Think of the universe as a painting. There’s the image made in paint, and the surface it was painted on. The canvas.
The stars, the planets, the gasses, the matter and energy and even the space between are the paint. What’s the canvas? Is there a canvas? Would the canvas follow the same rules as the paint?
The ‘canvas’ which everything else resides upon is currently thought to be Quantum Fields: Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe - with David Tong. (A 1h video by a theoretical particle physicist that’s in layman’s term, very educational and downright LOL funny at times. Well worth your time!)
A Field is something that permeates the entire universe. There’s thought to be a field for every particle in the Standard Model. Electron, photon, charm, up, etc. A particle forms when the field is excited, and these particles interact with each other to form the universe.
Dark energy…maybe. Unfortunately scientists don’t really know what it is or if it even exists. It’s somewhat controversial, but theoretical/mathematical indirect evidence points to the possibility. Sabine Hossenfelder on YouTube can explain this stuff far more intelligently and in more detail than I can.
One thing I try to keep in mind is: the observable universe is unfathomably vast… but that’s just the stuff we can detect with instruments. The “canvas” could easily exist beyond our limited abilities to measure or comprehend.
While I think I know what you mean when you say “canvas”, a physicist would probably want a more specific question. It could get into string theory and all kinds of weird stuff that’s way beyond my knowledge.
Well if you think of our universe as a flat image, you could technically picture it as an ever expanding “canvas” ,like the reddit and lemmy thing, and as all the other planets and stars change and move so does that magical canvas of the universe.
I believe what you are looking for is spacetime which is the foundation that all of the universe exists on. My layman’s understanding is that objects with mass “curve” or “bend” spacetime around them and this is actually how gravity effects objects. An object moving along a straight path (from it’s perspective if on a small enough scale) which is actually following a curved path of spacetime will move in a curved path.
This gives a visual representation of the curving of spacetime.
This shows how a super massive object like a white dwarf or black hole distorts and eventually “breaks” spacetime.
This video also shows it visually fairly well.
Really testing the limits of the community name here…
I don’t know. It’s seemed fine to me. :)
What’s simple to some people may not be as simple to others. That’s why this community exists.
This is more like a question someone who ate too many pot brownies asks. It’s not deep.
The question hits on some of the most fundamental aspects of our current understanding of reality and theoretical physics. As another commenter pointed out, one potential answer delves into QFT. Just because OP used a metaphor doesn’t warrant you saying they had “too many pot brownies” and there’s absolutely no need to be a condescending jerk here.
I agree completely. As someone who’s fascinated with cosmology, I think this is a perfectly reasonable question and a perfect fit for this community.
Lol came here to say something similar.
There may not be stupid questions but there are stupid comments.
