length and time
They're all symmetrical, they just have different lengths, Most people(including certain physicists) beleive that time is special, not similar to other dimesions. They beleive that the universe is finite, but you can never fall off(like the earth in a 2-D(plus time) world, it is finite, but you can literally, keep on going, and going and going. I beleive that time is the same, after a certain amount of time, we will end up in the exact same situation as we are now, probably after a very long time.
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EDIT: upon re-reading it, I realized that maybe time is like a basketball, we zoom outwards, but then gravity pulls us back, and we go back to the big bang.