Slashdot Mirror
NASA: Evidence Favors Infinitely Expanding Universe
Chris Gondek writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has a story here about how NASA is expected to announce this week that it has proved the existence of "dark energy," a cosmic force that counteracts gravity and will keep the universe expanding forever. The announcement will effectively demolish the theory that life will be wiped out in a "big crunch" when the universe collapses, and should end decades of academic dispute. Scientists ranging from Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist, to Albert Einstein, have argued that the universe eventually will stop expanding and then implode under the force of gravity, destroying all life. The Chicago Sun Times has also got some info."
but my money is on Hawking and Einstein, and not only because they had a handle on the metric system.
Dammit. Now I'm going to be able to feel my atoms growing farther apart all week.
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the combination is locked up in the safe. -- Peter DeVries
Now all I have to do is find out how to emit this energy and I can build starships!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
doubt it. we still have ppl disputing that the earth is round.
So the universe won't be wiped out by a big crunch.
What a relief. I was worried.
The universe will be wiped out by the heat death of the universe instead.
(Or am I incorrect in my understanding?)
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
So all that money that I spent on "Big Crunch" insurance is going to waste?
-Valiss
Whoa....if it's in the Chicago Sun Times then it must be true!
So instead of the Big Crunch, we get Heat Death. The universe is slowly cooling, and will eventually cool to absolute zero (killing all life), or so the theory goes.
I don't think that there is any reputable theory that doesn't have a "killing all life" at some point in the very distant future.
Pretty much what I was going to say. There's only x amount of energy, and if the universe is constanly expanding... OOPS! From one of the articles:
"Although NASA's discovery means the universe will go on forever, the same is not true for human life. As the universe expands, all of its energy will be used up."
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
"expected to announce? wouldn't it be better to wait and see if they actually do announce it before using slashdot bandwidth/processor ticks?
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
Although NASA's discovery means the universe will go on forever, the same is not true for human life. As the universe expands, all the energy needed to keep the stars and galaxies alight will be used up. What will remain is a universe full of black holes, which after trillions of years will explode to leave nothing but dark energy
As always take this with a grain of salt.
This is the typical "blackbox" approach in science:
You have a blackbox with inputs and outputs, and you theorize what is in the blackbox based on your inputs, and what the outputs are. Sure you can come up with math/thoery that works everytime when trying to predict what the blackbox DOES. But this doesn't mean you really know what the blackbox IS (or whats inside rather).
Losely throwing out a word such as "dark energy", pretty much spells "we really have no fucking clue why to me".
sure there is something forcing our universe to expand againts the will of gravity. But it's OK to admit we don't know what it is.
Heh.. I might as well call that sludge in my sink "dark matter", and the unpleasant odour a result of "dark energy".
--noodle
Well, there goes the whole Omega Point thing. I guess there'll be no subjective eternity of omniciense and omnipotence for the likes of us. Oh, well.
Damn. The big crunch was the only remaining obstacle to M$FT's eternal universal domination.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
This announcement has been informally known for a few weeks in the physics community. A famous cosmologist (Edward "Rocky" Kolb, FNAL) told us that it was delayed the official announcement after the Columbia tragedy.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
The Chicago Sun Times has also got some info
Slashdot posters has also got a need for some grammar checking.
If water were beans, I'd be 70% beans.
If there was a big crunch, then another expansion, maybe there would be the possibility for life again. Instead, there will be a cold death... and, it seems, eventually it will be a lot like nothing at all.
What will remain is a universe full of black holes, which after trillions of years will explode to leave nothing but dark energy.
This is true... unless there is another mechanism that transforms some of the dark energy back to normal matter. This could result in a classic steady state model.
Quick note: heat death would be if the universe was becoming hotter and hotter. This is more of a cold-death, AFAIK.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Well, I'm no astophysicist, but won't this new theory disprove all previous theories about the Bing Bang as well, and everything we thing of the Universe thus far. If this susbstance will keep the Universe expanding forever, how was it ever possible to have a Big Bang in the first place? It would be inconcievable to think anything created the Universe in the Big Bang theory, because it could never happen, thus our Universe does not go in cycles (expand then contract - repeat).
So, How did the universe get created. Does this mean that there was actually a "beginning of time" as far as we can tell? What was that point? What existed before then? Since matter can't be created nor destroyed, where did it come from? (though that is a question beyond most planes of though, IMO)
I don't believe this story, and I think more research is needed here.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
You got it, though "wiped out" isn't really the term I'd use (more like "stretched out"). It lowers the heat death temperature so that it approaches absolute zero, since the space occupied would constantly expand. Also, it's a rather lonely future even before then, as galaxies grow so far apart that you eventually can't see anything but your own big front yard.
I wouldn't get too excited, though. There are virtually no "facts" in cosmology that haven't been overthrown multiple times. This one will be no different.
I'd say 'heat death == the death of heat'
* chirp * chirp *
That's true... Cosmology is one big fun exercise in making up the most outrageous bullshit and supporting it with wild theories :-) Quite a lot of fun, too. What really got me was when I studied up on the Inflation theory... I mean, most of it before was already far out, but that... I had great trouble explaining to non-physicists that it's not actually meant to have been pulled out of thin air...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
"A long time ago, in a galaxy that is much farther away now..."?
Check out the Omega Point Theory... in this book. It suggests a way to use the expansion of space to generate energy to run a computer that would contain everyone's' information. Seems plausible, until he mixes its up with religion and it turns metaphysical. This theory has been promoted by Tipler, the same guy who has written many physics text books. I don't but the theory, but it answers your question about an alternate theory...
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Nothing could possibly approach the Goodness of an Infinite Life. By definition, it is Infinitely Better than All Other Goods.
I want to live forever; that is why I am signed up to be cryopreserved. See http://www.alcor.org
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Even if we don't get crunched, there are still too many inevitable things that current physics is predicting. Even if we somehow evade the heat death and all the other "short-term" worries, the matter itself as we know it will ultimately cease to exist because even the "stable" elemetary particles will ultimately decay (proton's halflife is about 1e31 years) and everything will turn into a soup of photons.
When men used to be men
They try to get me to accept the big bang.. but the problem I see is if everything emanated from a point source, it should not have any rotational inertia, which will be required for the spin I observe.
Maybe our observable universe is the result of the explosive contraction of a black hole? Let me elaborate: A black hole forms, and begins to accrete matter. But the matter is not falling *directly* into the hole, no, it goes round and round on its way in, going ever faster as it falls inward, spinning the hole up. Consider under the rotational centrifugal forces, the singularity forms a ring. Eventually, this ring meets the event horizon. Now, as long as the ring is not spinning fast enough to meet the event horizon, the hole is stable, but once the centrifugal force of the singularity exceeds in the tiniest amount the gravitational force holding it together, it looks like it may detonate, much like a wheel would detonate if you spun it faster than the tensile strength of the steel it is made of exceeded.
This would form the local areas we see in the universe as galaxies and galaxy clusters... and as a result of the rotational inertia of the detonating black hole which formed them, they would rotate likewise, and eventually the cycle would repeat. Endlessly. Much like a pendulum - free of friction, constantly exchanges kinetic energy for potential energy.
I'll toss this idea up the pole... comments invited.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
We eventually get ripped apart(by enthropy) rather than being crushed by gravity!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
The idea of a cyclical universe made things so much neater, the fact that there wasn't a definitive beginning or end, that it existed, had always existed, and will always exist. I'm not sure if an infinitely expanding universe necessarily means some sort of weirdness can't happen to bring it all back together, or that another dimension splitting thing can't happen (the basis of string theory), but nonetheless, the idea is daunting. The truely unfortunate part of this is that all the religionists are going to flip and say it's more proof that god exists... bleh.
Oh... and you can't prove anything in science... so they aren't going to release a paper proving dark matter.
sig.
How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?
(With apologies to Asimov.)
If you have a big crunch, the boundary conditions at both ends are zero, and it's harder to imagine why anything would happen in the first place.
Mabye the big bang wasn't driven internally so much as it was (is?) sucked out of nothingness by the infinity at the other end of time.
We will eventually find a way to tap into Dark Energy, just as we have with every other energy source. We will then build big honkin' SUVs that convert Dark Energy into smog. We will then use up all of the Dark Energy until it no longer has an influence on the expansion of the Universe. The Universe then dies with a big crunch (not unlike a tasty Dorito)
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Not with a bang but a whimper
;)
That said, an infinitely expanding (or "open") universe is just as likely to destroy all life as the "big crunch" at the end of a collapsing (or "closed") universe. The open universe eventually winds down as all the energy in the universe become homogenized by the 2nd law of thermodynamics in a fate that is often referred to as "heat death".
If anything, the symmetric fate of a closed universe is usually considered the more hopeful fate of the universe mirroring the more traditional cyclic cosmologies of many cultures. Not only does it allow for a sort of cosmic reincarnation but also provides insight into the origin of our own universe (plus some really interesting theories as to the nature of time).
As I see it, an open universe is going to fuel some interesting debates among proponents of the strong anthropic principle (unless they are also advocates of a mischevious "trickster" creator). At least we can take solace in the possibility that matter-energy lost from our universe is "reborn" through inflation events on the far side of black holes. Otherwise, its all seems to me to be an awfully big waste of space-time
The current Big Bang theory doesn't depend on any oscillatory process in the universe. It explains the universe since 10^-43s after the Bang. before that the String Theorists specullate about the universe, and that is it.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
> Whew! That's a relief!
Reminds me of the story of the student of cosmology who frantically waved his hand until the annoyed professor finally called on him.
"Professor, would you mind repeating what you just said about the end of the universe?"
"I said that according to recent estimates it would take place in about 200 billion years."
"Oh, thank God, you really had me worried there for a minute! I though you said million!
According to the best cosmological theory we have now:
The universe came into being. At first, there was but one force. As the universe grew larger and colder, aspects of that one force that were hidden became apparent - these are the forces we know of now: gravity, electroweak, strong nuclear.
Consider:
Trillions of years from now, the universe is much larger and colder. Aspects of the four forces we know of now become apparent, creating new forces.
Who is to say that in a google of years, there won't be some lifeform that will look back and say (translating to English) "We aren't sure what happened in the first trillion years, but after that, the 27 forces of nature we know of began to manefest themselves..."
Who is to say that there was not some lifeform living at the first 10e-32 second that was looking forward and saying (translating into English) "One day, seconds from now, all life as we know it will cease, and the universe will be far too cold to support life."
www.eFax.com are spammers
See what happens when you "Embrace and Extend"?
by the time the universe is dying of cold, something called AC could say
"Let there be light!"
And there will be light
How the hell can they predict what the universe is going to do in trillions of years, but I can't get an accurate weather forcast for the next 24 hours??
Buy the President
Many cosmologists call the Big Crunch the Gnab Gib.
You wrote:
>>
I don't think that there is any reputable theory that doesn't have a "killing all life" at some point in the very distant future.
>>
Exactly what I have been saying. Actually there ARE theories (see the next post below) that DO include the possibility that life may go on forever in the universe, but for some reason, they never get promoted by the media. Why not? It is obvious to me that we do not know what the hell is going on with the universe. So, therefore I say why not just assume that the possibility DOES exist for infinite life?
It sometimes seems as if currently living humans, having already internalized the inevitability of their own individual death, create their cosmological theories so as to make sure that there will never be any immortals. Our popular cosmology, at least the "mainstream" theories promoted by the mainstream media, seem akin to *theology*.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
I have heard so many versions of different cosmological outcomes for the universe, that the signal to noise ratio is approaching zero. The press doesn't help, covering every crackpot with a soapbox.
I am not discrediting the research. I am just so skeptical about scientific news stories that the Meaning of Life could be posted online and I wouldn't believe it.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
While this may be further proof, this has been widely accepted for several years now. Even Hawking reversed his opinion of the matter some time ago.
(I think this may even be the bet he had for a subscription to playboy- I can't remember...)
The assumption is that the laws of physics are uniform throughout the universe, which I also assume to be true. However, I don't assume that gravity is an attractive force, but rather one that obeys common sense, and is repulsive in nature at the quantum level.
I believe that when a graviton interacts with a particle, it pushes it along... just like any other particle interaction... but I believe that the source of the gravitons is external... and that each interaction creates a shadow... thus there would be slightly more gravitons coming at be from above, than have managed to pass through the earth to hit me from below... thus creating an apparent (and real) local gravity field, with the deficit in the downward direction.
The experiments to prove this are going to be very sneaky... but one sure proof would be that a material that stops gravitons would be very heavy, instead of having a negative weight. Even if you managed to stop some of the gravitons... then effects would be on the opposite side of the device than expected. Thus if your anti-gravity plate is put underneath a weight, it would actually get heavier... and if you put it above the plate, then it would get lighter.
The truely interesting effects occur when you get black-hole level matter density. If I'm right... then they should probably "boil off" slowly as some of the matter gets pushed out of the hole over time.
--Mike--
For a long time I have found it irritating that they talk about hypotheses like the big bang "theory" with the pretence that they have even the slightest idea what is going on.
With this new evidence, they still have no clue what the universe is up to as a whole. The whole thing was just an exercise in speculation no more informed than the Bible. It still is. It will remain that way for a very long time.
Just accept it, you are a bunch of pretentious hairless mutant monkeys living on an insignificant speck of dirt, and the universe isn't interested in bothering to tell you what is going on, and you are never going to figure it out in your lifetime.
Kind of amusing actually....
No Gib Gnab?
In the Crunch candy offices: "Great news, guys! That king-size candy bar we've been working on won't kill us all like we thought!"
-insert a witty something-
My guess is that they are talking about the results from MAP. This is a satellite that was looking at the CMB. Unfortunately, this won't tell us one bit about dark energy. What it tells us about is the total matter-energy budget of the universe. But we've known that the universe is "flat" since COBE (the last satellite to look at the CMB).
The basic way at looking at cosmological parameters is this: CMB tells us about the geometry of the universe (Omega_total = Omega_matter + Omega_energy), clustering tells us about the matter content (Omega_matter), and supernovae tell us about the acceleration of the universe (Omega_matter - Omega_energy).
Only supernovae have given us direct evidence that the universe is accelerating.
It's kind of a funny term. Heat death is actually the complete conversion of all the free energy in a system (in this case, of all systems) into the corresponding entropy. It's the victory of the second law of thermodynamics. It's not that all the energy goes away, but that it becomes so evenly spread that no further work is possible - there are no more free energy gradients to traverse. So it's not the death of heat, it's a death in heat - literally a tepid cosmos. ;)
As I noted in another message, an infinitely expanding universe means that the temperature of the heat-dead cosmos will constantly drop as the volume increases. It will asymptotically approach absolute zero.
Some others have noted that there are theories where energy and/or matter are spontaneously created in empty space. These can coexist with the heat death fate if the new energy is also evenly spread, which it probably would be in such a uniformly boring heat-dead universe. Still no way to create a new free energy gradient.
I find this an interesting fate because it's also reflected in some religions and philosophies, where everything becomes one at the end of time.
I still want to know.. if the universe is ever expanding, what is it expanding into? There has to be something on the other side for it to be expanding into. And hypeothetically speaking, what happens if you were to reach the end? Is there a way to get to the other side?
NASA definitely will not announce that they had proven the existence of "dark energy"; all they can really announce is that data they collected suggests an infinitely expanding universe. (This would not, btw, require dark energy, though an accelerating universe might; all it would require would be for the total matter and energy in the universe to be below a certain threshold level.)
I don't really know a whole lot about "dark energy" at this point... a few mentions here and there have given me a murky idea of it as similar to Einstein's cosmological constant, but nothing really definitive. Some recent evidence does, I believe, suggest an accelerating expansion which could lend credence to the theory... but I believe there have been alternative hypotheses advanced as well.
I am not a physicist, however, merely a freshman physics major. ;-) I know the NASA announcement isn't out yet so primary sources on this particular experiment are hard to come by, but can anyone suggest some background or current research on dark energy and the cosmological constant? My only real source so far has been Scientific American--that is to say, I've got no reliable sources. [grimace]
Much appreciated....
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
Hmm, yeah, well this is the first time someone has definitively claimed to have proven the answer to this issue. I don't really expect there to be any more back and forth on THIS one...
Damn, now we know the speed of gravity and the color of the universe, what's left? Let's shut down the patent office, man, science is done! Progress is so awesome - I think I'll just kick back in this technoparadise we've created until entropy consumes all things.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
See The Five Ages of the Universe (review), by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If NASA in fact were able to make an accurate measurement of a source of dark energy (seems improbable with today's technology), then the new data could impossibly show anything that isn't already known.
It is already known that the maximum amount of dark energy that *could* exist in the universe stands at an approximate 1 to 10^7 ratio against regular matter (observed universal radio emission compared to gravity, normal distribution). It is also known that energy in space decrements exponentially (law of ripple distribution (eph = md/(e^(1/r)). Therefore, it is possible to calculate a pretty good estimate for how much influence the dark energy has on spacetime. This calculation has been done already! (presented by Brockmeyer in 1999 or 2000)
The thing we *don't know* is whether dark energy is gravitationally reflective, but that's really no more than a minor parameter, and we only need to know it in other contexts (particularly when studying quasars).
He made a long bet on this. Not to belittle his boldness in going on the record, but he probably figured this wouldn't be solved until long after he died.
In other news: Wine and Cheese celebrations at the Institute for Advanced Study.
NASA scientist: We have this energy, see, but it's dark, see, and space is, well, dark, you see, so you can't actually see it, see, but it's there!
My brain hurts.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
There's no real new info in the Sydney Morning Herald article.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) NASA will hold a press release and Q&A session at 2pm eastern. Check out the MAP page, or tune in to NASA TV (Real Player) to see the briefing and Q&A session live (2pm eastern Tuesday).
--Xandu
...isn't "big crunch" but "Gnab Gib".
Or is it "Gib Gnab"? It's been a while since I've read those books...
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Sorry mate, I have a degree in physics and you're talking out of your arse :-)
Even if we can pick up dark matter and turn it into energy, the quantities are not limitless (though certainly huge). They only push the problem back by a few hundred billion years at the most.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Are you talking about how there is no global energy conservation due to time assymetry and Noether's theorem?
I find this an interesting fate because it's also reflected in some religions and philosophies, where everything becomes one at the end of time.
Don't most religions postulating "one" at the end of time actually have something closer to the big-bang / big-crunch? I mean the final conflagration in Heraclitus on up through the Stoics seems to have much more in common with the earlier view of cosmology. The big cruch returns everything to fire = logos that was had at the beginning of the universe. In this view the fire is raw energy and information.
I don't know of anything in traditional philosophies or religions that really corresponds to the heat death of the universe.
Anything that happened before the Big Bang is outside the purview of science. Ask the same question to your local philosopher or clergyman.
Not exactly. The physics of the earliest stages of the universe (before 1E-34 seconds) of the Big Bang are currently outside of our scientific knowledge but that is not to say that they will always be. Granted some theorists have hypothesized that the universe began with a singularity through which there can be no continuity of physical laws but it is only a hypothesis. Another hypothesis, not completely unreasonable, is that the universe began with a small but not infinitessimal "big bounce" through which physical laws could pass unchanged - at least at grand unification energy scales. So stop bothering your local philosophers and clergymen and get back to your physics homework!
The more interesting religions and philosophies realise that everything is already one :-)
:-)
Yeah, yeah, that's just an opinion, but so's yours
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I enjoyed the fact that we have a picture of Einstein's face next to a story that claims to prove him wrong.
Ah, delicious irony.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
First lesson: be wary whenever astrophysicists claim to have "proven" anything. Our confidence in this conclusion can only be as strong as our confidence in the consistency and logic of the theories, which are based on observations we can trust only so much as we trust the instruments used to record them.
In short, this is a question that philosophers and physicists have been working on for some time, and, in my opinion, it's improper to ever say that anything in science (particularly something of this significance and magnitude) can ever be "proven."
Replacing the word "prove" with "indicate" tends to help. What NASA has done is discovered "hot spots," which it believes indicate that the Universe may be accelerating indefinitely.
The implications of such a discovery are mind boggling. One thing I'm curious to know is how they can be sure the acceleration is constant. Although we may not be able to determine a good value for the approximation within our lifetimes, such a measurement would be necessary, I think, to confirm their hypotheses. If indeed the acceleration is not constant (which is something I would definitely consider probable), then the Big Crunch may actually be inevitable.
Hans Moravec conceived this ploy, I think. Problem is that the area under that curve is finite, right?
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
(Sorry, about this post. I'll go and fetch my brain from the freezer.)
Is it called the "Bing Bang" or the "Big Band"?
True, we can supposedly only change the form of energy, however I think what is meant is that this energy will be spread more thinly around the universe. So eventually there is not enough to sustain our life.
Howver I seem to remember in the New Scientist there was an article which stated that the Universe may well collapse despite the evidence of dark energy.
The human species will have wiped itself long before either of those eventualities come to pass, so no worries :)
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Yup, true... unless you start at t=0 with an infinite speed of thinking, lol :-) Oh well, still, could extend your life by quite a stretch...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Ah yes. They keep changing their minds about this one don't they?
:-)
Contraction: universe will eventually implode.
Expansion: universe will expand forever.
Sadly, neither is a particularly pleasant ending. In the first case, we all get sucked into the mother of all black holes, in the second case the universe expands until all available matter is so widly dispersed that it can't interact and form galaxies, stars, planets or life.
But on the bright side, neither scenario will happen within any time frame that we seriously need to worry about. In terms of ancestors and descendants, the number of generations required to get to the time where this would be a problem is an order of magnitude larger than the number of generations since your ancestors were bubbling around in an ancient puddle of mud on a half-formed Earth.
Comforting thought, eh?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
matter is just another form of energy.
Halton Arp, an award winning astronomer who used to be Edwin Hubble's assistant, has spent years documenting physically connected astronomical bodies with vastly different redshifts. That's simply impossible under the current theories. But they exist.
He's published several books on the subject including Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science which presents considerable information that's been surpressed by astronomers whose theories have been threatened.
In Seeing Red, he also lays out an alternate, simplified theory, which is a _slight_ modification of the general theory of relativity that ends up predicting the real world observations without resorting to magic constants, curved space, "dark matter", and other kludges that the currently accepted theories need.
Here's some other info about it.
Evidence can be used to support anything. To prove it, though, is another thing entirely.
Alas, this is (on the time scale of the advancement of astrophysics research) old news. In fact last spring, the ever-expanding Universe and the exsitence of dark energy was the cover story for Time Magazine.
The evidence for an eternally expanding universe and dark energy has been around for a couple of years from:
-Type 1a supernovea of the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe (science magazine story of the year a couple years back)
-Large Scale structure measurements of the mass density of the Universe
-Other CMB experiments of the geometry and mass density of the Universe.
Other CMB measurements to note, which have previously 'announced' this result are:
Archeops: http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0210306
BOOMERANG: http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104460 (Astrophys.J. 571 (2002) 604-614)
CBI: http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0205387
DASI: http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104490 Astrophys.J. 568 (2002) 46-51
MAXIMA: http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104459 Astrophys.J. 561 (2001) L1-L6
VSA: http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0212495
Of course MAP *may* also be announcing other new things tomorrow, which will make it exciting, but the results listed in the posting are not new.
The point is that in a heat death the total amount of information processed is finite. In a big crunch scenario the crunch may happen in finite time but an infinite amount of data processing could take place in that crunch. So if we eventually have the technology (and in a few billion years we *will*, whatever) to keep reconfiguring ourselves to run on whatever hardware is available at time omega-t then we will effectively have infinite subjective lifespans in a crunch scenario.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I think that Buddhist Nirvana sort of does; entities that become enlightened are never returned to the wheel of life, so there's a constant drain of energy "lost" by the world to nothingness. The peace of Nirvana always seemed something like a perfectly uniform universe to me. Eventually everyone on every plane is enlightened and everything is just sort of frozen (which is a way of looking at heat death, complete equilibrium being equivalent to no motion at all).
On the other hand Taoism would propose a universe that expands back into the original version of itself, since everything proceeds through an extreme, into and through its opposite, and back into itself. That's broad enough that you could fit either a big-bang-big-crunch, or a heat death where something about the uniform state causes the return of extreme nonuniformity (which is entirely possible, see below).
One of the things I find provocative about the heat death and "big egg" fates is that they're at some level indistinguishable. Once the universe is uniform, both time and space becomes meaningless, just as they do after a big crunch. So the Taoist view makes sense to me - the universe really does find its opposite (and a rebirth) at the extreme ends of time.
Oh well. I really have things I should be doing today besides discussing cosmology, if I'm to be able to afford to keep converting free energy myself. ;)
which referrs to freeman dyson's paper "Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe
so lets hope that those scaling laws hold up :D
(and yes, the kind of life he's referring to would be quite different than the kind that you and I are familiar with...)
my other lambda is a Y
In my model, quantum energy (particles you can interact with) become dark matter (particles you can't interact with) when they lose momentum (bad analogy, but can't come up with another). Also, light has no speed limit becuase time does not exist, it is a side effect. It changes depending on were your at in the universe from the its center. And gravity is just a side effect of motion through space. "A road without a mile marker is still a road."
To hell with the Standard Model!
Cosmologists have been aware of the ACCELERATION of universal expansion for a few years now. I remember seeing an interview with the group that first stumbled across this, and they seemed pretty bewildered, because it was NOT the answer they were looking for: the sign of good physics, I think. Whether the universe is in a "late expansionary phase", or whether this is something that persists over the "life" of the universe, it is still pretty strong evidence that we live in an open "saddle" universe, not a flat one or a closed one.
Which is actually good news, I think. Sure, heat death may be a bummer for all of us mortals, but there is the potential that life/consciousness could arise which requires only energy to maintain and grow itself... then an open universe is a good thing. This is because the universe will continue to expand, the temperature will continue to drop (approaching 0 Kelvin, but NEVER reaching it), and the amount of information the universe can hold will continue to grow.
This means, that if we have an open universe with "energy beings" in it near the end (remember, this is a LOOONG time off), those beings could take advantage of the increase in data capacity. I know it sounds weird, but it conforms to both physics and information theory.
Just trying to show how everything falling apart may not be such a bad way to go, after all. Plus, instead of thinking of the cosmos as an expanding-contracting "ball", we can think of it as a "firecracker" whose embers fly apart and dim, leaving only a cloud of smoke.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
IANA Physicist, but temperature is the average energy of all particles in the object to which we are referring; in this case, it's the universe. Since the number of particles and the amount of energy is supposed to be constant, shouldn't the universe have a constant temperature?
It's interesting to note that a constantly expanding universe is much more congruent with the concept of a creator. A constantly expanding universe must have a moment of creation which is unique whereas a cyclical universe doesn't. There's no Armageddon (well, in the "I'm burning!" sense) though, so it's not perfect for creationists. It annoys me when people think that science is utterly incompatible with theology. Indeed, the absolute most recent theory of the creation of the universe is entirely compatible with a Creator: almost eerily so.
I also seem to recall some problems moving from Buddhist discussions of nirvana into a more western styled metaphysics of "energy." But that's probably neither here nor there. Is the "everyone on every plane is enlightened" technically part of Buddhism as an end state?
Astronomy magazine has an article about this, unfortunitly, there is no free online version. They do have some spiffy graphics that went with the article though, showing the death of the universe: http://www.astronomy.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/ 000/000/001/165gbnzz.asp
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
I sounds to me like all the facts are based on the red-shift seen in remote objects. Red-shift can also be caused by the decay of the speed of light. I don't know if it's true or anything, but at least it's interesting with regard to this matter - it's a theory that the speed of light in vacuum is not constant but is slowly decaying.
0x or or snor perron?!
Vauge ramblings do not a theory make.
We'd have to make some radical changes :) But at the time scales involved, I don't think a bit of engineering is going to be a problem. If any kind of life is still possible, at any speed, then a way will be found. (Remember that in a low-energy universe, slow and "fragile" processes are much more reliable than they are now. Waiting 10^9 years for a signal to pass from one neuron to another will not be a big problem.)
the more time you have to predict something, the more likely it is to become a certainty. I can't predict with too much a degree of certainty that it will rain tomorrow, but I can predict with a much greater degree of certainty that it will rain sometime this year.
According to the best cosmological theory we have now: The universe came into being...
"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made many people very angry and has generally been regarded as a bad idea." --Douglas Adams
Yeah, and there goes my plan for a "Restaurant at the End of the Universe." I'll just have to keep getting by on what I make from my "Big Bang Burger Bar".
(Sorry Douglas. You're probably spinning in your grave right now over this. Kind of like the computer simulation of the couch in Dirk Gently's appartment.)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
was with kip thorne on the existance of black holes or not. Hawking bet (in a cover your ass type bet) that black holes didnt exist, and Thorne bet that they did. The terms of the bet was 1 year of playboy (it might of been penthouse) for Hawking, and 4 years of something more bland for Thorne. Hawking eventually paid up on his bet to Thorne.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
"This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fucking shit we're in man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack."
Like a true slashdotter, I'll leave you to try to remember what it's from.
Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation. -debord
If a photon has enough energy it can decay into a matter anti-matter pair. This has been observed for some time in particle collisions.
I do wonder if a black hole could "explode"... I'm not aware of any sort of explosion that could escape a black hole. however, black holes do slowly decay and radiate away mass as hawking showed... anyway I should prolly just read more of the thread
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
This has an influence on evolution. Typically when describing the impossible nature of evolution, it has occasionally been the response to describe that the universe expanding, collapsing, and expanding again has given a theoretically infinite number of times for evolution to successfully occur.
This argument now has no foundation if this final position is what really is happening. It will now be the role of the evolutionist to demonstrate how the incredibly unlikely event of evolution could have occurred with only one try.
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Well, I'm being pretty loose in my interpretations. I figure that's ok, though, because the one thing I definitely got from the University Buddhism classes I audited was that there's pretty much a variant for everyone.
;)
I have definitely seen end states described where everyone reaches Nirvana. I suspect this comes from the simple desire for a happy ending. It also more resembles endings in Christianity so that could be an influence too (but without the "hell" component, which is ongoing in most Buddhist conceptions anyway, whether you're a desire-ridden human or a hungry ghost). The alternative has infinite creation of new entities, but then you need a source for them, which kind of undoes the fact that it's an entirely reincarnation-based belief system (as with its roots in Hinduism).
It's all pretty metaphorical anyway; I also glossed over having multiple planes of existence in many or most Buddhist strains, of which this dying universe would only be one. But it beats watching TV.
A critique from a real Buddhist theologian would certainly be interesting.
"Well that's great, that's just fuckin' great man, now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man... That's it man, game over man, GAME OVER, man! Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?" - Hudson, the panicky guy.
Notice I am using life, not humans. A big difference.
In time, all matter in the universe will be part of living things. Just wait and see. :)
Billions of years ago life crawled out of the primordial sludge.
.
Slowly over many millions of years it evolved, learned to walk upright and became intelligent enough to know that it was fucked . .
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The universe came into being.
I'm gonna have to say maybe on this one. Perhaps the "begining" was more asymptotic and there never was an actual point at which the universe began. Thus you could look back in time ever so closely to the starting "point" but never actually see it.
Yah dig?
From this point of view the universe has always "been".
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
I was thinking of it in vaguer terms - if energy is spontaneously created in some way that depends on the existing distribution (as quantum theory would suggest) and the medium into which it's being created is uniform, the new energy will also be uniform on a large scale. It could still be usable in the way that Dyson describes harnessing it indefinitely though.
If you want to be more formal I'd guess Noether's theorem underlies it, like all symmetry. Way ahead of her time, that one.
It is quite possible that what you're suggesting exceeds the limits of my understanding of physics. ;)
The future was written in the past
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Has anyone else ever thought that "Dark Energy" could just be polarized gravity?
Think of it this way: imagine that the electromagnetic force worked across the sort of distances that gravity does, and we didn't have such a complete understanding of it. We might then easily mistake the source of energy for the destination. Maybe gravity, viewed from a larger perspective, has a polarity that we are not detecting from our frame of reference. Then "dark energy" just becomes gravity, with an opposing charge.
Of course, IANAP, so I am probably just ass-talking here (again). Is Doctor K around to set me straight?
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
So much from the bang-crunch anthropic principle (roughly stated: "if the universe has bang-crunched forever, then of course at some point the conditions were right for us to come into being so that we could sit around and ponder how unlikely we are") that was so popular in the writings of Paul Davies, Hawking, etc. Evolutionists will have to come up with some other way of stretching their arrow of time to infinity.
I put the 'fun' in fundamentalism
Does this mean the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is wrong???
[Niadh panics]
Yes, Homer's theory of a donut shaped universe is a lot more plausible. ;)
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
What's new - we have known this since 1999 when two independent groups working on observations of type SNe 1a supernova came to the same conclusion. That the expansion of our universe is accelerating. All that NASA can provide is further confirmation.
It's the isotropic assumption I have the hardest part with. Even the expanding balloon analogy has a conveniently ignored center, some spot inside the balloon.
Has anybody plotted the galactic courses and traced them backward to where they converge? The center of the universe so to speak? Have we pointed a scope at it? I know it looks the same in every direction, but the convergence point has to be somewhere I've googled extensively and can't find an answer, just explanations of why every point "thinks" it's the center.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
The rate of expansion IS decreasing, the question is will that be enough to cause the crunsh or not because the rate of decrease (second derivitie of velocity) is decreasing as well.
That's the old (early 90's) model. Before the supernova data, we thought that the universe would be decelerating. However, now we're pretty sure that the universe is accelerating, not decelerating.
However, that doesn't mean that the universe won't decelerate later (or didn't decelerate earlier). There are still a lot of questions as to what the dark energy is and all of the accelerating/decelerating depends on what it is.
Google for quintessence. It's beyond my area of expertise.
Regardless of what the dark energy actually is, the universe is accelerating right now.
So... If the universe did at one point "cycle" by expand/collapse phases, then that means that we're living in the "final" universe.
A completely separate though: given that will soon be able to make computers which accurately simulate reality (think Matrix), and everyone has one of those computers and can run a Matrix themselves, so there are 6 billion Matrices running, each of them containing "us"...
What are the chances that we're existing in the original?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Isn't it obvious that everything spirals in a funky multi-dimensional way. stars, galaxies, quarks. The all spiral out like a big fractal. from one angle it looks like a simple spin, from another like a spiral. And in space time like a straight line? not sure, but I know one thing, on the other side of the vortex is more of the same - same but different.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Is it just coincidence that NASA is going to announce something cool that it's done right after so many critics are calling for the space program to be dismantled?
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
This is true . . . unless there is another mechanism that acts as external forcing causing the universe to be constantly forced away from equilibrium. This could result in a classic pattern formation system.
(whatever)
Fred uses a log scale to break down the history of the universe into five cosmological decades, starting from nanoseconds after the Big Bang, out until a trillion years is but a twitch on the flanks of time. If nothing else, it provides a reference scale to remind you that eternity is indeed a very long time.
Yep, it's on Amazon.
Luke, help me take this mask off
But the part of this theory no-one likes to mention is eventually the stars are going to run out of energy and everything we've created is going to freeze no matter where we move to.
Well, lucky for us a sci-fi writer, in this case Asimov, already has an idea of how this will be solved. One of my favorite short stories: The Last Question ("for educational use") talks about entropy and the end of the universe as a whimper, with a great ending.
Jason
The average temperature is not the limiting factor, but that enough times passes since the beginning of the last universe so that it is likely for such an unlikely event to occur.
Statistically, these quantum fluctuations don't exist (except when they do..., ^_^ ) so you have to wait an inordinate amount of time for it to decide to happen.
First quasi-pseudo-physics post
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I was a physics major in college and the whole big bang theory never really worked out in my mind. The expansion isn't so straight forward. Why don't we see any effect of the expansion on a small scale? Gravity or electromagnetic forces might dwarf the expansion on small scales - but I would expect at least pertubations from our current theories...hmm, probably from quantum gravity too though - maybe they're really that small? But it's too ill described as to definition of expansion. Is space a tangible thing? Is the expansion a wind like force? Or is it like a bunch of 'space molecules' where they all multiply at once? Again there's no expansion even in star clusters or within a galaxy. Must we not have a suitable description of space before we say it's 'expanding'? I don't think people should stop trying to answer big questions like this, but I really dislike the sensationalism of it all. We don't have near enough information to make these judgements so why announce them as 'truth'? Selling newspapers? Funding research? Inspiring students? Maybe these are important things but it still makes me feel like science is becoming Entertainment Tonight or something.
Thats a nice reference to Isaac Asimov. I can't remember the name of the short story, but in it the long line of super computers used by man is asked a question over and over. The question boils down to is there a way to beat entropy. The computer always responds that there is not enough information. Then after the last human essense joins with the Universal computer, it continues to process the, until then, unanswerable question. It then produces the answer with the line "Let there be light", reproducing creation.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
If you where to glue those cardbord discs really well to the elastic surface, they would eventually shear to pieces on continual expansion. In case of space-time, one could differentiate between two scenarios: - objects get 'blown' further apart in space with time - space itself expands with time I would state the the last statement would have to be true (not implying the first one is not), since the 'big bang' theory starts out with the absence of space itself. However, I agree with you on atoms and molecules staying the way they are in the 'short' term. With continual expansion in the 'long' term however, it seems plausible these strong structures could be torn apart. Breaking up molecules and atoms would 'cost' a great deal of energy, but would 'yield' an enormous amount of entropy once the universe became infinitely large.
So much for my plan of reincarnation to keep me alive forever.
And it does. The "heat death" thing refers to what happens when the average temperature is evenly distrubuted across all the particles in the system.
See, discrete objects exist, and discrete events occur, because there's an energy gradient between one state and another. This energy gradient makes change possible. This is achieved by an uneven distribution of the average temperature. Stars are hotter than the average temperature of the universe, and on a good day revenge is colder than the average temperature of the universe. Distribute the average temperature evenly throughout the universe, and you won't be able to tell the difference between stars and revenge.
And that would take all the fun out of life.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The human race will cease to exist in the year 2095 AD.
Sorry guys, but just don't waste your time with all this "universe big bang collapse" theory stuff, because in the end no one will be around to give a flying crap.
I could have sworn that I read somewhere that Stephen Hawking believes not in the Big Crunch but in the ever expanding universe idea? Could be he used to believe in the big crunch theory but reversed his mind and nobody realizes it? :)
I was getting so worried about the sky falling on our heads! This makes me a feel a lot better!
StarTux
Isaac Asimov, The Last Question
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
...we finally get to see our closest 'neighbor universe' (simply another bubble of matter very similar to ours, which we call 'the known universe').
I feel, like NASA is now claiming, that 'space' is infinite. We also know that all matter is mostly empty space (no matter what scale you use). Therefore it should be a matter of fact that our 'universe' (an area of mass that has been expanding for 15 billions years) is simply one of an infinite number of 'specks' in the infinity of existence. Eventually 'our universe' will collide with another. (Not an alternate universe. Simply another shell of matter that has been expanding for 15 billion (or trillion) years.)
How American of us to think that our universe is the only mass in infinity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Ænima is probably my favorite Tool song...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Some others have noted that there are theories where energy and/or matter are spontaneously created in empty space. These can coexist with the heat death fate if the new energy is also evenly spread, which it probably would be in such a uniformly boring heat-dead universe. Still no way to create a new free energy gradient.
The lack fo a free energy gradient doesn't neccesarily follow. Keep in mind that the whole universe (after the first million years or so) condensed out of a virtually uniform distribution of energy, in the form of hydrogen and helium atoms, that gravitationally collapsed into ever larger concentrations starting from only the weakest of quantum fluctutations in the density field.
It's possible that any matter or energy that gets spontaneously created in empty space could be self-concentrating in a way similar to the gravitational concentration of hydrogen, leading to the spontaneous creation of new energy gradients.
It could still be usable in the way that Dyson describes harnessing it indefinitely though.
Isn't Dyson the guy that built that big sphere thingy? Ya, i think it was.
Hm, I'd say that's more Insightful than Funny - I mean, it is a rather serious metaphysical question if we really are facing a gloomy, dark, cold, lonely end to things, is there some way we can reverse entropy, maybe going beyond pure science and empiricism?
Anybody remember the Asimov short story, name escapes me, with the central computer that answered questions, and from time to time different generations would ask it "How can entropy be reversed?"; every time the answer was "There is as yet insignificant data to compute an answer." Eventually, mankind dies off and leaves this multidimensional hyperspatial uber-computer, which is left with one unanswered question, and it churns away, until the Universe reaches the end, heat death...and this computer finally gets the data, and the answer, and it booms out..."Let There Be Light".
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The human race isnt going to live long enough to see the universe eat itself. There will be a nuclear holocaust long before then i assure you..
So from the outside, you'd look like you were living a loooong time, but from your point of view, everything around you (if you had enough energy to detect it at all) would constantly be speeding up. And you wouldn't actually feel like you were living forever. At some point, you'd have to have a last thought. Like, "Wow. Thi s i s r e a l l y b o r i--" dead.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
That part cracks me up. Kinda makes it sound like they're full of shit. I kinda doubt that.
today is spelling optional day.
You people still haven't cured cancer yet! Get off your stargazing asses and hop to it!
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
Great, all life won't die in one big crunch. Yay!
Then I read this:
Although NASA's discovery means the universe will go on forever, the same is not true for human life. As the universe expands, all the energy needed to keep the stars and galaxies alight will be used up. What will remain is a universe full of black holes, which after trillions of years will explode to leave nothing but dark energy.
So all life doesn't get squished, but all the energy in the universe is used up. Gee, that's a much better alternative....
-ted
Of course, now that we know how the universe works, it will spontaneously change into something completely unrecognizable. :-)
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I agree. I'd rather see the possbility of at least recycling the universe than seeing it die by a slow pathetic decay.
To imply that life will go on because the universe is open instead of closed is a misconception. Eventually the remaining free gas in the galaxy will be used up and star formation will cease. All stars will eventually become cooled off white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. Galactic clusters will become more isolated and even black holes will fade out due to Hawking radiation. Toss in the possibility of proton decay and you are looking at a universe consisting of a "photon haze". Doesn't sound like a very life friendly future.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Actually...during the course of the travel through space, while it may be very small, the pull of gravity from stars would affect the acceleration of the body in motion. The pull of gravity would become greater as it traveled near a black hole as the gravity around a black hole is greater than traditional stars as they pull matter into themselves.
NeoChichiri
http://www.neochichiri.net
The short story is "The Last Question" (not to be confused with "The Last Answer"). I remember reading a comment by Asimov that nobody could ever remember its name. As I recall he thought it was his best short.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
As others have pointed out, I'm incorrect in concluding that the apple must fall back to Earth.
Yes, I've taken calculus (degree in math, if you can believe it). Just wasn't my best and brightest today.
Also, it's a rather lonely future even before then, as galaxies grow so far apart that you eventually can't see anything but your own big front yard.
Does that mean those damn kids will finally stay off my lawn?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Several billion years ago someone got an e-mail message titled "INCREASE YOUR UNIVERSE SIZE!!!".
They hit reply and the rest is history.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Maybe it's happening in reverse.
AOL is already here.
Let's wait for the earthquakes and tidal waves.
The meteor showers and _then_ the comet.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
The same way you can predict a gambler will end up broke if he doesn't stop, yet you can't say whether he will win or not tomorrow.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Dark Energy:
Properties: No mass. Does not interact with matter on a scale visible to the human eye in daylight. Has a minimum density at all points in space, even in vaccuum. may or may not be affected by gravity - no one knows yet. exerts minute amount of force over great distances and time - which adds up quickly to be great force.
Ether:
Properties: No mass. Does not interact with matter on such as scale as to be observable to the human eye in daylight. Exists throughout all space (thereby having some minimum density that must be over zero). exerts minute force over great distances that quickly add up to great force. Is the medium of transport for light.
Didn't science fight like hell about a hundred years ago to throw out the notion of a sea of magical invisible goop that pervaded space? Didn't scientists throw out the notion of ether saying it was a bunch of superstitous bunk - that if you couldn't see it or taste it or touch it, it was best left to wizards and alchemists?
They fight like hell to throw out ether, then they put a funny new name on it - not once, but several times (ether->quantum foam->zero point energy->dark energy) and want me to swallow it? I don't doubt there is a thing such as this - the idea makes the universe make more sense - but pick one side of the fence to stand on, boys, and stay there.
Hey, guess they will decisively know something within the next ten billion years.
~Questioning
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
When we are all dead and gone, and all of our thoughts and ideas are long lost, these things will come to pass. Homosapiens will just be a memory in some ancient anthropological archive - provided we or our ancesters don't extinguish all life before then.
This is one science experiment we can't observe the end of (unless you exist in a Douglas Adams novel).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Okay, great. The universe is expanding. But is it expanding quickly enough? By my calculations, the universe is not expanding quickly enough. The theoretical Heat Death of the expanding universe will not occur until long after the Starbucks Death of the universe.
That's right, the volume of Starbuckses is increasing at an accelerating rate. If this trend continues the entire universe will be filled with Starbuckses in 10^8 years, a tiny fraction of the time required for the Heat Death of the universe.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
If light is traveling more slowly than it has in the past, wouldn't that look an awful lot like the universe's expansion was accelerating?
the story ya'll are referring to I have in a book by Issac Asimov called Nine Tomorrows, the copyright is from 1959, the story starts on page 170 and continues to page 183 in my softcover version I have. The question asked to Multivac was, " How can the net amount of entropy of the univserse be massively decreased," was asked by alexander adell on May 21, 2061, and was solved by the fusion of Cosmic AC and the last man 10 trillion years later and since it couldn't tell the last man the answer it decided to do a demonstration proving it by starting with "Let there be light!" and there was light -
I have the book somewhere around here, I just couldn't find it in time to make any use of it
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
the universe *does* turn out to be in the process of expanding infinitely, instead of eventually collapsing, it brings up an interesting question ... where did the energy for the "Big Bang" come from?
Please forgive me, I have very little exposure to astrophysics ...
I've always heard the infinite regression theory, that the energy came from a previous universe that collapsed, then exploded, creating our universe, and that previous universe had come from another universe before it. Ignoring the inherent "infinite regression" fallacy, this explanation seems to make some kind of sense.
But if our universe will expand forever, it can't collapse to give birth to another. If it does expand forever, will it die a "cold death" when all the energy from stars and stuff will be released as entropy? Does that mean that an unknown number of previous universes collapsed, but that ours is the last universe? (sounds like a book title, "the last Universe") Or is ours the *only* universe? That possibility caused me to ask my original question: Where did the energy for the "Big Bang" come from?
--
Me: http://www.robertdhill.com/
Light has not slowed down, or sped up, or anything like that. (Well, okay, it may have changed by a tiny undetectable fraction like 10^-16). The fact is, if we look back 8 billion years, we see spectroscopic effects showing that back then, the universal constants were the same as they are now.
Yes, I know you want to make it sound like they share characteristics, but many physical phenomena do.
I laughed too, at first, then I thought that it really is an interesting question, and that some people might really want a good answer to it.
So, think about this. The movements of astronomical objects can be compared to watching a perfectly round steel ball rolling down a perfectly straight, very long, slightly inclined ramp, in which there is a groove cut so that the ball can't roll off. The ball (astronomical object) can only do one thing: roll down the slope. Using a simple clock, we can observe the motion of the ball and easily calculate how fast it's going, how fast it's accelerating, and when it will reach a certain point on the ramp with a high degree of accuracy. (They were doing this experiment with great accuracy hundreds of years ago.) The reason it's so easy in that case to predict what will happen, is that there is really only one (non-changing) vector force operating on the ball.
Now, compare that to let's say dropping a feather off a cliff, and then trying to observe the motion of the feather and predict when and where the feather is going to land when it gets to the bottom of the cliff. You're trying to predict the time to within a second, and the spot to within a millimeter. This is quite obviously impossible, but why? Because the moment the feather leaves your hand, it enters a chaotic zone where its position, direction, speed and acceleration are being operated on by billions of gas molecules, which collectively assert thousands or perhaps millions of different (changing!) vector forces on it. The molecules that directly touch the feather are in turn affected by billions of other molecules with their own vectors, and so on and so forth out to the limits of the atmosphere.
The only possible way to predict the motion of the feather would be to have some way to observe and predict the motions of every molecule of air surrounding it, out to the limits of measurable interaction. Obviously, molecules of air a mile away won't measurably interact with any molecules that interact with the feather for quite some time, so you can probably just deal with all molecules within a radius of [100 feet|1 mile|10 miles], I have no idea.
The point being, dealing with the movement of an atmosphere is an incredibly complex problem, even second-to-second, while all those astronomical objects out there in space will be following the same "ramp", or vector, in general, for the next quadrillion years. That's how they can say they think they know what will happen, when they still can't predict the motions of every molecule in Earth's atmosphere.
Here's where it gets interesting, to me anyway. If you think about this, we're talking about the difficulty of predicting the behaviour of objects on a macro scale, as opposed to a mega scale. We get the same sort of difficulties when we're talking about the difference between what happens on a quantum level (can't be predicted) and what happens on a classical level (if the atoms in your hand contact the atoms in a desk, they both maintain integrity and don't mix or explode, in other words, we can predict things that happen to atoms).
Quantum (truly impossible to predict) Micro (fairly easy to predict)
Macro (almost impossible to predict) Mega (very easy to predict)
I just felt that was interesting. Is there a level above the mega (astronomical) scale, that is so predictable that it makes the mega scale seem difficult to predict? What a strange concept.
Although the crunch effectively puts a maximum lifetime on any specific life, there is that slim theoretical possibility that another universe would arise from the crunch. As it is, the universe grows and cools to a homogeneous soup, and that's it. We can't reuse the universe, we have to get a brand-new one.
Basically, we can think of the universe as expanding linearly with distance (hubble's law). Now, there's a very special characteristic of this type of expansion: nobody can tell if they're the center. If there were a center, it would have no effect.
Think about the raisin bread - how can a raisin tell where the center is? Remember, they don't know anything about "absolute rest" either.
Visit RTB. There's no question about it, the universe was created with life, no, human life in mind.
The Catholic Church is actually one of the MOST accepting of science! Amazing! I guess most of the other religions haven't burned enough heretics yet...
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
... starting a new dispute about when will be energy spread too smoothly over universe to make life unable to retrieve enought of it to be able to live.
I.e. when will entropy kill energy sources?
(but beware: I'm not physicists! maybe life is eternal, maybe souls goes to another dimension, ...)
hany
Yeah, I'm twice as cool as I think I am.
If you think so, it just proves you are not cool at all. Because the only solution for c=2c happens to be c=0.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Apparently there is a norse myth that predicts "Fimbulwinter" - an everlasting winter at the end of the world. But then I read this in a 2000AD comic strip, so I can't guarantee its validity ;-)
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
America: Evidence Favors Infinitely Expanding Waistlines
Hey, you are right. Inflation assumes there was not even air there at the beginning, doesn't it? :-)
Of course, I wouldn't bet (pun intended) on the gambler's chances of winning in the end.
Great. Work out the details.
I have a much better (though terrible, but better) understanding of the popular models of the universe after trying to work out the details to my own model (similar to yours).
They are all just models. Reread the first chapter to Brief History of Time.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Something that counteracts gravity... Gimme my anti-grav boots!
It was meant to be a flip comment, but: :)
If the house takes 10%, and the games are true games of chance, the player will approach a 10% loss of everything bet over a long enough time. Yet to meet a gambler who stopped because they won too much
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Well, see, I don't think so, it just so happens that everyone tells me that. What can I say?
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
I thought iron - not lead - was the point of inflexion for fission / fusion?
And presumably, now that we are given to understand there will NOT be a Big Crunch, I would expect the final near-steady-state will include a broad mix of all forms of energy, including various elements, photons, leptons, yada yada... and not that everything will turn to lead.
Unix does not prevent you from doing stupid things; that would also prevent you from doing clever things.
Two of the three "arrows of time" no longer function.
Unix does not prevent you from doing stupid things; that would also prevent you from doing clever things.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
At one time, that majority of scientists believed that the earth was flat we well.
It would not be the first time scientists were wrong.
Kent
Something similar to this was discussed in the book Mind Children by Hans Moravec (1988, ISBN 0-674-57618-7). However, the biggest flaw in your argument is the statement "given that will soon be able to make computers which accurately simulate reality...". This is far from given!
If this 'dark energy' is acting *against* gravity, then can we call it *anti*gravity? If so, I'd like to be first in line to put a deposit down on a flying car...
You must think in Russian.
Couldn't we just get in a spaceship and shoot away from the Big Crunch?
It didn't take me to long to realise the point the author was trying to make though. That the universe is radically different than what the Standard Model suggests. Most people who've studied that model their whole life don't want to abandon it, because it appears to work at macroscopic levels, were electromagnetic forces and gravity are balanced (sort of). But at the particle level, gravity doesn't seem to really exist, its an effect. I may be full of shit, but it seems pretty basic to assume we are as stalled with Special Relativity as we used to be with Newtonian Physics. Time and Gravity aren't understood at a fundamental level. It requires thinking about them differently.
And let's face it, the pink frosting makes it easier to swallow.
With raised edges so the water doesn't run off the side.....
D.A.K.D.A.E.---- Deny all Knowledge, Destroy All Evidence
Then why don't they work on m-theory?
were electromagnetic forces and gravity are balanced (sort of)
Not really.
By that I ment that at macroscopic levels (planets, humans, cars) gravity can act on electromagnetic forces(i.e. planets revolve around star), they seem to effect one another. At a particle level gravity has no effect whatsoever, they don't effect eachother with competing/balancing forces. See what I meant?
I think that Buddhist Nirvana sort of does; entities that become enlightened are never returned to the wheel of life, so there's a constant drain of energy "lost" by the world to nothingness.
What energy is lost? Are you referring to some sort of energy embodied in a soul? There is no persistent self, ego, or soul. Upon death the body, and thus mind, are dissolved. The matter comprising a person does not vanish anywhere. Consciousness is dissipated upon the cessation of stimuli, for such is how it arises.
Please refer to the following:
The Gospel of Buddha, by Paul Carus -- specifically "The Bodhisattva's Search"
What the Buddha Taught, by Walpola Rahula -- the earlier chapters; unfortunately, as I am currently at work, I cannot reference them.
The peace of Nirvana always seemed something like a perfectly uniform universe to me.
A key point regarding the conception of Nirvana lies in the following statement by the Buddhist logician Nagarjuna:
"There is nothing whatever which differentiates the existence-in-flux (samsara) from nirvana;
And there is nothing whatever which differentiates nirvana from existence-in-flux."
--Nagarjuna, "Fundamental of the Middle Way" (25.19)
Nagarjuna espouses the idea of sunyata, or emptiness. For a further explanation of sunyata, please consult an essay that I have written:
Emptiness, Nihilism, and the Middle Way. While this essay deals with sunyata in a different context, I believe that it comprises an adaquete introduction towards the concept. (I am not a monk, but at the very least my professor had no qualms with it)
You seem to have forgotten about the Second Noble Truth: suffering occurs because of ignorance; the ignorance that leads one to imbue things with a self and attach to those things which will someday dissolve, causing suffering -- it is craving that is the source of suffering, and it is the extinction of craving that is Nirvana. Parinirvana is not a nihilistic oblivion. Please refer to this essay of mine.
I posted a link to this story earlier in the day in my journal. Interestingly enough, it is titled "The New Convergence".
Forget the whales - save the babies.
So let me get this straight: instead of the universe collapsing and destroying everything in it, it will eventually expand far enough that it will require so much energy that all the stars will turn into black holes and everything will explode? Can't we pretty much agree that the universe will end in several billion years, regardless of whether it will implode or explode?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
>> It is quite possible that what you're suggesting exceeds the limits of my understanding of physics. ;)
"You and everybody else..." -- "Oscar", 1991
( http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102603 )
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
A so called theory of everything has not yet been created, and leading attempts to do so (through the use of superstring theory, m-theory and the like) have been largely unsuccessful. Explaining/predicting what happens/will happen is a great deal easier than explaining why it will happen.
Additionally, it is wholly possible that a fifth fundamental force exists, but the universe isn't big enough (strange notion) for it to be effective. I will attempt to explain this by analogy. On the subatomic scale, gravity does almost nothing (it is by far the weakest of the four fundamental forces) but on the macroscale that we are all familiar with, it plays a dominant role.
Consider that the static electricity of a comb can lift a piece of paper on your desk, paper being held in place by the six sextillion ton Earth.
I just think that the judgement that gravity may overcome the expansion of the universe is a bit premature, since before that happens (and perhaps as a catalyst to the heat-death of the universe) a fifth fundamental force (one which is repulsive at very large distances, but non-existent at small distances) may make itself visible.
I like the idea that the universe will collapse. It gives the universe a cyclical quality, and plays well with certain iterations of string theory (where the radius of a string, and its properties are identical to a string whose radius is the reciprocle)
In either case, I am not sufficiently familiar with the mathematics or the reasoning behind the conclusions to state anything with certainty... I don't really plan on being around when this type of thing will become important, how about you?
You have obviously forgotten that the AOL Disc Death of the Universe will occur before that. Because of the accumulation of AOL discs, Earth will become a black hole, and suck in the entire Universe into a big crunch!
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I don't mean balanced as in canceling eachother out. I mean that they compliment eachother at big scales, but at smaller scales electromagnetic force is like 1000 times stronger. It was a really bad analogy.
Yeah, it's one of my favorite short stories- I've always wondered if Asimov wrote it front to back, and came up with fantastic ending, or if he started with the ending and wrote up to it.
That and "Feeling of Power", where they 'rediscover' how to do math. Love those two. Well, ok, most of his short stories are good... but those two stick out in my mind.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.