Common Astronomy and Cosmology Misconceptons
Outer space is incomprehensibly big and it is hard to understand the distances to all the objects.
It is easy to understand outer space distances using metric distance values. The diameter of the entire observable universe is not even a full ronnameter.
The big bang began with a singularity and it was the beginning of the universe and of time and space.
This is an obsolete idea that we now know is not true. It was originally thought to be true because of Einstein's equations and his theory of gravity. But that theory of gravity is likely incomplete. The main reason we know that the big bang was not the beginning of time and space is because the newer model of "cosmic inflation" has replaced the original basic version of the big bang model.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/beginning-big-bang/
“Isn’t the Big Bang the birth of time and space?”...at one point in the history of cosmology, that’s how the Big Bang was originally conceived.
...But we know that’s not correct today, in 2024...our Universe is best described by an inflationary period that occurred prior to the Big Bang, and the Big Bang is the aftermath of what occurred at the end of inflation.
The inflation model says that a period of cosmic inflation which had an unknown length preceded and set up the hot big bang. Which means the big bang was not the beginning of space and time. Cosmic inflation could have started 10 billion years before the hot big bang and all the other events in big bang timeline. We don't have any reason to think any special event occurred at the beginning (t=0) of the big bang timeline. There may or may not have been a singularity before cosmic inflation, but nothing that came before cosmic inflation is directly related to any events after cosmic inflation, which includes all the events related to the big bang and included in the big bang timeline.
/beforebb.htmlThe universe has no center or any edges/boundaries.
The universe may or may not have a center and edges/boundaries.
Time is an emergent property of the universe that is created by entropy and matter.
Time is a fundamental property of the universe and has existed as long as the universe has existed. Nothing can move or change without time. Therefore time is a prerequistite for anything in the universe to "emerge". Here is another way to see this. The speed of light/causality is fundamental to how the universe works. It is universal and so it has existed as long as the universe has. Which means there is a speed as old as the universe. And a speed involves a measurable unit of distance per measurable unit of time. Which proves that space and time is as old as the universe. The speed of light always exists, even if there was no entropy. The speed of light/causality always exists, even without any current existence of matter or light particles.
Because time is relative to your frame of reference, this means that time is also subjective and meaningless outside your frame of reference.
Time is not subjective because there is an absolute maximum amount of time that can be experienced between any 2 points in time across all frames of reference. The amount of relative time you experience in your reference frame is related to the absolute maximum. The same thing that is true about time durations is true about space lengths. Distances are not subjective because there is an absolute maximum amount of distance that can be traveled in a straight line between any 2 points in space. The amount of distance you experience in your frame of reference is related to the absolute maximum.
Absolute motion does not exist.
Absolute motion cannot be ruled out.
It is generally assumed that no reference frame has special properties because we have never detected any. Special Relativity says that "all motion is relative", but any possible absolute motion would also be relative motion. If the universe has a center and edges/boundaries, than any motion in the reference frame of the boundary would by definition be absolute motion. Therefore we cannot rule out the existence of absolute motion, for the same reason we cannot rule out the universe having boundaries. We don't know if a hypothetical "absolute motion" reference frame would have any special properties, but if we ever discovered such a frame we would want to run tests to see if it does. In theory, an object at rest in a reference frame of absolute motion would have the maximum possible time flow rate for the entire universe after adjusting to exclude the effects of gravitational time dilation. That could in some ways be viewed as a "special property". But if you accept that there is a maximum amount of time that can be experienced between any two points in time, then it follows that there has to be some hypothetical frame having this property, and it need not be thought of as special.