Time Dimension To Become Space-like

KentuckyFC writes "The Universe is about to flip from having three dimensions of space and one of time to having four dimensions of space. That's the conclusion of a group of Spanish astrophysicists who have calculated that observers inside such a Universe would see it expanding and accelerating away from them just before the flip (abstract, full paper pdf on the physics arXiv). 'We show that regular changes of signature on brane-worlds in AdS bulks may account for some types of the recently fashionable sudden singularities. Therefore, the fact that the Universe seems to approach a future sudden singularity at an accelerated rate of expansion might simply be an indication that our braneworld is about to change from Lorentzian to Euclidean signature. Both the brane and the bulk remain fully regular everywhere.'" Update: 10/09 16:06 GMT by Z : A few readers have written in to point out that the article is not peer-reviewed; your mileage may vary.

Comments

Re:the intersection of mathematics and cosmology

[Oligonicella]

Halle-friggin-leuyah! Sing it brother! I am so fed up with people treating this parlor conjecture as if it amounted to more than a tediously-written scifi blaster.

Repeat after me -- math describes reality, it does not define reality. Just because you can make numbers dance, in no way does that mean said dancing jiggles anything other than your dendrites.