Do We Live In a Giant Cosmic Bubble?

Khemisty writes "Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of space-time that is particularly void of matter. Scientists say this condition could account for the apparent acceleration of the universe's expansion, for which dark energy currently is the leading explanation. Until now, there has been no good way to choose between dark energy or the void explanation, but a new study outlines a potential test of the bubble scenario. If we were in an unusually sparse area of the universe, then things could look farther away than they really are and there would be no need to rely on dark energy as an explanation for certain astronomical observations. 'If we lived in a very large under-density, then the space-time itself wouldn't be accelerating,' said researcher Timothy Clifton of Oxford University in England. 'It would just be that the observations, if interpreted in the usual way, would look like they were.'"

Comments

I know I do

[Anonymous Coward]

Like, cosmic, man.

Re:I know I do

[SleptThroughClass]

Apparently someone is indeed less dense.

Re:I know I do

[bugeaterr]

6000 years ago, god farted in a Cosmic Bathtub.

Re:I know I do

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not hilarious. It's fucking stupid.

Re:I know I do

[SlowMovingTarget]

A brane-fart, eh?

I always wondered...

[clonan]

If this was why the galaxies appear to rotate to quickly at the edges.

Would the greater density at the galactic cores cause time to go slower and effect the apparent speed as observed from the exterier of the system?

Re:I always wondered...

[Goaway]

No. The gravitational forces required for time dilation to be that strong are many orders of magnitude stronger than what you'll find on the galactic scale.

Being special

[Harmonious Botch]

Ok, I'll believe that there are regions of space that are more dense than others. I'll even believe that we are in one of them. ( This is no harder than believing in dark matter and dark energy, and it's before breakfast )
But what I find hard to believe is that we are in the exact center of such a region. So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

Re:Being special

[BigGar']

Man you ain't kidding. Take a look at the Capitol Hill region of space. That is one ultra dense region of hot air, that isn't just warping space-time this is a region of space where the wildest of idea's are warped into reality.

Re:Being special

[someone1234]

Except if such specialties make our sentient life possible (or much more probable).

Re:Being special

[2names]

Density distribution throughout the universe (ours, at least) is relative to the scale at which your measurements are made. Follow me here...

If you get far enough away from this universe, and I'm talking 'Douglas Adams' far, this universe would appear to be perfectly uniform. However, the closer your observation point becomes, the easier it is to distinguish the clumps, bumps, peaks, valleys, troughs, etc. in the density. At a very close, human-type scale, the density changes are very easy to spot. How dense is the space between the Earth and the Moon as compared to the Earth itself?

Re:Being special

[LordNimon]

Why is it so hard to believe? Let's say for instance I tell you that there is a one-in-a-million chance that a person will have a particular dream. Every night, 300 million Americans go to sleep. Would you find it hard to believe that at least one person has this dream every night?

And what if you were that one person last night? Would you think you were special? You would, if you were bad at math.

So why is it hard to believe that our planet exists in conditions that have incredibly low odds? The universe is not only more vast than anyone can imagine, it's also been around for over 13 billion years! For all you know, these "special conditions" you complain about could have happened a million times by now.

Re:Being special

[meringuoid]

But what I find hard to believe is that we are in the exact center of such a region. So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

There's an unexplained anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Hot and cold spots don't appear to be quite randomly distributed. Nobody's come up with a good explanation, and it might be an instrumentation error or due to some local gravitational anomaly - say, lensing around the next supercluster over - but at the moment it's very unclear.

Re:Being special

[Chris Burke]

But what I find hard to believe is that we are in the exact center of such a region.

How exact do you think it has to be when we're talking about cosmic distances? Distances where being in the Milky Way vs Andromeda wouldn't make much difference in how the distant universe looked?

Re:Being special

[Anonymous Coward]

. So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

Oh, but it does indeed! haven't you noticed that the universe is at daylight here but at night in China?

Re:Being special

[ivandavidoff]

Boy, and what an ultimate irony it would be if the center of the bubble isn't just Earth, but the exact location of Copernicus' grave.

Yes, this is clearly the answer. What we can observe of the universe does not jibe with what we THINK we SHOULD be observing; so, obviously, we are in the middle of an anomaly, outside of which the universe behaves the way we THINK it should behave.

Re:Being special

[John Hasler]

We need not be at the exact center. Closer to the center than to the edge would probably suffice.

Nor does ours need to be the only bubble: there could be billions of them. Thus we need not be unique: just not quite average (but then, being perfectly average would itself be unlikely).

Re:Being special

[ShieldW0lf]

You're believing something the opposite of what the premise of the article is. The premise of the article is that we are in a bubble containing a void, not a highly dense space.

I think we really need to restructure our underlying philosophy of what existence is. I've been chewing on this concept for years:

This "universe" isn't infinite. It's a 4 dimensional object, with a large but quantifiable amount of mass/energy, and this mass/energy has permutations across x, y, z and t. You see a 3 dimensional object with dimensions x, y, z moving through t, but observed from outside the t dimension, it's a 4 dimensional object.

The big bang, the singularity, is significant because at the moment that the mass/energy of the universe is in the singular state, it is identical to all the other universes. It is at this point that it "connects" to all the other universes, like petals connecting together to make a flower.

Questions of religion, spirituality and what it means to be human start getting in your way once you start looking at things this way. Am I an aspect of this object that is my universe, or am I some sort of traveler within this object that is a universe?

I think there's a good possibility that the missing matter and forces we hypothesize to be acting upon our universe are actually other universes influencing our own, like petals on a flower bumping into each other. And, assuming that we are "souls traveling within the universe" as opposed to "4 dimensional objects that are aspects of the universe", it isn't outside the bounds of reason to imagine that we might one day be able to map the shape of these universes and achieve "time travel" by moving to other universes.

I expect that we will eventually find the concept of the "infinite universe" to be a false path, and that we will achieve great breakthroughs when we find a framework that doesn't rely upon its existence.

Re:Being special

[mcgrew]

This is no harder than believing in dark matter and dark energy, and it's before breakfast

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so". -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re:Being special

[khallow]

I expect that we will eventually find the concept of the "infinite universe" to be a false path, and that we will achieve great breakthroughs when we find a framework that doesn't rely upon its existence.

Already happened. Our description of the laws of physics is local in nature and doesn't depend on the extent of the universe.

Re:Being special

[Artifakt]

We don't necessarily have to be at or near the center of such a bubble, here's the conditions we might require:

1. We would have to somewhere be in a bubble that is much less dense than the actual average for the universe,
2. that bubble would have to be pretty uniformly less dense for the 12 Billion light year radius around us. It doesn't have to be exactly uniform, in fact one reason we might be able to detect it is if it isn't. The bubble doesn't have to be spherical, overall, or uniformly dense, overall, and the nature of the edge, where it becomes more like the rest of the universe is, is allowed some variation as well.
    (In fact, from what the original paper says so far, the center of the bubble could still be even less dense than our part, just so those lower density regions were more than the observable length away.)
    (If this hypothesis develops into a full fledged theory, we would probably be able at a minimum to confirm or reject the existence of even lower density regions, predict how thick the edges of the bubble are, and write an equation that describes how the density would go up, as hypothetically measured at different points in the edge.).
3. The bubble would have to be pretty big, bigger than the time it takes light to cross the entire part of the universe we can see. Since we estimate the universe is about 12 Billion years old, the edges of the bubble must be more than that number of light years away from our POV. But, we don't have to be equally near all edges.
      (We could still possibly see some effects from what is now farther away, because we can observe things such as the cosmic microwave background, that preserve data from the very early times when things were much closer together. We could also see the indirect effects of gravity on things we can see directly in the visible, Gamma or UV ranges).
4. We would have to be near enough to an edge in at least one direction that we could see the effects of those hypothetical average density regions that lie farther than 12 Billion light years away. That way, we may never be able to see them directly, but we can infer them from the parts we can see, so this becomes testable. So if the bubble is much bigger than 24 billion light years across, we must not be too near the center. The bigger the bubble is, the farther out from the center we would have to be to detect something, but that's still a pretty general requirement that we be somewhere in a pretty big volume, not really something improbable or requiring a particularly privledged viewpoint. Our view would be unusual, but not unique.
5. Near enough in point 4 depends on how swiftly the edge of the bubble changes to a more average density, and just what the average is, among other factors. Again, actually coming up with some more specific numbers is what will happen if this hypothesis gets developed into a more established theory. The researchers will calculate some combinations of overall size, rate of change at the edges, and density for the larger universe, and see if there are combinations that predict something we can observe to test them, while throwing out combinations that lead to conclusions contrary to what we can observe. Better yet, a lot of our existing observations can be used to swiftly develop this hypothesis - this is much more testable right now than, say, string theory.

Re:Being special

[ksd1337]

I think that 5-year olds got mod points today. Seriously mods, get a sense of humor. Slashdot isn't supposed to be politically correct or anything like that.

Re:Being special

[ksd1337]

Nah, you meant to say Jack Thompson. The vacuum between his ears sucked in all the copies of Duke Nukem Forever, and we can't get them out now.

Re:Being special

[mshannon78660]

Or more appropriately: If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?" - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re:Being special

[Anonymous Monkey]

Rassilon? Omega? Or are you The Other?

Re:Being special

[pla]

So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

Yes. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe looked for (and found!) exactly that.

Now, exactly what the WMAP's findings mean... Well, physicists and cosmologists will probably argue about that for the next century. But as a scientifically-literate non-expert, I would say that an anisotropic CMB seems consistent with (though certainly doesn't require) the "bubble" theory mentioned in TFA.

Re:Being special

[lymond01]

But what I find hard to believe is that we are in the exact center of such a region.

Heretic! Thou shalt be forced to quaff hemlock. All know that Earth is the center, and the Church is the center of Earth!

Re:Being special

[IndustrialComplex]

So why is it hard to believe that our planet exists in conditions that have incredibly low odds? The universe is not only more vast than anyone can imagine, it's also been around for over 13 billion years! For all you know, these "special conditions" you complain about could have happened a million times by now.

It isn't hard to imagine that at all. Since we don't have a good set of data to determine the probability of sentient life, we can't really come up with much justification on its probability. What if the likelyhood of a form of sentient lifeform developing in the universe is only 1 every billion years? It could be 1 billion every 1 billion years, or 1 trillion every billion years. We simply don't know that yet. It is quite possible that Earth is the only planet in the entire universe that has developed sentient life. It is also possible, that every third planet in the universe has developed sentient life (And we just can't tell).

It all depends on how 'special' those special conditions are. Other than our own innate dislike for probabilities that aren't measured in integers on 'x in a million chance' scale, there is no reason to assume that the probability is anything other that somewhere between 1:1 or 1:infinity. (I probably rambled on there for a bit). It is my personal opinion, that life is exceptionally rare, even at an intergallactic scale. I base that opinion on the very unlikely circumstances that must occur without interference in order for sentient life (as we know/define it) to develop.

It doesn't imply that we are special. The only thing we can know for certain is that we are.

In an infinite number of trials, and an infinite number of universes, there would exist a universe where the braziilion to one odds that only one form of sentient life would develop, would exist.

Re:Being special

[void*]

We're not necessarily in the exact center of any region other than the region defined by our light horizon.

AFAICT, our light horizon would have to either intersect with or be very, very close to a boundary of the bubble for us to be able to see different properties in some direction. If the bubble is sufficiently larger than our visible universe, and our light horizon is entirely contained within the bubble, we could be randomly off-center inside the bubble (compared to the geometry of the bubble) and still not be able to currently see space with different properties.

Re:Being special

[Silicon Jedi]

Is the reverse infinitely better? The earth cannot be special, and any evidence to the contrary must be explained away with a more complex theory.

Re:Being special

[lymond01]

Think of the rest of the universe -- the stars, quasars, galaxies, planets -- similar to a large energy source, like a giant lightbulb that takes a very, very long time to screw in.

That's Earth's job. Hardly "complex"? Now, if you'd like me to explain the "water is wet" thing, just shoot me a reply...

Re:Being special

[f()rK()_Bomb]

The observable universe is actually more like 96billion light years across, its a common mis-conception that because its 13.7 billions years old, its 27billion light years wide. This would b true if space was flat, but on cosmological scales, its highly curved.

The lower bound on the size of the universe, based on the CMBR is 78billion light years, any smaller, and then light would have circumnavigated it since the big bang, and we would see multiple images in the CMBR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

Re:Being special

[Khashishi]

It depends how big the bubble is. Any sufficiently large bubble looks uniform to us. The bubble could be larger than our observable universe. The Earth is flat.

Re:Being special

[SpaceLifeForm]

If you can get far enough way from your universe, the questions may become answerable. But since you are part of your universe, you can not observe it from outside.

Re:Being special

[The Mighty Buzzard]

It wouldn't surprise me at all. One-in-a-million chances crop up nine times out of ten.

Re:Being special

[2names]

"But since you are part of your universe, you can not observe it from outside."

Sure, *I* can't, but that does not eliminate the possibility that at some point some being of some sort would not be able to accomplish this. Unless you philosophically define "your universe" as anything you can observe, which would make all theories regarding multiple dimensions or universes moot. Wow, I think I've just gone cross-eyed.

Re:Being special

[dcollins]

"If you get far enough away from this universe, and I'm talking 'Douglas Adams' far, this universe would appear to be perfectly uniform."

That's a pretty bold claim. Other options could include (a) it's chaotic and has detail at all scales, (b) there's always more stuff but it has measure zero (countable vs. uncountble infinite sets), etc.

Re:Being special

[dbrutus]

And for all you know, these "special conditions" are statistically improbable for a universe 13 trillion years old. Somewhere between the two probabilities, it's time to start putting away faith in random unguided chance.

So, what's the actual probability?

We all collectively haven't a fucking clue which is why definitive statements of the "God is dead" variety have always been unscientific.

Re:Being special

[DrWho520]

If we were in an unusually sparse area of the universe, then things could look farther away than they really are and there would be no need to rely on dark energy as an explanation for certain astronomical observations.

What does Occam's Razor slice through first, that we live at the exact center of a matter void or the existence of dark matter scattered throughout the universe? According to the article they are mutually exclusive to the point that observations are better explained by one than the other. Although, I am certain if we just add one more dimension to M-theory, everything will work out fine.

Re:Being special

[Eli Gottlieb]

Obviously the only man capable of such a cogent explanation of such difficult matters would, of course, be The Doctor.

Re:Being special

[jessemerriman]

Sounds a lot like Julian Barbour's The End Of Time.

Re:Being special

[khallow]

You are basing this claim on the assumption that the universe is expanding and that we would see multiple images in the CMBR, if the universe were smaller and had some nontrivial loop path in it (cannot be shrunk to a point). As I see it, it's an ill-defined statement. My view is that any spatial (light cones centered in the sheet, only cross the sheet at that point) cross-section of the universe yields an equally valid "length" of the universe. Equivalently, that means there is some sort of universal clock that tells time for everything in the universe. The simplest one is the light cone boundary of our past which is 27 billion ly across. The other extreme is the light cone boundary of our future, which may be infinite in extent. Anything else depends on our choice for a universal clock (assuming we can make such a choice).

Re:Being special

[jacquesm]

hehe, Insightful ? Hilarious, I think mods are confused today, THHGTTG is definitely *not* a textbook on cosmology.

Re:Being special

[RespekMyAthorati]

Somewhere between the two probabilities, it's time to start putting away faith in random unguided chance.

"Faith" and accepting "random unguided chance" are polar opposites.

Re:Being special

[AJNeufeld]

We don't even need to be close to average. In fact, we can be far off from average.

Case in point, we can be in a low-density bubble. If we were in a high-density bubble, and things appeared closer than they were, and consequently appear to be slowing down much faster, and we might conclude the universe is closed (and will end in a gnab-gib). Then this bubble theory is proposed and suggest we are in a high-density bubble, and objections would again be raised that we're in a special place.

So we can argue ... low density bubbles would be "special", and high density bubbles would be "special", and average density would (because being perfectly average is unlikely) be "special".

Is being near the center of a bubble "special"? If we weren't, we may have noticed a gross disparity in the distance -vs- rate of recession of galaxies in the various directions, and concluded we were off to the side of the big-bang explosion. Theories that eschew being in a special place wouldn't be as strong, since, as we wouldn't have appeared to be at the center of the big bang, we wouldn't have looked for another explanation for the appearance of being special ... that is, everywhere appears to be the center of the big bang.

So, just because we aren't at the center of the solar-system, and aren't near the center of our galaxy, doesn't mean we don't happen to be near the center of our bubble. In fact, it is worse for us, since it makes it harder for us to understand the universe.

Re:Being special

[Maelwryth]

Yip, especially if I am looking in the direction of the milky way. There does appear to be more stars in that direction.

Re:Being special

[antic]

Anyone else ever feel sad when thinking that they won't live for the centuries it may take humankind to find answers to such immense questions?

The scale of the universe (even as we know it) is almost incomprehensible. Most of us will be getting well on in age even by the time that there could be a manned mission to Mars. I don't want to seem ungrateful, but that's stepping foot on a nearby planet. Not visiting another solar system, another galaxy or anything like that. A nearby planet.

Maybe I'm just really impatient!

Re:Being special

[Petersson]

All know that Earth is the center, and the Church is the center of Earth!
Correct! On top of it, the Pope is center of the Church and Mr. Hankey (the Christmas poo) is in the center of Pope.

After that, center of Mr. Hankey can be described as pure crap, no matter how deeply do we look.

Re:Being special

[meringuoid]

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so". -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Actually, I think the reference was to Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. The White Queen, unimpressed at Alice's inability to believe impossible things, suggested that she had not had much practice: 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' Then she turned into a sheep.

Re:Being special

[mcgrew]

His Lewis Caroll quote was in my response to my HHGTG quote. The "impossible things" was also in Adams as well as Caroll, but that wasn't the quote I quoted.

Re:Being special

[kalirion]

The lower bound on the size of the universe, based on the CMBR is 78billion light years, any smaller, and then light would have circumnavigated it since the big bang, and we would see multiple images in the CMBR

Um, why would light need to "circumnavigate" anything? Is it in orbit about the universal core or something? Why can't it just keep going and going and going without coming back?

Re:Being special

[Artifakt]

I'm not sure if this should be called a result of curvature or a result of Guth style expansion, but yes, it's at least quite possible that the observable radius is much, much larger than it would be for a more Newtonian model, and highly probable it's at least a little larger. If I'd known that it was even possible to get over 3 times a more linear extrapolation while sticking to pretty well established physics, I would have adjusted what I wrote, but I still thought it was more like, say, 20 or 30% at most (damned pesky back of the envelope calculations), and the post was getting pretty complex already, so I simplified.
    The Wiki article is very interesting, and thanks for bringing it to my attention, but I thought there was still a lot more debate over whether the CMBR reflected only post inflationary era expansion or included enough primal photons from non-Einsteinian stretching of the metric frame (photons already in existence in the inflationary era) to skew the overall numbers. Anyway. I think I'll go with at least that lower bound figure of 78 billion in the future.

Re:Being special

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Ok, well circumnavigated is a bit of an odd term ill admit, but its to do with the fact that the visible universe was much smaller in the past, and space itself has expanded. When the light was emitted originally, the universe was only 40million light years across. The space has expanded to its current size.

baut forums info on this
ned wright info

Re:Being special

[dbrutus]

Accepting "random unguided chance" in the face of strong scientific evidence to the contrary is an act of faith. I'm maintaining that the true scientific attitude is not one that assumes intelligence or randomness but rather accepting that we don't know and not speculating too far ahead of the facts while claiming such speculations are scientific.

Re:Being special

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

Ok, I'll believe that there are regions of space that are more dense than others. I'll even believe that we are in one of them. ( This is no harder than believing in dark matter and dark energy, and it's before breakfast ) But what I find hard to believe is that we are in the exact center of such a region. So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

Yes, actually... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14814-galaxy-flow-hints-at-huge-masses-over-cosmic-horizon.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

So..

[Corpuscavernosa]

"If we lived in a very large under-density, then the space-time itself wouldn't be accelerating," said researcher Timothy Clifton of Oxford University in England. "It would just be that the observations, if interpreted in the usual way, would look like they were."

So... they're not then?

Bubble?

[Vagnaard]

I don't know about cosmic bubbles... But I know of an economic one who just busted.

... I hope it doesn't happen to our galactic bubble...

Just to be sure...

[nameendingwith]

Are they sure they aren't just looking at the reflection in the side mirror?

Occam's Razor?

[H0p313ss]

I'll apply Occam's Razor and ask which is more likely.

• Are we in an unusual zone so we get unusual results?
• Is there some unknown and mysterious matter that screws up our results?

Quite frankly I find both solutions rather silly, they sound a little too much like deus ex machina to me. I suspect the truth is still out there and when we understand it will change our view of the universe. It's happened before, it will happen again.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[zappepcs]

The trouble with using Occam's Razor here is that we are talking about how matter and energy interact over very long distances. The scale of it is larger than seems probable for choosing simplest answers. It seems agreed that something is distorting our measurement of how things are working, but what that is may be difficult to discern while remaining within it's distortion field.

If indeed we are in a matter/gas/dust free bubble of space, it would rule out dark matter as the 'cataract' in the eyes of our science. Dark matter doesn't seem to be explaining everything either. A classic case of 4 blind men and an elephant.

Of course, if those are not acceptable, we can go with the fact that we see what we do because that is how the FSM wants it to be. Either that or the aliens are creating this illusion so they can keep studying us.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[kisrael]

My favorite alternative is that we need someone to do to Einstein what Einstein did to Newton; that just like Newton's laws are near-perfect and beautiful at reasonable speeds, maybe there's something that happens at cosmically grand distances, masses, or propagation delays for Gravity that we're going to have to be awfully clever to ever hope to reliably detect.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy both felt like big hacks to me.

But, I am by no means a scientist, just an interest layman who hasn't done enough reading.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[philspear]

You say you'll apply Occam's razor, but then appear to reject both possibilities. I wasn't aware that Occam's razor said you could throw out any theories that sound a little too convenient.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[H0p313ss]

You say you'll apply Occam's razor, but then appear to reject both possibilities. I wasn't aware that Occam's razor said you could throw out any theories that sound a little too convenient.

"the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible"

Re:Occam's Razor?

[Timothy Brownawell]

I suspect the truth is still out there and when we understand it will change our view of the universe. It's happened before, it will happen again.

What makes this difficult is that while it's out there, we're stuck down here.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[pilgrim23]

Que Monty Python: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0S

Re:Occam's Razor?

[John Hasler]

> Are we in an unusual zone so we get unusual results?

If the universe is large enough there could be many such zones. If perhaps 10% of the mass in the universe is in such zones our being in one would not be particularly improbable.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[R2.0]

"My favorite alternative is that we need someone to do to Einstein what Einstein did to Newton; that just like Newton's laws are near-perfect and beautiful at reasonable speeds, maybe there's something that happens at cosmically grand distances, masses, or propagation delays for Gravity that we're going to have to be awfully clever to ever hope to reliably detect."

Screw that - the reason Einstein needs to go down can be summed up in one word:

Starships.
(and not the lameass rock band, either)

Re:Occam's Razor?

[mr_mischief]

The problem is that Occam's Razor does not allow for mamiing fewer assumptions than possible.

If what we think we know to be true does not explain something we observe, then either there must be something unknown as well or we must be wrong about what we think we know.

Your assumption is that what we think we know is wrong. The dark matter, dark energy, and the sparse bubble folks are all putting forward theories and trying to validate them through experiments.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[timmarhy]

you realize dark matter is simply the generic term applied to that missing mass we can't account for, not an actual explanation for it?

Re:Occam's Razor?

[philspear]

I thought it was for deciding between two or more competing theories. I didn't think it could be used to reject all theories. If you have two theories, one makes two assumptions, one makes just one, it's more likely to be the one that just makes one. While both may be wrong, you can't use Occam's razor to throw BOTH of them out.

Furthermore, you don't use it at all, or if you did, you forgot to tell us the outcome. You actually just say both sound like deus ex machina, are both silly, and we're not right yet. Didn't even mention any underlying assumptions. That's not Occam's razor, or even rational argumentation. You just have a gut instinct that they're both wrong.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[H0p313ss]

You make very valid points and I agree with many of them. However, my point here is that there are two theories, one new, one less new, that IMHO make too many assumptions. The simpler solution is that we really don't understand the problem yet and that there is a more elegant solution waiting to be found. This is the unstated third choice. I should have made that more clear... I'm blaming the cold medication.

Is this a proper application of Occam's Razor? I'm really not sure I'd care. I'm not sure that even Occam would care...

Re:Occam's Razor?

[DynaSoar]

I'll apply Occam's Razor and ask which is more likely.

• Are we in an unusual zone so we get unusual results?
• Is there some unknown and mysterious matter that screws up our results?

Quite frankly I find both solutions rather silly, they sound a little too much like deus ex machina to me. I suspect the truth is still out there and when we understand it will change our view of the universe. It's happened before, it will happen again.

Two thoughts come to mind:

1. Deus ex machina is a term that can be applied to anything which conforms to Clark's Law ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). Any spacetime/matter phenomenon that can be understood has the possibility of being controlled and therefore to become a technology, therefore Clarke's Law can be applied.

2. "Willam of Ockham had a beard," which is to say he was not an authority in the field and the rule associated with his name fails. It is sufficiently common that data proves a more complex hypothesis true that reality invalidates use of this axiom even in pre-result situations. Acceptance of parsimony (same concept as the razor) without cause is mental laziness as well as the logical error of acceptance of (perceived) authority. Nature doesn't care about how easily our tiny meat computers can process a given data set.

Those said, I may disagree with your supporting statements, but I agree wholeheartedly with your assertion that "the truth is still out there". Call it the first corollary (inclusion of "still") to Mulder's Law.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[Abcd1234]

"Dark Matter and Dark Energy both felt like big hacks to me."

To you, perhaps. Problem is, at least in the case of Dark Matter, it's real and we've observed it.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[philspear]

Is this a proper application of Occam's Razor? I'm really not sure I'd care. I'm not sure that even Occam would care...

Especially not given some of the more flagrant misapplications of his razor. Like creationists saying "God did it" is simpler than evolutionary theory and therefore right by occam's razor. I think he would die if he were alive and heard that.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[H0p313ss]

Like creationists saying "God did it" is simpler than evolutionary theory and therefore right by occam's razor. I think he would die if he were alive and heard that.

From what I've read he'd be more likely to take the scientists down the pub for a round and have a good laugh.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[amRadioHed]

If we are to apply Occam's Razor, then the first option would be the most parsimonious option. However since we are already certain that we lack any real understanding of most of the matter in the universe, assuming there is more matter out there that we don't understand is not much of a stretch.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[H0p313ss]

Well if nothing else this somewhat offhand remark had provoked much discussion... Barkeep, a round for my friends.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[Zeynel]

We are neither in an unusual zone or usual zone. There are no such places. Cosmology which is the banana republic of physics make these things up.

http://bigbang1.wordpress.com/

Re:Occam's Razor?

[void*]

Are we in an unusual zone so we get unusual results?

This sort of presumes that a region of less density is 'unusual' - and since we can't see what might be outside, we really have no way of determining whether it's usual or unusual.

For all we know (and, afaik there would be no way to test this, other than waiting for our light horizon to get big enough - by which time humanity might no longer exist to be looking), the universe is very, very, very many times the size of our light horizon, and there are plenty of 'less dense' regions inside it. In such a big space, you might have, when picking a random point, pretty good odds that point would land in a 'matter is pretty sparse' region.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[kesuki]

well, the best solution is to keep watching as much light from around the universe for as long as possible, until enough data is collected that we know every single possible bit of data about what's happening in as much of the universe as we can observe.

computers and advanced optics are making incredible views of the universe that once would have required a giant floating space telescope. only here on earth, as this technology matures we'll have so much more observational data available which will make it a lit easier to decide what is happening with light.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[cmat]

Dark matter and dark energy are as much "hacks" as "gravity" is; i.e. they all are names for phenomena that we observe in the universe except that we have some sort of an explanation for gravity, whereas the former two we have no (at least known to me) current consistent theories that can explain why there is unobserved extra mass in the observable universe and what is causing the observable universe to expand (accelerating the expansion). Note that both of these properties of the universe have been measured (observed).

Re:Occam's Razor?

[Spinalcold]

Our current theories of gravity and attraction break down on not only the cosmic scale but the subatomic scale as well. It would be great to have someone like Einstein or Newton click on a light bulb. However, I think in these days of shared information it will probably be a lot of small discoveries that will tell the tale.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[Jorgandar]

But it makes the underlying assumption that the matter exists. It feels as hackish as the "aether".

Re:Occam's Razor?

[RightSaidFred99]

False. A lot of people propose it as some magic "something" with super-fancy-special properties. I always thought that was ridiculous, but even scientists sometimes make it out to be something like Fairy Dust.

Re:Occam's Razor?

[DrWho520]

Well, no more a hack than adding an arbitrary number of dimensions to the universe until all your equations work out. Oh, wait...

Re:Occam's Razor?

[Reziac]

So, dark matter is stuff that isn't there??

Reminds me of this:

As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away!!

We known this for a long time

[Iowan41]

At least as far as gas and dust are concerned. The Standard Model explanation is that a 'nearby' star (the pulsar Geminga) went supernova a good long time ago, and blasted a large bubble (300 ly across) of relatively gas and dust free space, called 'the Local Bubble', and our solar system is well within this bubble. The relationship between that and what is being discussed I do not know, for details haven't been provided even on such things as scale. Do a search on 'Local Bubble' and you will find a great deal of information about this.

Re:We known this for a long time

[fish_in_the_c]

hey, couldn't the bubble of hot gas itself account for some kind of lensing effect?

Re:We known this for a long time

[frankie]

To have a relative void large enough that it would distort observations by the right amount, I think you'd have to be talking about the scale of our galactic cluster (millions of LY), if not larger.

Re:We known this for a long time

[John Hasler]

Much larger. Much, much larger. Much, much, much larger.

Re:We known this for a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

This is different bubble. The Local Bubble is rather local (tens of parsecs across) and we can easily see gas outside of it. The bubble in the story could be bigger than the visible Universe (gigaparsecs across) and thus can be fundamentally untestable. Plus, null results (that we can't see outside of this gigantic bubble) make it even more unlikely because over- and underdensities are progressively rarer as they get bigger.

Re:We known this for a long time

[comet63]

In order for us to be in a void that affected how distant supernovas appear, it seems the void would need to be large enough to encompass many galaxies. Otherwise, we would see all supernovas as uniformly more distant. If the gravitational effect is primarily an edge effect, then we do not need to be in the exact center to see a uniform effect. However, if someone is looking for the effect, it seems that they should be able to find where the boundary is with enough data.

Re:We known this for a long time

[John Hasler]

> ...the void would need to be large enough to encompass many galaxies.

Yes. Many clusters of galaxies, in fact.

Large Hadron Collider can help us

[ilovesymbian]

Maybe the Large Hadron Collider can help us with this. The scientists can try to recreate this as well - after they fix the magnet issues.

That's the result of the last LHC

[Anonymous Coward]

See, that didn't turn out so badly.

Paraphrasing the Monks of Teshuva...

[Spad]

Oh, how conveniant, a theory about the universe that doesn't involve explaining dark energy. Get back to work!

Say what?

[Yvan256]

Somebody's been watching this episode way too many times.

Re:Say what?

[tibman]

One of my Favorite episodes from all the Star Treks. Best part was that the time bubble around the planet prevented the inhabitants from communicating or interacting with the galaxy, their SETI program was ultimately a failure and they didn't understand why.

Re:Say what?

[Yvan256]

One of my favorite is the one with the time ship that kept re-writing the history of a few sectors but Voyager got caught in the middle. Can't remember the season/episode but the captain of the time ship was the guy who played Red Foreman on That 70's Show.

Re:Say what?

[mcgrew]

Or this one or this one.

Re:Say what?

[ChienAndalu]

Or this one?

Eureka!

[mfh]

Someone has finally explained Spooky Action... we are trapped in a void of low-density matter! Like Newton, on that fateful day, when the obvious idea of gravity suddenly cracked his noggin -- I think this is an obvious explanation to pretty much everything that has been perplexing science geeks for so long. Like Newton, we must make apple pie out of this painful discovery!

Now the important question is, what can we do with this new knowledge other than escape the bubble to realize our true freedom? Not much. Escape is the only answer! Oh and when we escape, it's important to only slightly crack the bubble, not shatter it, or the universe will collapse. (FYI)

You mean like...

[clonan]

a 3 million sun heavy black hole...like the one in the center of many galaxies including our own?

Re:You mean like...

[Quietust]

There would definitely be significant time dilation in close proximity to said black holes, but beyond even a fraction of a light year it would become negligible due to the rate at which gravitational force weakens.

Re:You mean like...

[caramelcarrot]

The gravity from a 3 million sun black hole is no different to 3 million suns, and given that a galaxy will contain billions of such suns - no, that's not sufficient.

Re:You mean like...

[ksd1337]

They will only be the same if those three million suns attract each other close enough to appear as a single mass.

Re:You mean like...

[postbigbang]

No Swarchild radii around here.....

Re:You mean like...

[MBGMorden]

From outside the system (and to a large degree on the edges of it) they do appear as a single mass though. The entirety of the Milky Way is exhibiting the same pull on Andromeda being spread out as it would if the whole galaxy were condensed down to a single point with the same center of mass - that's because even though that would make one heck of a black hole, Andromeda would still be beyond it's event horizon (for the time being anyways) and as such the fact that it's a black hole would be irrelevant.

Black holes really only behave strangely within their event horizon. Beyond that, they interact just like any other body of that mass would (which is why there are lots of stars happily orbiting pretty close to our galaxy's center). And on a galactic scale, the black hole in the center of the galaxy is only a tiny fraction of it's total mass.

Re:You mean like...

[Lumpy]

incorrect. The gravity from a 3 million sun black hole has a deeper center than if you took 3 million suns and stacked them in a sphere just touching each other.

The gravity well of the two is quite different. one will be huge because the gravity mass is spread out at last a few hundred thousand suns wide in all directions and the other has a gravity mass that is far FAR smaller. This making the sides of the gravity well steeper and causing a very defined terminator line compared to that of the giant ball of suns.

Re:You mean like...

[Colonel Korn]

It (be it a 3 million or 3 billion solar mass black hole) has an effect, one that you can easily calculate. The time dilation is almost nonexistent when you go more than a fraction of a percent of a galactic radius away from the black hole.

Re:You mean like...

[caramelcarrot]

Considering the point was related to the effects of such a black hole on the outskirts on the galaxy, then yes, the oddities of the gravitational field of the black hole are on a massively smaller scale and totally irrelevant. Your point that the field isn't exactly the same is true, but pedantic and irrelevant to the discussion.

Re:You mean like...

[clonan]

But then you surround it by a sphere of an additional few million stars and you have a very significant mass (5-10% of the galaxy) that would slow down time in the area.

Then from our perspective, well outside the effect, the stars next to the core will appear to travel slower than they should which would make the fringe stars appear to move faster than they should in comparison.

Re:You mean like...

[Goaway]

that would slow down time in the area.

The point is, no, it would not, not to the degree you are thinking of. Look, we do know what a galaxy is! We know there's a lot of mass in there! And it's easy to calculate the time dilation it causes, and it is negligable.

Re:You mean like...

[tenco]

They will only be the same if those three million suns appear close enough.

Re:You mean like...

[KDR_11k]

It keeps the solar system in a very large orbit but the Earth orbits way, WAY closer to the sun and the moon even closer to the Earth, if the ability to keep something in an orbit was an indicator we'd have to have some serious dilation simply because we're on this planet.

Re:You mean like...

[Tubal-Cain]

The Republicans now have a torture advocate and a creationist Nazi-sympathizing theocrat on their ticket for November.

[citation needed]

Are we in some kind a time loop / time DILATION...

[Joe The Dragon]

Are we in some kind a time loop / time DILATION FIELD. If we are we should use the ZPM powering it for other stuff.

Re:Bubble?

[explosivejared]

Dude, don't worry God will just be there with a 700 quadrillion ton slab of dark matter to bail... I mean patch the hole right up.

The obvious answer is...

[fahrbot-bot]

*We* are the people of Krikkit and have been re-sealed in a Slo-Time envelope.

[ Hactar is God! ]

I concur and have the following questions.

[scubamage]

I like this theory. My questions are, if our known universe is a bubble/globule of matter floating in a larger void...

1. Where are the other globules?
2. What happens if we hit one?
3. Where did the globules originate?
4. Is that larger void a super-large globule itself inside a still larger void? If so, see questions 1-4.

Re:I concur and have the following questions.

[SBacks]

Where are the other globules?

Outside our light cone.

What happens if we hit one?

We won't. They're too far away and moving much too quickly for us to ever catch them, even if we were to travel at the speed of light.

Where did the globules originate?

The exact cause of this phenomena is still unclear and, in fact, may never be clear. The idea is that a rapidly expanding universe would have laws of physics unrelated to our current ones, so our understanding can only go back so far. (We're talking about the first few microseconds after the big bang)

Is that larger void a super-large globule itself inside a still larger void? If so, see questions 1-4.

Maybe?

Re:I concur and have the following questions.

[John Hasler]

You've got it exactly backwards.

Re:I concur and have the following questions.

[Captain Hook]

My understanding of the article is that the bubble isn't the universe (the article wasn't very clear on that part), it's a bubble of lower density material within the universe which we are in and we have assumed the local conditions as we see if are roughly constant throughout the universe.

Our calculation for distance is based on Supernova light (which is assumed to be roughly the same brilliance at source in all cases) being absorbed by matter which on a universal scale is roughly uniform and hence the less light receieved from a Supernova the further away it must be.

If however we are in a bubble of lower density material, the light absorption outside that bubble would be higher per unit of distance than we have calculated and hence Supernova are closer than we believe and as a result the universe is not as large as we believe. So there are no other globules to crash into

It does pose the the following questions to me though.

1. Why are we in the middle of a low density bubble
2. are there others?
3. wouldn't the effect be observable through gravitional effects on other galaxies - unless the effect is smaller than that I suppose

Also, there seems to be a lot of assumes in there.

Re:I concur and have the following questions.

[trongey]

Where are the other globules?

Oh, you know. Just here and there.

What happens if we hit one?

Big Bang?

Where did the globules originate?

Existentialism.

Is that larger void a super-large globule itself inside a still larger void?

Sure.

Re:I concur and have the following questions.

[GaryPatterson]

>> Where did the globules originate?

> Existentialism.

Damn philosophers! I knew they'd cause problems, but I never dreamt of the scale.

Re:Bubble?

[philspear]

No way man, we need to pop it so it doesn't get worse! Also, that's the perfect time to buy buy buy!

The anthropic cop-out

[tepples]

Except if such specialties make our sentient life possible (or much more probable).

That's called the anthropic principle, and Wikipedia's article cites criticisms by several philosophers of science who call it a cop-out.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Anonymous Coward]

It's perfectly reasonable to think that, if sentient life requires unusual circumstances, then we will find ourselves in unusual circumstances.

It's already the case that we're in a rather odd location. Pick a random point in the universe. Does it happen to be on the surface of a planet? Of course not.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[caramelcarrot]

It's not really a cop out if you can actually give the statistically biasing action. It is a bit of a cop out to just say "specialties make our sentient life possible (or much more probable)" but if you can quantify this, then it would be possible to quantify the experimental bias. The anthropic principle is a lot more rigorous than people give it credit for. Of course rare events are always possible, too.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[knavel]

Nonetheless, it's a somewhat plausible theory that warrants investigation before being disregarded completely.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[corbettw]

I've always preferred the misanthropic principle, myself. "We see the universe the way we do because people are idiots."

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Anonymous Coward]

Philosophy is just jealous of its little brother science that went on to bigger and better things while philosophy is still trying to shake off post-modernism.

Science = Planes, trains and automobiles, semiconductors and superconductors, quantum mechanics and nuclear fusion...

Philosophy = Thousands of years spinning its wheels and still no consensus of what truth is and still dealing with misleading concepts like "qualia".

I think many philosophers are bitter because they aren't really the center of attention anymore. Philosophers these days seem more interested in pooh-poohing everyone else's lack of subtlety. Unfortunately, after people become so entrenched in technology, questioning the philosophical basis behind such technology seems absurd and reeks of solipsism.

Btw, I'm still waiting for someone to explain the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing nature.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

It's not really a cop out if you can actually give the statistically biasing action.

Since they can't actually give that (whatever it is) as our universe and everything in it is only a single data point, it's a cop out.

The anthropic principle is a lot more rigorous than people give it credit for.

No, in fact, it's just the opposite. The anthropic principle is far, far, far less rigorous than our soceity is collectively giving it credit for. It represents an objective low point in the progress of science over the last 300 years. I am not being hyperbolic. Never since the days of Newton, or even before then, have so many "eminent" scientists seriously proposed so much philosophical arguments and circular logic as valid science.

The reality is that fundamental (I say fundamental mind) theoretical physics has made absolutely no progress whatsoever in the last 40 years!! Our theoretical scientific community is collectively demoralized, burned out and beaten. Rather than admit this, they have resorted to fantastic theory after fantastic theory in an effort to maintain their position as the leaders of societies great leap forward.

That the last ~20 years of this period has coincided with the rise of religious and fundamentalist thinking, is no coincidence. Society has sensed that fundamental science has made no progress, and people have collectively turned back to old ideologies, religions and subjective schools of thought. At this point, some scientists have simply stopped trying and have joined them.

I was skeptical of a great deal of modern theories the first time I ever read a modern popular science book. Initially, I was prepared to give the theoretical scientific community the benefit of the doubt on some of its more dubious proposals. But as time has gone by, and line after line has been crossed, I for one have had enough.

The anthropic principle was not, is not and never will be a scientific theory. Is is a pseudo-spiritual argument born from the minds of people raised in an Abrahamic culture, who after countless personal failures have lost confidence in their scientific methods, and who now simply have reverted to the worldview inculcated in them all those years ago. There is far more Genesis than analysis in their arguments.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[SirLanse]

The cop-out is because we don't have several other universes to test it against.
We can't re-run the experiment of the big bang.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[moderatorrater]

Statistics require multiple data points. Statistics based on one data point are called "anecdotes" or, more simply, "bullshit". We have investigated one planet very well, one planet very little, and a handful of others we've looked at from a very long distance. We can't rule out the existence of life in our own solar system, and there are billions of those in just our galaxy. Statistically speaking, there's no way in hell that we can even begin to do the math required to figure out if the anthropic principle is skewing our understanding of the universe. It's like saying that the cosmological constants are finely tuned to life, and that if they changed a little bit life would be impossible. BULLSHIT. We know for a fact that life on earth has found a way to live almost anywhere on the planet, be it the arctic or just outside volcanic vents. For all we know, life has found a way to evolve in any circumstance, be it the matter orbiting black holes or in universes where light travels at 1 meter/hr and gravity is many times weaker than it is here. The anthropic principle is a way to look at the vastness of the knowledge that we don't have about the universe and make sense of it by saying, "Well, I think we're special, don't you guys?" "Oh yeah, my mom calls me special all the time." "What do you say we turn that into a theory and call it a night?"

The only thing the anthropic principle tells us is that we can't use ourselves as a valid data point. It doesn't tell us anything more or less than that.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[TheGeniusIsOut]

Which would be the second quarter of next yer...

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Ultimate Statement]

The unusual circumstance is that we are indeed in a time-bubble. We live in an alternate time, and it is coming to an end (Jesus explained it as the end of TIMES, he new there was more than one time).
Think about this situation as an spiral moving upward (the real time) and another one, which finally blends in (the alternate time), and I guess you know when that date is. It pleases me how science confirms this information, and others, time after time.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[thasmudyan]

I may be wrong, but isn't the term anthropic principle essentially the opposite of what you're describing? IMHO the anthropic principle just states that there is nothing special about our particular environment beyond the fact that we happen to live here and there is not much else that we have experience with?

Sadly, religious nutjobs have completely turned around what was once an important scientific reasoning tool that existed to make sure our observations of nature are not biased towards human existence.

The anthropic principle is the mother of all cause-and-effect observations. The obvious cause here is that we live in a certain environment with a certain set of rules and random environmental factors, as a consequence of this, we have turned out the way we are now - including our way of interpreting the world around us. Now religious people, for whatever fucked-up reason, believe our environment was actually created by someone just for us to live in, and that the purpose of our universe is to support human life - thereby turning common sense on its head by confusing cause and effect.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Hucko]

As one of the fundamentalists, I believe you are mistaken. The Anthropic principle is the exact opposite of what you claim just as thasmudyan said...

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[oldhack]

Sounds like twisted tautology to me. Do we actually have enough information

1. to define "life" outside the ones on Earth
2. to specify how "unusual" our circumstances are, in cosmic scale

??

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Eli Gottlieb]

To combine the two topics, I can actually use religion to argue against the anthropic principle.

Suppose that we didn't evolve, and no Big Bang occurred. Instead, God created the Earth quite as described quite literally to His prophet Moshe (Moses) in the Sefer Breishit (Book of Genesis) at Mount Sinai.

We still turned out the same way today as if a Big Bang occurred and lots of physical constants were precisely right and we evolved.

In other words, my argument is this: the anthropic principle claims that we see the universe the way we see it because, if it were any different, we would not be here to see it. Let's turn this into a proper logical proposition:

NOT(physics and constants as we know them) -> NOT(human life as we know it)

The problem with the anthropic principle is that it simply never proves this implication. There is no proof that human life as we know it (or some other kind of sentient life that might hallucinate itself living our human lives) couldn't have come out of a universe with a totally different set of rules or constants. So the anthropic principle never actually explains anything, it just makes an unjustified assumption and proceeds to claim that the assumption explains our observations of the universe.

In summary, just because we observe a universe of nature X doesn't mean our existence depends on X.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[thasmudyan]

In summary, just because we observe a universe of nature X doesn't mean our existence depends on X.

You're right of course, and the reason the anthropic principle got trapped in this pretentious and totalitarian implication about what our existence seemingly depends on is, because it got mutilated by "spiritual" pseudo philosophers in an effort to make themselves seem relevant, when in fact those particular questions should have been directed towards biologists in the first place.

But to expand on the problem of logic and religion, because I believe you have hit a broader theme here: religion's job description is to defy logic and scientific understanding. I postulate that for each and every scientific theory conceivable, an unlimited number of unprovable twisted religious explanations can be conjured up. This works basically by defining supernatural influence as whatever areas are poorly understood by the people at the time. Whenever the horizon of scientific understanding is updated, religious people have the option of either rejecting the new findings or updating the nature of god to reflect the new border beyond which there be dragons. And you'll find both things happening in real societies as a reaction to scientific progress all the time.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Cassius Corodes]

The Vatican is years ahead on quantum theory research, but they are too modest to release it ahead of the scientists.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[syousef]

I've always preferred the misanthropic principle, myself. "We see the universe the way we do because people are idiots."

No more episodes of House for you young man!

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[Alsn]

Which is why GP wrote if.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[RespekMyAthorati]

No, in fact, it's just the opposite. The anthropic principle is far, far, far less rigorous than our soceity is collectively giving it credit for. It represents an objective low point in the progress of science over the last 300 years. I am not being hyperbolic. Never since the days of Newton, or even before then, have so many "eminent" scientists seriously proposed so much philosophical arguments and circular logic as valid science.

The Anthropic Principal is essentially equivalent to the phrase "shit happens".
In other words, if things hadn't worked out the way they did, we wouldn't be talking about it right now on /.
Which is true, although it doesn't really explain anything.

The reality is that fundamental (I say fundamental mind) theoretical physics has made absolutely no progress whatsoever in the last 40 years!! Our theoretical scientific community is collectively demoralized, burned out and beaten. Rather than admit this, they have resorted to fantastic theory after fantastic theory in an effort to maintain their position as the leaders of societies great leap forward.

You can't conclude that there has been no progress in theoretical science just because you don't understand it.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[RespekMyAthorati]

I'm still waiting for someone to explain the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing nature.

Math itself doesn't explain anything. By formulating and testing mathematical theories, we are "tuning" the math by systematically rejecting anything that leads to unverifiable results. What is left is the math that centuries of experiments have shown to be right (so far). It is this whittling down and paring of theories that leads to good models of nature. The math just reflects the current state of the process.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[oldhack]

"if sentient life requires unusual circumstances, then we will find ourselves in unusual circumstances."

This is a tautology. Equivalent to:

"If shit happens to you, you'll find shit happening."

The problem with the first tautology, though, is that the "if" part doesn't even make sense for the reasons I noted in previous post.

Re:The anthropic cop-out

[mdwh2]

Yes, clearly we can't trust the Wikipedia article, because an anonymous comment on a random web forum says so.

An observation and 2 question2

[mcgrew]

The question: if things only look farther away, does that make travel to other solar systems more likely? I mean, could that mean that, say, Alpha Centuri is less than the four light years away we think it is?

The second question may answer the first: how big is this bubble?

The observation: Further research will probably show this to be wrong (and I think it is), but AFAWK we are special in one way: we are the only planet in the universe that we know harbors life.

Re:An observation and 2 question2

[CrimsonAvenger]

The observation: Further research will probably show this to be wrong (and I think it is), but AFAWK we are special in one way: we are the only planet in the universe that we know harbors life.

Operational phrase being "that we know". Note that most other planets harbouring life can probably make the same assertion, with the same validity.

Given, of course, that there are other planets harbouring life. But I'd hate to have to bet against life being found pretty much everywhere.

Re:An observation and 2 question2

[SBacks]

The question: if things only look farther away, does that make travel to other solar systems more likely? I mean, could that mean that, say, Alpha Centuri is less than the four light years away we think it is?

There may be a slight effect at that short distance. However, we're talking about interglatic scale here. Its like saying "Mars may be closer than we think, so does that mean the cubical next to me may be closer as well"

The second question may answer the first: how big is this bubble?

BIG. Huge. Gigantic. Orders of magnitude larger than you can imagine.

Re:An observation and 2 question2

[mcgrew]

Mars may be closer than we think, so does that mean the cubical next to me may be closer as well

Actually the cubicle would be closer, although the distance might be so small as to be immeasurable.

BIG. Huge. Gigantic. Orders of magnitude larger than you can imagine.

That describes the distance to the second nearest star. Probably the nearest (i.e., the sun)

Re:An observation and 2 question2

[Zenaku]

BIG. Huge. Gigantic. Orders of magnitude larger than you can imagine.

Is its diameter larger than how far it is down the street to the chemist?

I thought . . .

[PapaSmurph]

we live in an airport locker, like in MIIB.

Excuses, excuses...

[pandrijeczko]

Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of space-time that is particularly void of matter. ...said George Brussard of games developer 3D Realms when asked about the possible release dates for Duke Nukem Forever.

Earth inside a black hole

[MobyDisk]

I thought Slashdot had an article years ago about the possibility that our galaxy is actually inside a black hole. The cosmic microwave background radiation would then be even, produced by Hawking radiation. I forget the rest. Anybody know where that article is?

Re:Earth inside a black hole

[ZarathustraDK]

Funny, I had the same theory (really, no kidding).
The explanation is simple, cuts out unneeded theories (dark matter), explains why the universe is black, and opens up the possibility for "rebirth" of the universe through inversion while keeping the universe expanding at an accelerated rate through the accumulation of matter in the black hole(s).

Of course the universe would have to have a shape that allows for this. I propose a hypersaddle-shape with opposite corners connected in black holes (gotta have symmetry ;) ).

Re:Earth inside a black hole

[earlymon]

I don't recall the article, but Asimov's book of MANY years ago summed up that our universe could be itself a black hole based on the consistent size/mass ratio required.

http://www.amazon.com/Collapsing-Universe-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0091317703

How big

[4D6963]

Hold on, how big is that bubble? Like 1,000 ly wide, or like billions of ly? If it's the former then I guess the entropic thing applies, i.e. it's unlikely such a small zone would be special, if it's the latter then I guess it's more likely to be a correct observation but on the other hand how would we know it doesn't just have to do with how long ago the stuff we observe out of the bubble happened?

Re:How big

[pandrijeczko]

Erm... yes, but this amplifier goes up to 11.

3 questions

[globaljustin]

I find this theory to be kind of specious myself...IANAA...so maybe some of you could help me out

space-time around us would be different than it is outside, because matter warps space-time. Light travelling from supernovae outside our bubble would appear dimmer, because the light would diverge more than we would expect once it got inside our void.

1. Light is affected by gravity...that's one way we find extra-solar planets...but how could it be affected in a way that it would make supernovae appear have less magnitude? Wouldn't it (the light) just wobble?

2. Also, how abnormally less-dense is our area (I hate that they call it a bubble...pocket maybe)? It seems that in order to be significant, it would have to be so abnormal that we would have noticed by now...

3. Lastly, these supernovae arent' the only thing we have that tells us the universe is expanding with acceleration, right? don't observations of the cosmic microwave background also lead us to conclude that the universe is accelerating and expanding? how could both these ideas be correct?

Re:3 questions

[mr_shifty]

Actually, light itself isn't directly affected by gravity; that's a misconception that's always bothered me. In order to be affected by gravity, there has to be mass, and photons are energy, not matter. The space through which light travels is directly affected by gravity, however, which is what causes the gravitational "lensing" effect one observes near stars, black holes, and other massive objects.

Contrary to popular belief, black holes don't have "gravity so intense even light cannot escape", as so often is thrown around. Instead, it is more correct to assert that black holes have gravity so intense that the space through which light travels is warped back in on itself... which prevents light from escaping.

As far as light knows, it's always traveling in a straight line. :-)

What does Samantha Carter say about it?

[DJCouchyCouch]

Otherwise, I don't believe it.

Okay, I'll go with Mackay in a pinch.

Year of Hell

[vecctor]

This is the two-parter you mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_Hell :)

Dark Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitol Hill region of space. That is one ultra dense region of hot air

Actually, that particular region of the universe consists of dark matter. It's an enormous pile of it, brown in color, steaming and giving off fetid odors that would knock a buzzard off a shit-wagon*. The region is full of it and amazingly, endless numbers of primitive little life-forms actually burrow themselves into it and suck nutrition from it.

* We miss you, George.

"Average" is Not Normal

[Tablizer]

But the chance of being in a spot that is a perfect representation of the average is rather small. The chances of being in a spot of above-average density and a spot with below-average density may even be greater than being in an average spot. This is of course unless the spot is significantly below or above he average.

It's also possible that intelligence life is more likely to evolve in sparser areas. Dense areas may offer too much chaos for advanced life (multicellular) to take hold. Some speculate that dense space is the best place for life to get started but sparser areas are better for the long-term evolution needed for intelligent life. A dense area of space is more likely to be blasted by a central-galaxy black-hole jet or a supernova magnetically-focused gamma beam; which would fry all the mammals.

Re:"Average" is Not Normal

[Tablizer]

intelligent life has several routes to evolution. our own species benefited greatly from extinction level effects, that wiped out less capable species

Perhaps, but too many such events may keep "resetting the clock" and starting things from scratch again. For example, mammals appeared to be somewhat close to extinction at a few points in history. There were very few species during certain times such that a stressing event could have ended mammals for good. Humans also had at least one bottleneck point according to some genetic studies.
     

Re:"Average" is Not Normal

[xouumalperxe]

it's really quite interesting. i also often times wonder why elephants have such large brains. yeah they're the largest land animal, but what could they possibly be doing with those brains?

Size doesn't matter nearly as much as connectedness does -- which is why humans with abnormally large heads aren't necessarily smarter than people with average skull sizes.

Re:"Average" is Not Normal

[xouumalperxe]

which is why humans with abnormally large heads aren't necessarily smarter than people with average skull sizes.

They just think they are! (Sorry, just had to reply to myself to complete the post)

Management

[JayAitch]

Always thought it was upper management that lived in a bubble.

Re:Bubble?

[Tablizer]

I don't know about cosmic bubbles... But I know of an economic one who just busted. ... I hope it doesn't happen to our galactic bubble...

If we could only stop the Galactic Deregulators.
           

Re:Bubble?

[Praedon]

Why does the first thing that comes to mind after reading just this headline, make me think of that one episode on Star Trek Voyager, when Voyager got caught in that planets atmosphere/space-time bubble and time on that planet was accelerating at like almost a week for every second on voyager... and then the civilization finally learned space travel and went up to voyager, and learned about all the time acceleration... Kinda screwed up if this is all true. :P

I've seen it

[MosesJones]

So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

I was just talking about this the other day when I was in B'tslashdoaut which is in a galaxy far far away. Oddly everything there looks like the universe was created out of cheese but that could be because of the unusual configurations of solid matter with grey holes (like black holes but not as bad) all over the place.

Maybe it's a warp bubble...

[UseTheSource]

Dr. Crusher: "If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"

...

Dr. Crusher: "Here's a question you shouldn't be able to answer: Computer, what is the nature of the universe?"
Computer: "The universe is a spheroid region seven hundred and five meters in diameter."

Re:Maybe it's a warp bubble...

[HalifaxRage]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought immediately of a static warp shell... where is the traveller when you need him?

Big bang

[jhines]

So the big bang was a fart by the great maker. Glad we can't smell on a cosmic scale.

Sparse bubble more special than "normal" matter?

[Keramos]

As mentioned in the article:

One problem with the void idea, though, is that it negates a principle that has reined in astronomy for more than 450 years: namely, that our place in the universe isn't special. ... "This idea that we live in a void would really be a statement that we live in a special place,"

Hold on a second...

Current thinking is that 74 percent of the universe could be made up of this exotic dark energy, with another 21 percent being dark matter, and normal matter comprising the remaining 5 percent.

So, being part of the 5 percent of "normal" matter isn't living in a "special place"?

intermingling of rock bands sketches...

[mr_mischief]

Your amp may go to 11, but my fever can still only be cured by more cowbell!

Obvious Answer

[gbutler69]

It's globules all the way down!

Can we rule out the effect of our heliosphere?

[Progman3K]

I mean it certainly forms a bubble around us.

Disclaimer

[SkunkWorx]

Objects In Universe Are Closer Than They Appear

Cosmic Bubble?

[actionbastard]

You know that Dark Matter everybody is talking about? It's a pint of Guiness that our 'Universe' bubble is floating around in. I just hope we bump into some of those bubbles filled with chicks. Then the party can really start.

Confirms very old news

[earlymon]

What? So we live in Sector zed zed nine plural zed alpha. Yeah, big news.

We don't

[Timosch]

We live in a matrix, folks!

It's turtles all the way out.

[Culture20]

So if I read TFS correctly, the real universe is chock-full of matter (turtles in all directions, not just down), but our known universe is a vacuum bubble in the matter?

Re:It's turtles all the way out.

[John Hasler]

> ...our known universe is a vacuum bubble in the matter?

No. We live in a region (an extremely arge region) where matter is slightly less dense than average. There may be many other such regions.

Just admit you don't know.

[cjhanson]

It amazes me that as a whole our society is ready to jump on board with any theory that seems to help us understand our place in the universe. The Copernicus theorem is, IMHO, the best addition to scientific process. Ever. We are not special.

As for the content of this story, I mean, come on. I think it is silly that scientist continually feel the need to come up with a "reasons" which bridge the gaps between observable and more importantly, testable and reproducible conclusions. Dark Matter. UH-huh. Oh, no, wait.. wait.. space-time bubble! Yeah, that's it! How about we decide to leave the unknowns as unknowns and instead of spending time and resources coming up with viable possibilities to explain the unknowns, we spend that time discerning the actual, factual answers.

If we keep coming up with "viable possibilities" then all we are really doing is

1. Preventing the lemmings from running around in a crazed frenzy
2. Blurring the path to a better understanding with misleading information

The heart of my point.. the same thing happening to cosmology happened to the theory of electricity a long time ago.. and now we have generations of people who were taught to understand electricity in way that does not promote it's true nature. Same with light. How about instead of teaching our children something that is inherently wrong, we teach them what we do know, and admit that there are aspects we don't understand. At least then they (we) might have a chance to develop useful mindsets and contribute to respective solutions and explanations rather than taking away from them by filling people's head with misleading information.

Re:Just admit you don't know.

[Shotgun]

Why would I feel a need of teaching leading edge cosmology theories to children? It's a 24x7 job just covering the stuff that they actually need.

Re:Just admit you don't know.

[cjhanson]

I did not imply, or rather, was not trying to imply we need to teach this to the children. It was more about the fact that publishing guesses as "leading edge theories" is just bad. It wouldn't be so terrible if it weren't for human nature to loose parts of the message along the way and then before you know it, it is in the text books. I am saying that this practice is clouding the facts and not adding any value to the already steep task of passing on knowledge to the next generation. More importantly, and more to my point, passing on the ability for the next generation to help solve these problems.

Case, point: If we used to teach children that "we kinda think the earth is flat but have no evidence" then there is a STRONG likelihood that this notion would have been dispatch a long time ago. Instead, it was publish to the world as fact, and as such, there are still people who think the world is flat and won't accept any evidence to the contrary, because that is what they where taught in school.

Re:Just admit you don't know.

[dbrutus]

To say that we are not special is unscientific without a statistically significant sample of the universe to compare to. Ditto for saying that we are special. The Copernicus theorem is convenient for progress in research but not especially scientific.

Re:Just admit you don't know.

[Shotgun]

I gotcha. The only problem I see with your argument is that people need to publish what they think they've found, so that others can pick it up and run with it. I use "people" in place of "scientist" here, because I want to avoid the allusion to the white coat, ivory tower mentality. Humans get their best solutions through collaboration. So publishing preliminary or poorly thought out results has the contradictory results of both hindering and speeding progress at the same time 8*)

Objects in the Mirror

[sycodon]

Objects in the [telescope] mirror are closer than they appear.

Oxford has a good 420 harvest this year

[peter303]

Stoned musings.

Thats no bubble

[jagdish]

That is the Jobs Reality Distortion Field(TM). In existence since 1997, and growing stronger every minute.

It doesn't necessarily mean we are special...

[divisionbyzero]

If it's true, which I doubt, it's not necessarily the case that we are special. It may be the case that sparse areas are typical. This would require some explaining as well because it overturns other assumptions, but they are only assumptions.

Re:It doesn't necessarily mean we are special...

[John Hasler]

> ...it overturns other assumptions...

Which ones?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Quantum Loop Gravity

[ipoverscsi]

One of the competing hypotheses for a Theory of Everything is quantum loop gravity. It postulates that space is not continuous but discrete, composed of planck-scale atoms. In a recent Scientific American article, (it might be http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=big-bang-or-big-bounce but I'm having trouble getting the site to respond) one of the curious effects of atomic space is that light of different wavelengths travels through space at different speeds. So it is conceivable that, if this model happens to be correct, that everything far enough away to be affected by atomic space would appear to be red-shifted, thus appear to be moving away from us at the same speed in all directions, simply because red light traveled in a more straight path than the blue light. This would be akin to light refracting off of water molecules in the air causing the sky to be blue (blue light is scattered) whereas the red colors of longer wavelength ignore the water and come straight at us.

Re:Bubble?

[ozmanjusri]

I hope it doesn't happen to our galactic bubble...

The kind of pricks that burst the economic bubble aren't interested in galactic ones.

Sadly

[jitterman]

none of this satisfactorily explains away *my* rapid expansion :(

Re:Bubble?

[MightyYar]

Why does the first thing that comes to mind after reading just this headline, make me think of that one episode on Star Trek Voyager

Wow, our minds just totally work differently. I thought of J-Lo's ass.

You know what I believe

[rdforsyth]

Is that our world is nothing more than a quark in another world, and that world is nothing more than a quark in another world. The perceived end of our universe is nothing more than a shell, with another universe beside it, and trillions more beside each other. By my calculations, we're part of a toenail on some other sentient being. We're probably going to be clipped off soon, but I'm sure we'll never know.

Re:You know what I believe

[John Hasler]

> Is that our world is nothing more than a quark in another world

The notion that the world is a subatomic particle in a larger universe goes back to 1930's science fiction.

Re:You know what I believe

[ProfessionalCookie]

A concept described eloquently to children by Dr. Seuse.

Re:You know what I believe

[rdforsyth]

My thoughts exactly. Except he didn't mention anything about toenails.

Simple Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

We all live in a yellow submarine

Drink beer!

[Chemisor]

> what can we do with this new knowledge other than escape the bubble to realize our true freedom?

We can finally say that beer is the true meaning of the universe. This finding confirms what beer drinkers around the world have suspected for years: our universe is just a bubble in a giant glass of beer! In the beginning, the beer was flat. Then suddenly the bottle was opened, and the lowered pressure lowered carbon dioxide's solubility and enabled creation of bubbles. As the primordial beer gas accumulated in our bubble, gravity appeared (the surrounding universe is made of light beer, which does not bend space as much as the regular beer) and caused the carbon dioxide to coalesce into stars and planets, and eventually into people. Our bubble is expanding now, and floating upward in the glass. Eventually it will reach the top and become a part of the giant cosmic head, at which point we shall all be judged for our actions and be doomed to either sink back in the glass, or to fly up into the cosmos with the angels. Yup, dude, this is some heavy stuff! But don't worry, the more beer you drink, the better you understand it!

Re:Bubble?

[tenco]

time on that planet was accelerating at like almost a week for every second on voyager...

Time on that planet wasn't accelerating but was accelerated in comparison with voyager such that one second on Voyager meant almost a week on the planet (so velocity of time on the planet was larger than that on voyager by a constant factor, no accelerating).

Hmmm...

[uberjack]

What smells like blue?

Our region of space has less mass......

[onkelonkel]

but compensates for it by having more stupid.

Re:Are we in some kind a time loop / time DILATION

[corbettw]

Are we in some kind a time loop / time DILATION FIELD. If we are we should use the ZPM powering it for other stuff.

Yes, and then put our hands on our hips and do the pelvic thrust.

No.

[dreemernj]

We live in a comic thought bubble coming out of the head of God. And God's God is looking at it in a weekly comic wondering if it's a misprint.

KHAN ! ! !

[UttBuggly]

Trapped in a cosmic bubble:

The tragic result of a madman attempting to corner the galactic market for rich, Corinthian leather!

This is practically untestable

[slashdotlurker]

I have not read the PRL paper that the article refers to, but if the entire test depends on detecting a large number of supernovae in a certain region of space, its a non-starters. Supernova events tend to be rare, and the further away you are looking, the brighter the event has to be, to be detectable.

These people may well be right, but they need to come up with a better test. What they are asking is akin to us asking a kid who has grown up in a submarine world, and has never been out of water or has any chance of being out of water, to somehow prove that the refractive index of the atmosphere is lower than the sea he lives in, and that somehow explains how he is unable to see anything above the water beyond a certain critical angle.
I am not saying that this is impossible. I am just saying that the test for this will likely be extremely subtle, and extremely unlikely to be definitive.

Re:This is practically untestable

[John Hasler]

Supernova events tend to be rare, and the further away you are looking, the brighter the event has to be, to be detectable.

Type Ia supernovae (which are identifiable by their spectra) are all of the same intrinsic brightness.

Re:This is practically untestable

[slashdotlurker]

Quite so. However, you need to detect the supernova event first (spectral measurements come only after you first see it). That depends on the supernova's apparent magnitude, not absolute magnitude. If it is too far for us to even see it, then it cannot really be used for anything.

Re:This is practically untestable

[John Hasler]

If a galaxy is too far away to see any Ia supernovae in then we no data on its distance, not incorrect data.

Re:This is practically untestable

[ElAurian]

We see distant supernova events all the freaking time. We're talking about galaxies in other superclusters here, man. The further away we look, the more we see. (Obviously up to a point, or we'd be seeing quasars exploding all the time and the night sky would likely be rather warm.)

Re:This is practically untestable

[slashdotlurker]

Ergo, we cannot have a large enough dataset for supernovae in any given direction.

The scum of the universe

[IPFreely]

Maybe what we need is more like what Copernicus did to the standard model. He suggested that we are not the center of all things. And ever since then, we've been moving farther and farther away from the center.

We know that there are particles that do not have electric charge and therefore do not interact with electrically charged matter in notable ways.

Theories on dark matter suggest that there is a lot more of it than "regular" matter.
"Regular" matter, as we call it, is identified by and works with the electrical forces, including electromagnetic waves (light).

So my suggestion is that there may be a lot of matter out there that does not interact with electric force. That matter operates under some different mechanics, somewhere between gravity and the weak force. It pools and flows of it's own in a way that we cannot observe.

Meanwhile, we are living on small clumps of unusual matter that is bound by electrical forces (molecules) and can only observe other matter that is also bound by electrical forces (light). It is we who are unusual, the minority and who are isolated from the universe, isolated because we can ONLY observe using electromagnetic forces.

We are little clumps of electric force scum floating through the ebb and flow of the rest of the matter in the universe and we cannot see it or understand it.

Re:The scum of the universe

[kisrael]

The funny thing is that if Earth is in some kind of "special bubble" it's kind of a reintroduction of pre-Copernicus thinking, that we're in a special, priveleged spot.

Re:What's beyond the bubble ?

[IndustrialComplex]

Perhaps it is what is beyond the bubble that is attracting the matter within the bubble.
If the rest of the universe, ie. beyond what is visible to us, is dense in matter, perhaps it is attracting the sparse matter within our visible universe. Seems a lot more plausible than non detectable dark matter.

If you can see something being affected by gravity, and gravity's effects are bound by the speed of light, then you should be able to see the object which is the source of that gravitational force.

Think of it like a relay race in which the original runner doesn't stop, and doesn't slow down. When runner A meets runner B, and runner A continues to run at the same pace as Runner B then Runner A and Runner B will arrive at the finish line at the same time.

Re:Sparse bubble more special than "normal" matter

[MozeeToby]

Here, application of the anthropic principle makes sense. Dark energy is just a force, and as far as we know does not interact with itself. Dark matter can only interact through gravitation and so can't support complex chemistry. Our 'regular' matter is the only thing we know of in the universe that could support life, therefore it shouldn't be suprising that we are made up of that kind of matter.

The key here is to remember that the percentage figures given are for the mass/energy budget of the universe and that dark energy and especially dark matter aren't matter the way we think of it. Perhaps dark mass would be a better name than dark matter, since dark matter has mass but doesn't appear to take up space or interact with normal matter in any way.

Re:Management Would it SUCK or...

[davidsyes]

Would it BLOW if someone burst our bubble? (Trying to reduce the techno-babble of the cosmo-bubble...)

It might be funny if our bubble had to pass through a cosmic blow ring. Things could REALLY be up for (Social) distortion.

The moral here?

[eagee]

By the end of their story Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gave up on trying to find explanations to the universe. Damn it, heads again!

Re:Bubble?

[Ekdar]

I am unsure why you thought of that. I thought of the episode where Voyager was trapped in a void (and the Doctor figures out that he can communicate with those "mute" creatures using musical notes).

Voids of matter...

[curious.corn]

... and dramatic density variations are quite understandable in a cosmology that doesn't dismiss electromagnetic interactions on a large scale, it's called "pinch effect". Only it's not as mainstream as the Big Bang

(ducks... awaiting moderation)

e

Connecting ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

It can sounds weird, but I've already thought about that. From relativity theories and connecting it to the third law of motion, action-reaction, and energy conservation laws.

Imagine the following: a huge amount of mass and/or energy increases the density of space-time, creating acceleration known to us as gravity. In fact a bend in space-time tissue attracting everything around, like a curved depression in a surface.

If we think in the conservation of energy in a system (and think the close universe as a closed system), this increase of density at some point should cause a deacrease somewhere, so we keep the total amount of space-time constant for this close system. Think of it as a compensation. Think on this as we strech a bubble gum, some areas get thiker, others thinner, but the total amount of gum is the same.

As increase of space-time density creates attraction (gravity), a decrease should create repulsion ("anti-gravity").

Thinking again into the curved depression, close to matter and energy, far from it we should find peaks in the surface, repelling matter.

In fact, I believe we can find these gravity bubbles surrounding some more gravitational systems, like galaxies, blackholes, and solar systems.

And more! Think about huge amounts of mass moving, like planets, stars and blackholes. The movement os these bodies would create a space-time wave effect surrounding them, which we could connect to the Doppler effect later, for even more weird effects. We already know about these interference from spinning planets, stars and blackholes.

Which make thinks even more diffcult, because relatvity should need to be adapted to include these interferences of anty-gravity if they become true, specially for interstelar long distances.

Re:Connecting ideas

[jacquesm]

Imagine this bathtub, see, made of ebony...

How old is the Universe?

[spaceman375]

Depends on where you are. Sciencedaily had a story about a year ago (can't find it now; can you?) about some folks involved with WIMP who had found mega-galactic voids and calculated that time ran fast enough inside a really big one that the universe was 18 Billion years old near the middle while it's only 13 and change around here.

So if time moves faster, how long does it take to cross one? Is it bigger inside than outside?

Yes...

[xactuary]

And we're probably over-investing in it as we speak.

Re:Bubble?

[GargamelSpaceman]

J-Lo's ass... Hmm.

I thought of what would happen if 7 of 9 farted.

It IS NOT a BUBBLE

[spaceman375]

There is no discrete border or boundary to this effect, any more than there is a cutoff point for gravity from earth somewhere above the surface. When it comes to size, it operates on a scale of 10^8 Light Years. That's WAY up the scale beyond just galaxy sized. This is the scale where things look like strands and bubbles made of clusters of galaxies. Voids are well documented areas of the universe where we can't see any stars. Putting us in a "low density" area is not saying we are somewhere special; we've just gotten higher resolution of where we are in a universe that is not uniformly distributed.

Dark Matter Evidence

[squoozer]

We have some preliminary evidence that dark matter exists from studying the collisions of galaxies (IIRC). I believe we have managed to gravitaionally lense round dark matter which to my mind is fairly good proof.

Riiiight.

[amn108]

There is nothing special about Earth. It is the typical observer mistake, when things look different in one way or another from where you are observing.

People around me may be a bit dumb. The observations point to the fact.

Model being patched already undermined

[shadowofwind]

In an earlier thread, an expert told us that the expected rate of expansion is based on a solution of Einstein's equations that includes a homogeneity assumption. That assumed homogeneity in the distribution of matter is now observed to be false, which invalidates the expansion rate prediction. Furthermore, a solution consistent with the observed distribution of matter, which is yet to be worked out, is plausibly expected to yield a result like the observed expansion rate. So it would seem that currently there's no known "problem" requiring "dark matter", or bubbles, or other devices.

Re:Model being patched already undermined

[John Hasler]

> That assumed homogeneity in the distribution of matter is now observed to be false...

No it isn't, any more than it was undermined by the observation that the Earth is denser than space. The theory permits inhomogeneity even on this large a scale.

Big Bang gives him a really big hadron

[tepples]

We can't re-run the experiment of the big bang.

On the contrary, with a new particle collider coming online in the second quarter of next year, we are getting closer to being able to run experiments simulating parts of the early universe. This is giving particle physicists a very large hadron.

correction

[shadowofwind]

I meant "dark energy", not "dark matter".

Re:Bubble?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow she would use that in your divorce proceedings and you would lose your senate race.

Oh really?

[V!NCENT]

Totally didn't read something like that one year ago... probably on /. ...

I had just explained this to my dad when he brought up a theory posted in some Dutch newspaper (called Volkskrant for those who live in the Netherlands) before reading this.

Those whom brains are hurting (tag) clearly are not familiar with even the basics of Einsteins theories.

Re:Management Would it SUCK or...

[Hognoxious]

Would it BLOW if someone burst our bubble?

I don't know, but it'll probably cost a lot more than 700 billion dollars to bail the universe out.

We're trapped in a warp storm...

[mahsah]

In time, the Emperor of Mankind will lead us out of it.

Re:Management Would it SUCK or...

[davidsyes]

Depending upon the Universe, then according to a character in "The Spy Who Shagged Me" who responded to Dr. Evil, "THAT KIND OF MONEY DOESN'T EVEN *EXIST*"...hehhehe.

But, if have our own lens/bubble distortion, NO amount of money would matter...

Butt, I'D like to know, since there is a possible bubble, is there a possible tent and string of coconut being pulled between the heavenly bodies?

The alleged cop-out that is Wikipedia

[tepples]

To make even more of an impact, though, try linking to a reputable source.

By linking to a Wikipedia article, I linked to all the reliable sources that the Wikipedia article cited. Do you complain that they are not reliable sources, or do you claim that the Wikipedia article misrepresents the sources?

Questions for Physicists

[Original Replica]

Isn't one of the founding ideas of Physics that "The laws of Physics that hold true here, are also true everywhere else." If we allow for our bubble to have any fundamental exceptions, like the rate at which time flows, then why should any of the other "laws" be expected to hold true outside of our bubble? If that is the case then how can we pretend to be measuring or accurately observing anything outside of that bubble, when all of our observations are based around a physics that may or may not apply to the universe outside the bubble?

Re:Questions for Physicists

[clonan]

But based on the "laws of Physics" time is NOT immutable. We knew both mass and speed affect the apparent rate of time.

All I am suggesting is that the local time frame may make it look like it is moving slower from the outside....using the "laws of Physics"

Re:Questions for Physicists

[Original Replica]

I understand the time/speed interaction in my basic knowledge of relativity, but I wasn't aware of a time/mass interaction. I guess the root of my confusion about this is summed up in FTA:"One problem with the void idea, though, is that it negates a principle that has reined in astronomy for more than 450 years: namely, that our place in the universe isn't special. " If we establish that our place in the universe is special, even if it is just with something that is known to be mutable like time, how can we hope to have any accurate understanding beyond the edges of our bubble? As you say the local time frame may look different from outside the bubble than from inside, but then I would assume that the inverse would have to be true and that it would be impossible to know exactly how different it was without having measurement of some kind take from both inside and outside this bubble. Perhaps this would make more sense to me if I understood the mass/time interaction, but this bubble thing seems to conflict deeply with what small amount I do know about physics.

Re:Questions for Physicists

[marcello_dl]

I don't exactly like the way you formulated the question, but that rings a bell... occam's razor would suggest that if we have to postulate we are in a peculiar place, chances are that our models are flawed to begin with.
"Precession of the perihelion of Mercury" all over again?

Can't afford any more @#!$^@$ bubbles.

[ukemike]

First it was the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, next is the derivatives bubble. But look! We have something to make all that look like small change, the cosmic bubble. I bet the taxpayer is going to take it up the rear over that one as well.

Give it up

[rezalas]

"We have no f-ing clue, because we haven't been anywhere yet." There, how hard was that? This whole guessing crap is getting old. Every time someone makes another guess at the answers to questions we don't fully comprehend someone tries to pass it off as either a fact or a great break through. People once guessed the earth was flat and that the sun was eaten every night and regergitated every morning by great beasts. This stinks just as bad. When it comes to space we are still learning to crawl. Lets stop stabbing the darkness and wait on the flashlight.

Re:Give it up

[John Hasler]

You'll never get anywhere if you just stand around waiting for someone to hand you the answers.

Re:Bubble?

[Xonstantine]

Why does the first thing that comes to mind after reading just this headline, make me think of that one episode on Star Trek Voyager

Because you are a nerd.

Spelling?

[MrM]

I think it's "Comic bubble"...

It has been said earlyer already

[Qbertino]

I find the arrogance and ignorance of modern science unnerving. People like Pytagoras thousands of years ago described essential parts of what scientists are 'discovering' today. They described it in their own words, but some of that is pretty clear, even for todays vocabulary:

Pytagoras: "The Universe is shaped like a pentacondodecaeder" - Fits right smack on to the modern multi-universe-bubble theory.
Various Okkultists and Alchemists: "The validity of the laws of nature change with the distance to a certain point in space." - Fits what we observe in cosmology (and strange voyager course deviation) on a daily basis. And raises some questions about the flow of time over the cosmic history aswell.

Note that the above was said *way* before any technical devices existed to observe these facts. Instead these people claim to have sensed these things with their higher senses - ESP if you will - which, according to quite a few intelligent people, we have lost along with the gain of our advancements in and of materialisim. That, of course, no one even wants to ponder.

Mod me a potential crackpot if you will, but I actually recommend the cosmologists return to the old master once in a while for some inspiration on their explaination of the universe and all that. They'd be suprised about what they find.

Ultra Dense region leads to greater gravity

[DeadDecoy]

You also forgot to note, that because of it's abnormally high density, this region of space has an unusually strong gravity field. This can be observed by noticing that our tax money flows in and never comes out. Sure, there is such a thing as hawking radiation, in which energy leaks out, but that is only composed of lost hopes and shattered dreams veiled behind transparent promises.

Re:Bubble?

[tenco]

Uhm, well. If this happens we should watch out for some angry aliens. You see, this dark matter has to come from somewhere.

Re:Are we in some kind a time loop / time DILATION

[Reziac]

[pulls ZPM, hooks it up to something more useful]

***POP***

Ooops...

This smacks of....

[EmagGeek]

"Gotta dream up something wacky and new to justify my grant money for next year..."

Re:Sparse bubble more special than "normal" matter

[khallow]

That's nonsense. You look at any spot in space at sufficiently small scale and you'll find some deviation from average.

Re:What's beyond the bubble ?

[SlowMovingTarget]

Except you are forgetting about the metric expansion of space. In your analogy, as runner B reaches the finish line, the finish line recedes away from runner A fast enough that runner A can never reach it. Space will expand fast enough that we will _never_ see the light from those features causing the gravitational pull.

Of course, as has been discussed here, the notion of metric expansion of space may be wrong.

Re:What's beyond the bubble ?

[nedlohs]

Gravitational effects travels at the speed of light.

Hence the light from the distant object having a gravitational affect on what we are observing must have reached the point we are observing

Since light travels at the same speed it continues to us and arrives at the same time as what we are observing. Of course that's if those objects and us are in a line - if not then non-uniform expansion or universe in which the distance from us->X is greater than the distance from us->Y + the distance from Y->X would make this unable to see the object we can see the effects of thing happen (I don't think either of those things are true where we live).

Actually, After reading the paper...

[killmofasta]

The idea is rather brilliant. It would combine steady state with expanding. It would appear steady state locally, for a time, then it would either expand forever to heat death or osciliate.

Too bad Hoyle is dead, Ill write his friend at Cambridge and see what he says. ( I know quite a few astronomers there, and at Cardiff ).\

Brillant. just Brilliant. for... now...

No Degree Necessary

[poetd]

Never studied physics beyond High School except in books and documentaries etc. 5 years ago I came up with this idea to explain the lack of enough mater, even posted it up on physics forums and emailed various schools etc asking these questions, and they ALL shot me down. Ha, I should sue Oxford Uni for plagiarism, I still have all the original emails to prove the idea was mine. This morning I am now ranking myself with Einstein and Hawking. LOL.

And if we aren't special...

[Slur]

Other theories might be better suited to this. We have hardly any experience of astronomical scales, and have only begun to observe the universe at these distances. Perhaps there is simply a "lensing" effect that spacetime produces over huge distances. Or perhaps red-shift is simply non-linear and this accounts for the appearance of expansive acceleration.

Any theory that doesn't require us to be in the center of anything, please!