Well, on the bright side, from its perspective, it’s exactly where it needs to be all the time.

Have you looked into the recent “reverse sieve black hole theory? Similar to your idea. Also, have you checked out Calabi-Yau manifolds? Conjecture at this point, but you might get some original ideas when reading about them:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabi%E2%80%93Yau_manifold

Seriously, keep thinking about this. Also it would be good to read about virtual particles and quantum vacuum fluctuation if you haven’t already.

Absolutely anytime. There are far more qualified people than me that can really get into specifics and special cases with you, but I think we had a good start at opening further roads. I am glad to see that I was able to help you in some small way!

The previous configurations of matter, energy and spacetime are “under” the rubber layer, because it’s where the rubber layer used to be in terms of entropy. You can’t take a ship and just fly to it. It would have to be a space-time machine capable of reversing entropic systems either globally or locally. Yes, the balloon analogy is simple to say, that’s the trade off. I am not going to be able to describe to you the capabilities and perception of any trans dimensional perspective, because I do not and cannot have that vantage point. The rubber layer is all you will ever be able to physically “travel” within as a being bound by length, width, height and time. So “under” the rubber layer… IF you could reverse entropy, you would simply arrive at the universe in what entropic state the universe happens to be in at the time you “stop reversing time”.

Seeing “through the rubber layer” would be akin to saying you have the power to see matter in superposition at scale. It would appear as nonsense multiple output for few input. Nonlinearity, etc… The more finely we tend to look at the universe on a small scale, the more “elephant in the room” this conversation becomes. Imagine watching a movie and seeing every single frame transposed onto one another at once… whatever that would even mean or look like. It’s important to point out here that the movie would lose all narrative meaning in this configuration. Which should prompt you to ponder what narrative in the abstract even is and if it’s somehow transcendental. It is information we might would actually lose by GAINING transdimensionality. Total conjecture but worth thinking about. Usually it’s the other way around; We gain information going up that ladder. Going down usually forces us to give up a little bit of “true” information about the higher rung.

As for saying it would “just” be the past is a little insufficient, depending on your definition of the “past”. You have to remember to account for the spatial distortion as well. So it’s not like the Langoleirs from Stephen King, where you go back to the past and all the structures and inanimate matter just is “left behind”. All of that matter is subject to entropy as well. On that note, I have a serious hunch that quantum computing and the recent work with local realness and entanglement will drastically redefine our capabilities regarding this issue. I could absolutely be completely wrong as well.

Another note on your question of whether or not there is anything happening at the “center” of the balloon still:

From OUR perspective. No, it was the Big Bang. From outside the perspective of time, who knows? Extrapolating (which is NOT necessarily the correct answer!) from an unconstrainment of the time vector, it could be a permanent ON switch eternally happening. This is nearly alllllll conjecture at this point, but in the words of Richard Feynman, it’s fun to imagine.

To use an even less understood phenomenon and an even poorer analogy:

You would be a particle within that rubber layer. It would take more energy than we can currently generate and use to rip you out of it. And it would absolutely require you to not be constrained by any time vector, which isn’t the case. What would that look and feel like? I have no idea, and I doubt anyone else has a fully proven idea of what that is like. Much like the ink cannot just float off the page of your paper, what use is that ink without paper? Will it even keep its spatial configuration so you can read it? Would your brain even be able to function without an entropic “inertia”? Etc? Now you will have to borrow more and more from philosophy to arrive at a conclusion that you and every other human might never be able to prove… but it’s important that we keep trying.

And here is where the balloon analogy of vector dimensionality breaks down for a 3D intelligent lifeform bound by time.

If you are asking:

What is outside the “balloon”?

From OUR perspective, it hasn’t happened yet, so nothing….maybe…..(your guess is as good as anyone else’s.)

What is inside the “balloon”?

Previous stages of the universe’s development. The closer to the “center” of the balloon you get, the further back in time you go, from our perspective.

As for the geometries:

“Flat”, as in the rubber substrate of the balloon to us, encompasses ALL of spacetime. So the “rubber layer” you can consider all of three dimensional space. So, yes, we are on a “layer” in which all three spatial vectors are spreading due to an ever increasing “metric”.

I am glad I was able to help in some way. I’m sure a more robust cosmologist can dig into the weeds of it all with you, but I wanted to give you at least some breadcrumbs to follow. Just keep in mind that, with Cosmology especially, our models are being adjusted and improved almost monthly these days. It’s always important to remember that a model is just exactly that - a model. They may be very accurate, but there will always be a distinction from our most accurate models and the mechanics of nature itself.

In short: Keep digging into it. No one knows what great ideas might cross your mind.

Yep very interesting indeed. There is a hypothesis that this is a dipole effect with a repulsion point a little further “behind” us.

At a far enough relative distance, the Earth and moon DO act as one large mass. You will have to be a little more specific with your second question. What specific means of energy farming from this system are you proposing if any?

Hey there!

One thing before anything else is to determine how you’re viewing the “edge and origin” of the universe. So far as we understand, there is not some “cosmic waterfall edge” we could just plummet off of. That is not what is meant by expansion. It’s more like a balloon with dots representing galaxies and the balloon is being expanded so that the “rubber” space between each dot gets larger over time. The actual “edge” of the universe is the present moment happening in real time around and throughout you. Space and time are correlated with each other in such a way that you cannot simply think of a spatial boundary. What this edge “is” is the arrow of entropy from moment to moment. It’s not a cosmic rainbow wall that is spatially impassable (so far as we know…)

We use the Hubble constant and extrapolation from expansion (the balloon filling up over time) to arrive at the approximate age. We also can look at how our laws of physics currently work and how they would’ve had to work far enough back with the conditions that matter and energy would’ve had to be in.. in order to give us the way they currently work. There is the CMB that is an immense help to this extrapolation.

The first place to start is with the expanding Universe itself and the one parameter we’ve strived to measure longer than any other: the Hubble constant. On the largest scales, the galaxies we find in the Universe obey a very simple relation between the two observable quantities of distance and redshift, where the farther away an object is from us, the greater its measured redshift will be.

The value of the Hubble constant today isn’t simply the inverse of the value of the age of the Universe, even though the units work out to give you a measure of time. Instead, the expansion rate that you measure — the Hubble constant today — must balance the sum total of every form of energy that contributes to the Universe’s composition, including:

normal matter, dark matter, neutrinos, radiation, dark energy, spatial curvature, etc

There is a lot more to how they do this, but just remember that one of the most fundamental conundrums in cosmology is the small variance in the results of each method to determine the actual age of the universe. You should look into the Friedmann Equation: (I’m sure there are better links, but alas, here you go. I hope it helps!)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/04/17/the-most-important-equation-in-the-universe/?sh=2aa411460da5