New model of cosmic stickiness favors ‘Big Rip’ demise of universe
The universe can be a very sticky place, but just how sticky is a matter of debate.
That is because for decades cosmologists have had trouble reconciling the classic notion of viscosity based on the laws of thermodynamics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. However, a team from Vanderbilt University has come up with a fundamentally new mathematical formulation of the problem that appears to bridge this long-standing gap.
The new math has some significant implications for the ultimate fate of the universe. It tends to favor one of the more radical scenarios that cosmologists have come up with known as the “Big Rip.” It may also shed new light on the basic nature of dark energy.
The new approach was developed by Assistant Professor of Mathematics Marcelo Disconzi in collaboration with physics professors Thomas Kephart and Robert Scherrer and is described in a paper published earlier this year in the journal Physical Review D.
“Marcelo has come up with a simpler and more elegant formulation that is mathematically sound and obeys all the applicable physical laws,” said Scherrer.
The type of viscosity that has cosmological relevance is different from the familiar “ketchup” form of viscosity, which is called shear viscosity and is a measure of a fluid’s resistance to flowing through small openings like the neck of a ketchup bottle. Instead, cosmological viscosity is a form of bulk viscosity, which is the measure of a fluid’s resistance to expansion or contraction. The reason we don’t often deal with bulk viscosity in everyday life is because most liquids we encounter cannot be compressed or expanded very much.
Disconzi began by tackling the problem of relativistic fluids. Astronomical objects that produce this phenomenon include supernovae (exploding stars) and neutron stars (stars that have been crushed down to the size of planets).
Scientists have had considerable success modeling what happens when ideal fluids – those with no viscosity – are boosted to near-light speeds. But almost all fluids are viscous in nature and, despite decades of effort, no one has managed to come up with a generally accepted way to handle viscous fluids traveling at relativistic velocities. In the past, the models formulated to predict what happens when these more realistic fluids are accelerated to a fraction of the speed of light have been plagued with inconsistencies: the most glaring of which has been predicting certain conditions where these fluids could travel faster than the speed of light.
“This is disastrously wrong,” said Disconzi, “since it is well-proven experimentally that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.”
These problems inspired the mathematician to re-formulate the equations of relativistic fluid dynamics in a way that does not exhibit the flaw of allowing faster-than-light speeds. He based his approach on one that was advanced in the 1950s by French mathematician André Lichnerowicz.
Next, Disconzi teamed up with Kephart and Scherrer to apply his equations to broader cosmological theory. This produced a number of interesting results, including some potential new insights into the mysterious nature of dark energy.
In the 1990s, the physics community was shocked when astronomical measurements showed that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. To explain this unpredicted acceleration, they were forced to hypothesize the existence of an unknown form of repulsive energy that is spread throughout the universe. Because they knew so little about it, they labeled it “dark energy.”
Most dark energy theories to date have not taken cosmic viscosity into account, despite the fact that it has a repulsive effect strikingly similar to that of dark energy. “It is possible, but not very likely, that viscosity could account for all the acceleration that has been attributed to dark energy,” said Disconzi. “It is more likely that a significant fraction of the acceleration could be due to this more prosaic cause. As a result, viscosity may act as an important constraint on the properties of dark energy.”
Another interesting result involves the ultimate fate of the universe. Since the discovery of the universe’s run-away expansion, cosmologists have come up with a number of dramatic scenarios of what it could mean for the future.
One scenario, dubbed the “Big Freeze,” predicts that after 100 trillion years or so the universe will have grown so vast that the supplies of gas will become too thin for stars to form. As a result, existing stars will gradually burn out, leaving only black holes which, in turn, slowly evaporate away as space itself gets colder and colder.
An even more radical scenario is the “Big Rip.” It is predicated on a type of “phantom” dark energy that gets stronger over time. In this case, the expansion rate of the universe becomes so great that in 22 billion years or so material objects begin to fall apart and individual atoms disassemble themselves into unbound elementary particles and radiation.
The key value involved in this scenario is the ratio between dark energy’s pressure and density, what is called its equation of state parameter. If this value drops below -1 then the universe will eventually be pulled apart. Cosmologists have called this the “phantom barrier.” In previous models with viscosity the universe could not evolve beyond this limit.
In the Desconzi-Kephart-Scherrer formulation, however, this barrier does not exist. Instead, it provides a natural way for the equation of state parameter to fall below -1.
“In previous models with viscosity the Big Rip was not possible,” said Scherrer. “In this new model, viscosity actually drives the universe toward this extreme end state.”
According to the scientists, the results of their pen-and-paper analyses of this new formulation for relativistic viscosity are quite promising but a much deeper analysis must be carried out to determine its viability. The only way to do this is to use powerful computers to analyze the complex equations numerically. In this fashion the scientists can make predictions that can be compared with experiment and observation.
###
The research was supported by National Science Foundation grant 1305705 and Department of Energy grant DE-SC0011981.
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Such doom and gloom 😉
They’re still trying to jimmy reality into matching Biblical prophecy. 😉
Since cultural biases are ridiculously strong!
Actually, for the Earthlings prospects are much gloomier and end will come much sooner.
?w=720&h=556
These people are astronomic illiterates and an embarrassment to the cosmology.
Sun is a middle age star, and eventually will morph into red giant swallowing all inner planets, including the Earth (which will slowly melt and turn into constituent indistinguishable part of the aging sun) long, long, long before they envisage the ‘Earth exploding’
Yes, I had to do some research on this in the past. You have to say though, given the size of the Sun, it isn’t certain that it will balloon big enough to swallow the Earth. It is possible that it will escape the expansion and continue to orbit the Sun for billions of years. vukcevic, this is because as the Sun expands, it loses mass. The Earth therefore drifts outward because the gravitational pull isn’t as great. This doesn’t mean it will escape the Sun for certain, as other factors will be at play.
But in just a billion years from now, Earth will be a dry, dusty rock. That’s for certain.
Not necessarily! By that time, we’ll be able to move the Earth into a more distant orbit, and into a more congenial neighborhood. Science fiction writer Larry Niven has already proposed the basic mechanism; build a whopping enormous fusion ramjet engine on Saturn’s moon Titan, and use Titan as a “gravity tug” to coax the Earth into an orbit around Jupiter.
http://www.amazon.com/World-Out-Time-Larry-Niven/dp/B00EAW34HK/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435860892&sr=1-2&keywords=niven+world+out+of+time
After all, we have plenty of time!
These models may be right, they may be wrong, but thank goodness I won’t be there to see.
No need for anything as complex as a gravity, a single 100 foot rock on a sling shot orbit about once every century or so would be sufficient nudge the earth into higher orbits faster than the sun expands.
I am not very convinced by the BB hypothesis any way, a four-dimensional toroid of a single ever regenerating universe is more acceptable to my simple minded view.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Uo.gif
We have a merger with Andromeda to consider also. We could end up just about anywhere, perhaps another coloured ring of debris around Saturn or Jupiter?
Vukcevic, this is a family website. Pictures of bottoms are not appropriate.
Actually the Earth will be dead long before the sun comes anywhere near the end of its life cycle. The Earth has about 800 million to 1 billion years left before its surface is to hot to support life. The sun warms up as it ages and in about 800 million years it will push the average surface temperature here on the Earth up to a rather hot 165°F. At that point, life on the surface of the Earth will be all but impossible and we will have either long since moved out into the galaxy, or we will be long dead.
100 trillion years.
I’ll wait till tomorrow to start worrying.
“This is disastrously wrong,” said Disconzi, “since it is well-proven experimentally that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.”
What experiments would those be? We haven’t the technology to propel any objects at close to the SOL and subatomic entities and macro objects might have radically different behaviors.
Particle accelerators work on the basis that no object can cross the speed of light barrier and that momentum, energy, and mass increase asymptotically as you approach the speed of light – the energies of the photons and particles that are measured experimentally make no sense otherwise. And if subatomic particles can’t do it, how would macroscopic objects composed of subatomic particles do it?
Protons in the rings at CERN travel at very close fractions of the speed of light, and all the extra energy that is now going in goes into their momentum and not their speed, because of this speed limit.
Gaia gets her bodice ripped.
(Rings bell) Last call, ladies and gentlemen.
One hopes their new model makes more actually measurable predictions than string theory.
Supersymmetric string theories have created a bunch of predictions, none of which appear to be true. This means there is science going on its normal pace.
The big-rip is a highly speculative idea, which does not seem to have any relevance to us mortals, but is rather a purely mathematical exercise. Good for them. Don’t let your brain boil by trying to understand.
Well, thank goodness! I was thinking of moving to Utah or someplace.
I can’t move to Utah, since I’m already here. It is a nice place to live, but I’m curious why you’d need to move.
You and me both.
I have never placed much hope in string theory. The idea of tinier things that “wiggle” just seems absurd, because such a gizmo, would necessarily have to be made up of even smaller “moving parts.”
I have no idea in my mind, as to what these new guys are really saying; but I like the way this release is worded. Makes it sound like they feel they are on to something.
Well I guess I will shave my face this morning, just in case this ripping starts anywhere near me.
A nice cheerful way to start another rain free morning. Thanks Anthony for this one.
G
Was it the Aussies who came up with that expression; ” Ripper Mate !! ” ?
re: “Makes it sound like they feel they are on to something.” george e. smith
An entire career is created out of models (AKA, mental masturbation) so decades will be needed to flesh out that something that they are on to. The have found, they hope, a full employment plan for the rest of their working lives if they can convince the rubes to fund them.
Physics fell off the wagon over 100 years ago. The Big Rip idea is another fool’s errand stemming from that wrong turn.
Dan Kurt
Pure speculation, all of it. These guys just serve theirs up with some theoretical math, putting “cosmologist” right up there with “climate scientist” in the speculative fiction mill.
Well ALL of mathematics is just fiction. We made it all up out of whole cloth, and there is not one single entity of any branch of mathematics, that actually exists in the real (or any other) universe. Can’t even find any mathematical points anywhere.
Well maybe “Projective Geometry” will finally catch on.
Basic axioms of PG.
1/ Two points define a line.
2/ Two lines define a point. Yes it’s a plane geometry.
3/ There are at least four points. Like the corners of the Charlie Brown kite.
First theorem. There are at least seven points. Like there’s one new one where the kite sticks cross (axiom two).
It can’t be proven that there are any more than seven points (different points).
And in PG, circles are just a special case of hyperbolas, and they all intersect each other ( at the two “circular points at infinity”, so circles are infinite in size too, since hyperbolas are.
See, we really did just make all this stuff up out of nothing.
g
How about recognizing an old model and stop nursing the current version of a failed model?
The Big Bang model (BB) for the origin and evolution of our Universe is a grossly bandaged and kludged behemoth that needs to go away. Discussions of how the Universe will end, the Big Freeze, the Big Crunch, etc., ignore the fact that the model is seriously and egregiously flawed. A Steady State Universe model (SSU) matches up perfectly with what we see once one comes to grip with the fact that the velocity-based red-shift that is the basis of the BB model is not valid.
Quasars have been clearly shown, but not accepted and specifically ignored by the BB proponents, to be localized to the regions around their parent galaxies. Their redshifts decrease as they move away from their central galaxy and begin to transform by intergalactic matter accretion in protogalaxies. They are not the ultra-distant, metaphysically powerful objects at the edge of the universe. They are local and thus not as drastic as they are believed from BB theory and take on realistic physical features.
The key is that BB assumes that gravity runs the Universe and almost completely ignores electromagnetic effects, which are a billion, billion, billion, billion (10 to the 36th) times more powerful, assuming all charges balance to zero locally and all through the Universe. BB also assumes that all redshift by objects must be caused by velocity-caused Doppler effects. BB completely ignores that an object, not moving, causes a redshift gravitationally. Thus, the distance of massive, dense objects nearby can be misinterpreted to be very distant, fast-moving objects, based on redshift, when, in fact, they are much closer.
BB theory has been patched over and over to explain observations that do not fit. For example, the abundance of light elements in the Universe was explained or, more accurately “fixed/patched” by inventing Dark Matter to discount (read, “ignore”) all cold, non-glowing, real matter in the Universe. [Literally, they pretend that all real matter is visible to us and there is no cold matter. SSU has no problem with light element abundance.]
As gravity should be working to slow down the BB expansion and it cannot be detected in observations, BB supporters had to invent Dark Force that counters gravity and that is working to expand the Universe. Of course, if you have Dark Matter and Dark Force, you would have Dark Energy, completing the invention of a Dark Physics, and the many fantasies of tapping this non-existent energy source. At this point, the fudge factor in the BB theory is 10 to the 106th power, that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.
They really want us to believe that 95+% of the Universe is undetectable and then make up lots of ephemeral ways to infer its presence.
The solar and cosmic winds are evidence that charges move around in space and that static charges can occur which can result in current flows between objects. When observations of the Universe are examined in terms of plasma physics, with gravity also in play but not dominant, as BB pretends, lots of the structures observed in the Universe become rather normal. Local solar, interstellar, and intergalactic features can be explained without inventing undetectable factors and imaginary Dark Physics. Einstein did not think black holes existed, and there are currently seven different models for black holes that do not agree with what we see. BB supporters pretend to see black holes everywhere. It is curious that, only with black holes, BB supporters recognize that gravity can cause redshifts; how myopic and selective of them.
The bottom line is that studies of quasars show that the BB model is fatally flawed and we have an SSU, as was thought long before Hubble reported astronomical redshifts. It simply may be that we will never know the past history of the Universe nor know how it is developing in the future. BB theory appealed to many people because it offered an almost religiously-based birth, origin, genesis, or beginning.
Recently, at the micro-scale, the model of quantum mechanics has been elegantly completed. One implication of this model is that the BB model cannot be. It is fun to see that both the macro (quasars) and micro (quantum mechanics) worlds negate the BB theory.
In an SSU, all Dark Physics, and related fantasies that spawn from it, can be abandoned and the massive, cobbled patches to the BB model are not needed in order to understand what we see and what is happening when we look out at the Universe.
Oh, and a Steady State Universe also obviates all the “Multiverse of Universes” and such that go with the BB theory speculations. One speculation went so far as to claim to calculate how far it is to the nearest other universe in which I am wearing a blue shirt today rather than a white shirt. These fantasies are mind- blowing and fun, but they are also patently absurd and way out of being even slightly realistic—ah, that would be what we call science fiction.
Of course, the BB research community comprise a very wealthy industry and has job security, always needing more funding to do research to describe things that simply do not exist and never will. They will always be on the verge of discovering something. [I am not talking particle physics, such as the Higgs particle. I am talking about mini-black holes and efforts to detect Dark stuff.]
How then in the SSU do you account for night sky, age of the universe and such? I mean a standard argument against the SSU is that we have night. In the SSU, the universe is infinitely old, which means over time that we have now, there should be saturation of light in the night sky, leading to no darkness. If the universe ISN’T infinitely old in SSU, then when did it start and why?
I realize I’m bringing up a standard argument against SSU. And will admit that it was taught in Astronomy 1. But it deserves some sort of response and both BB and SSU to be tested by our limited ability to test them. – testing and falsification being essential elements of the Scientific Method. I’m genuinely curious about such a response.
To quote big bang theory (the show) thank you for close captioning my pain. And very good explanations; thank you. Ok, things can be counter intuitive but just darn. BBT pretty much ignores electricity? I like the paraphrased quote that electricity flows to your can opener you don’t have to hold it beneath the outlet. Multiverse; a theory that predicts anything predicts nothing. Really, a whole new universe base on whether a C02 molecule zigs instead of zags. Speed of light limit, well may be true but light can be slowed down; it seems a bit non symmetric that light can be slowed but not sped up. I haven’t kept up or verified but I understood one of the “big” Higgs-Boson discoveries was a statistically tortured blip on a graph?
What I wanted to hear was some theories on the speed of gravity. What I found was a static field theory where a static gravity field always pointed directly at the source (no speed involved). Maybe, but ungratifying, Seemingly gravity is a vector sum of shifting different sources and intuitively doesn’t lend well to static source; to spite the static theory invoking relativity.
Is it possible to be an open minded skeptic?
The old Halton Arp Intrinsic Redshift/Electric Universe/Steady State Universe. I do enjoy “competing” theories. Arp has some interesting ideas and (old) data but intrinsic redshift seems to have more holes than Doppler/expansion redshift. Why are galaxies giving birth to and ejecting mini galaxies again? Why aren’t all quasars associated with ‘closer’ galaxies? I would agree that all redshift being based on Doppler/expansion is not well supported but falls into the ‘best theory we have’ category. The Electric Universe group is little more than a cult. SSU is a valid albeit currently unpopular view which relies heavily on alternative theories to observed redshift (tired light?). I don’t know of any that are overly convincing or as well supported as Doppler/expansion but if you have something new to point me towards I would be happy to read it.
relies heavily on alternative theories to observed redshift (tired light?)
No proof, but I like the “tired light” hypothesis. Maybe someone in optics can disabuse me but, space isn’t empty. The further away, the more refractions you get and seemingly a shift towards red.
Well electro-magnetic forces may be billions (with a B) times stronger than gravity; but gravity has the advantage; IT SUCKS !
So all you need is a whole lot of mass, and it all heads towards the common CM, hopefully with not too much in excessive net angular momentum, and you get a free gravitational thermo nuclear reactor, without ever lifting a finger, to put anything where it needs to be.
But the Coulomb force BLOWS .
And Earnshaw’s Theorem says that there is no point of stable equilibrium anywhere in an EM field. I. e. there is no place you can put an electric charge, and have it stay there.
And in particular you can’t hold enough electrically charged mass there under compression, for long enough or hot enough, for a continuous thermo nuclear reaction to occur.
In other words, old Sol is about what a working thermo nuclear energy plant looks like.
I don’t make the rules I just print them.
g >> G
The thing will eventually blow out the side somewhere
AC says July 2, 2015 at 9:34 am
“How then in the SSU do you account for night sky, age of the universe and such? I mean a standard argument against the SSU is that we have night. In the SSU, the universe is infinitely old, which means over time that we have now, there should be saturation of light in the night sky, leading to no darkness.”
I was wondering, does this not assume the universe is 100% transparent? If the SSU universe is not 100% transparent it means that light from a certain distance is simply lost, like light in the ocean under 100 meters? It does not matter how long do you keep the ocean illuminated, light will not go deeper then a certain level?
taz1999 July 2, 2015 at 10:13 am
“What I wanted to hear was some theories on the speed of gravity”
There is a link posted by BFL July 2, 2015 at 10:25 am below.
Joseph Murphy July 2, 2015 at 11:21 am
“The old Halton Arp Intrinsic Redshift/Electric Universe/Steady State Universe. I do enjoy “competing” theories. Arp has some interesting ideas and (old) data but intrinsic redshift seems to have more holes than Doppler/expansion redshift. ”
I do also enjoy competing theories. I think the EU theories might have some good points even if they may have many wrong ideas.
Not sure why do you mention that intrinsic red shift theory has so many holes? Can you help pointing to some?
I found this experiment that should support intrinsic redshift:
http://vixra.org/pdf/1105.0010v1.pdf
“Electrons in the plasma can perform SHM and any electron that can perform SHM can absorb and reemit photons of light.”…
See also:
“Energy lost to an electron during emission or absorption”
george e. smith
July 2, 2015 at 4:11 pm
“Well electro-magnetic forces may be billions (with a B) times stronger than gravity; but gravity has the advantage; IT SUCKS !”
Well actually when “looking at dark matter” I find it really sucks. If it interacts with gravity why does it stay around the galaxy in the form of a giant ball? Now that is really odd, it is there for no reason but just to make the stars in the galaxy to move as they move… Dark matter being there for no reason just to “fix my theory” that otherwise would not run, looks a bit stretched to me:
http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/dn18344/60594306001-milky-ways-dark-matter-turned-on-its-side.html
Why it does stay there as is and it does not fall into the galaxy?
Dark mater is invented to account for the universe not disintegrating.
We don’t need competing ideas to get rid of DM, applying relativity to gravity may do:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/RG.gif
vukcevic
July 5, 2015 at 10:25 am
“Dark mater is invented to account for the universe not disintegrating.”
Sorry for late answer Vuk, I thought dark matter was invented to explain the rotation of the stars in the Galaxy – see below:
http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sun4Adop3.htm
See typical rotation curve:
http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sfigs/vrot.jpg
“velocities in these outer regions were expected to decrease in accordance to Kepler’s law. But they did not.”
“this seems to imply that the mass M inside a galaxy increases in proportion to distance r from the center, even in dim regions near the edge where very little starlight originates. “
Well then … let ‘er rip!
Eventually everything will become nothing.
We can forestall this entropy thing. Every single molecule of CO2 helps ……
Well isn’t that the ultimate result of “averaging” ??
Only fair, since nothing became everything!
The depiction above when analyzed from a purely Freudian perspective tells us exactly what is on the minds of the proponents. Apparently there is nothing new under the sun
Do these folk really know what they are talking about? What exactly is this space that is expanding ever quicker?
” What exactly is this space that is expanding ever quicker?”
I wonder what surrounds this space that is expanding ever quicker?
Aye, as well.
Paul,
Nothing needs to surround it. Nothing surrounds it in the three dimensions that are expanding.
David A,
Scientists know surprisingly lot about ’empty’ space. It is interesting that so much can to be said about it. So it is rather non-trivial to say what is this space.
Yet still, no answer to my non trivial question.
…and Hugh, the dimension are in fact described as boundless, so how can they not be?
Clearly, the surrounding space has a cyan-ish blob, a magenta-ish blob and an orange-ish blob in it. I think it is more probably that the orange-ish blob is really yellow-ish.
Thank you RTaylor,
Simple, honest, straightforward logic (and just as useful as any other answer).
Warning: I am not a physicist nor do I play one on TV
As I understand the explanation of inflation, the 3D space we occupy is analogous to the surface of a balloon. As the balloon is inflated, all points on the surface move away from each other. Remember, the balloons surface is our 3D space. To get from point A to point B in our space, you travel across the surface of the balloon. So the answer to what surrounds space, is that the question is meaningless (assuming the analogy has any resemblance to reality) since the only thing that exists is the surface of the balloon. No doubt rgb@duke can provide a far more lucid explanation, but that’s how I understand it.
No, that’s pretty much how I understand it too.
rgb
It can be anything, that’s why they need more money…for research, of course.
How do they know it went “BANG” if nobody was there to hear it?
You hear the bang, just listen carefully as the listening monks do.:)
It is another unverifiable cosmological modeling construct. They haven’t even proved there was a big bang in the first place.
Well it was a very little bang. And it must have happened right in the middle of nowhere.
But apparently all the really interesting “Archeo-Physics” happened in the first 10^-43 seconds; or was it 10^-34 seconds, which is a Billion (with a B) times longer ??
Yes it really does seem that this place is becoming rather “old man” like; every damn thing just falling apart. Well I guess the ladies also deteriorate eventually.
g > G
in the first place
============
more likely a supernova explosion in our parent universe created our universe, accelerating our universe to relativistic speeds, such that we exist far in the future of our parent universe due to time dilation.. what we perceive as the cosmic background radiation is the event horizon. what our parent universe perceives is the black hole left by our birth.
First, there was nothing.
Then, it exploded.
I read that the Big Bang pissed a lot of people off because of it’s philosophical implications, and so a lot of effort has gone into replacing it with something less finite and more steady-state-ish.
Well, they’ve utterly failed because the evidence just doesn’t support any other model. HOWEVER, we should never let data stand in our way when they is an a-priori belief in danger! Now the news on the street is that some group has scheduled a party for a decade or so hence when the BBT will be pronounced dead and the SST reborn, in the form of a giant machine that makes new universes forever and ever, amen.
They found that stars werent moving apart from eachother at a steady pace as they expected instead they were accelerating.
They filled in the formula so the math would add up with a variable called dark energy, (positive acceleration), as an explanation.
And they have backed it up with other experiments.
The big rip comes from the fact that matter at highspeeds lose their bonds and get pulled apart into atoms.
They don’t know if the stars are moving apart, or if the intermediate space is distorting their perception. The scientific method was introduced specifically to constrain speculation in a frame-based philosophy, “science”, to curb secular excess. The wild speculation that leads to a conflation of logical domains.
..so they, the galaxies, appear to be expanding with more space between them, but what is this space beyond three infinite dimensions, and if infinite, how can it expand?
Thats the thing David A. They measured because they expected nothing, instead they found something and named it dark energy. If you’re onto something more philosophical then I am not very good at that. I just have a basic understanding of space.
Not really philosophical, but conceptual. Three boundless directions as the illustration above depicts. The squares in the illustration are nothing more then a mathematical concept of relativity in an infinite field. As soon as you do anything definable by numbers, you then “measure” or have relative time and space. But the three dimensions are both timeless and infinite, so I have no concept of how they expand.
Afaik neither time nor size even closely as established as dark energy. Really hope someone far more scholared than me could answer you. Sorry 🙁
the 4th dimension is what the first 3 are limited to. outside space is time.
entropy points to an expanding universe, at least from our viewpoint.
No that wouldn’t work. While blue and green are primary colors, blue and yellow hues overlayed on each other strike our eyes as green. Our eyes have strong wavelength sensors for red, green, and blue, and have less strong sensors to pick up other wavelengths. When we see a mixture of yellow and blue, our color sensors see it as it does when viewing pure green (ie the same pattern of pickup by our sensors happen for mixed yellow and blue, and for pure green). If the plane in question were yellow, the figure would be less visible as a three dimensional figure because the overlayed areas would show up as green, making it difficult to see all three planes clearly.
Obviously, when school is out, I don’t have enough sh** to do because all this useless information in my brain gets restless and demands to be thought of.
My response was to R Taylor July 2, 2015 at 6:20 am, who commented on David A’s 3 dimensional plane and its colors. Damn the nested comments design.
Who was responding to the colors in the original post! LOLOLOL! My bad. Time for a beer.
“Yet still, no answer to my non trivial question.”
Right. ‘One madman can ask more than ten wise can answer.’ I’m not calling you mad, though.
“…and Hugh, the dimension are in fact described as boundless, so how can they not be?”
Yes. I think you got a concept and its description mixed up. Don’t try philosophy.
Well Hugh, your imagination is better then mind if you can envision an end to the 3 dimensions depicted in the schematic I provided.
Oh..another model to explain reality…..how about this….there is THAT which never came into existence, nor will it ever go out of existence…if it were not so, there would be never be any refuge from coming into existence and going out of existence…THAT is absolute reality…
..the extra be should not be…
I’m waiting for the time when the digital physics/computational universe discussion gets more attention.
That’s the one that can explains it all … and if something doesn’t fit it can just discounted as a bug in the code.
Also, over time the cooling systems fail.
“… the scientists can make predictions that can be compared with experiment and observation.”
Ah. Proper scientific research then, involving experiment and observation. Quite different from climastrology.
That’s the part that really stood out for me. Too much negativity here, IMO, in light of that. This, where we are talking about theories making predictions to be compared to reality, is real science, and it is refreshing to see it.
So Global Warming will rip atoms apart?
Could we be any doomeder?
But I recall there was at least one thing that does travel faster than light. It is well known that “bad news” has this property.
Actually two, lies are even faster. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill
One may wonder why the truth had its pants off in the first place.
One may also wonder where WC got his special knowledge of the speed of lies.
@Steve p Well we’ll have to tell a lie about THAT!
Steve P – One may wonder why the truth had its pants off in the first place.
It was… the naked truth. (groan)
does travel faster than light
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The propagation speed of gravity is not known and remains one of the fundamental problems in physics. In spite of considerable research, gravity waves have not been observed, which are one of the predictions of limiting gravity to light speed,
unlike light, gravity is not affected by gravity. thus it is unknown if relativity applies to gravity as it does to energy and matter. It seems unlikely that general relativity would apply to gravity, as GR is a result of gravity. Special relativity is a result of the limited speed of light, so it would appear the SR would only apply to gravity if the speed of gravity is limited to light speed.
This leads to interesting problems if our universe is a daughter within a parent universe. is dark energy in fact the gravitational attraction of our parent, and our parent’s parent, in some infinite fractal beyond the event horizon?
Well an astronomer specializing in celestial mechanics shows that gravity speed is greater than 2×10^10 c. Of course the usual way to reconcile with Einstein’s perceptions is to start adding fudge factors much like they do in quantum mechanics.
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gravity.asp
Then there is this by physicist Tony Rothman about physics in general:
“Nevertheless, as a physicist travels along his (in this case) career, the hairline cracks in the edifice become more apparent, as does the dirt swept under the rug, the fudges and the wholesale swindles, with the disconcerting result that the totality occasionally appears more like Bruegel’s Tower of Babel as dreamt by a modern slumlord, a ramshackle structure of compartmentalized models soldered together into a skewed heap of explanations as the whole jury-rigged monstrosity tumbles skyward.
It would be surprising if the strange world of subatomic and quantum physics did not lead the field in mysteries, conceptual ambiguities and paradoxes, and it does not disappoint. The standard model of particle physics, for instance (the one containing all the quarks and gluons), has no fewer than 19 adjustable parameters, about 60 years after Enrico Fermi exclaimed, “With four parameters I can fit an elephant!” Suffice to say, “beauty” is a term not frequently applied to the standard model.”
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-man-behind-the-curtain/4
Grave news there. There is a certain gravity to bad news, and to lies as well.
Thanks for the morning mayhem
So all CO2 molecules will be ripped apart! This is great news for the coral reefs!
+1
The chart is wrong at first inspection showing earth exploding ~20 billion years from now, earth will be swallowed by the sun in a red giant stage long before then.
Stop nit-picking! 🙂 A good end-of-world prophecy needs the Earth.
And before that happens, solar winds will have finally stripped our atmosphere away.
I so want to watch all that happen. Oh wait…….
“Universe ends! Film at 11:00.”
“In related news today, the EPA announced it is working on new regulations to limit the amount of debris produced by the ending of the universe.
An anonymous source at the EPA was reported as saying, “According to the latest scientific studies, for every 5% reduction in apocalyptic debris, the average person can expect to live 37 minutes longer. This is a startling discovery and we have decided we must act now for the health and safety of all of humanity. Therefore, we are issuing an emergency directive that the universe must not exceed 1970 levels of apocalyptic debris by the year 2021. Non-compliance will result in heavy fines.”
Most major environmental groups have already released statements supporting the emergency directive.
And now, let’s go over to Chuck for the weather… Chuck…”
“Thanks, Dan.”
“And our requirement for you people is that you must simply sit on your ass, or else.”
It’s all emptiness. Why do I bother?
…. for the children and the children’s children ??
For [unplanned] Posterity. At least that was the traditional consensus. The opinions diverged in the 70s with the discovery of anthropogenic abortion rights… or perhaps rites. Since then, we have engaged in sequestration of 1 in 6 carbon-based humanoid lifeforms in order to mitigate the perceived threat of global “ripping apart”.
Next press release from the Alarmists:
” Carbon Dioxide From Burning Fossil Fuels Speeds Cosmological Ripping ”
.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
So you say CO2 is the catalyst for the Big Rip, or RIP??
There is just no end to the proofs of universe destroying catastrophically adjusted anthropogenic global warming (CAAGW).
Only 22 billion years left, it’s worse than we thought….
Is that 22 billion years from now, or 22 billion years from The Big Bang (about 14 billion years ago)? I need to make plans…
I wonder how this works with the new research claiming the universe is a hologram. I have a feeling we are still and long, long way from understanding reality.
I understand reality very well.
It keeps taking cash out of my bank account.
Really?
Until “dark energy” is figured out, you really can’t make that prediction yet. Bottom line, there’s little difference between a big rip and the older theory of simple “heat death” — both end up w/a dearth of matter & energy. The heat death just takes longer.
That is exactly right.
We have to understand dark energy and dark matter (at least a little, if not completely) before one can make a theoretical prediction of what they do 100 trillion years in the future.
This is also the case for climate science. 100 years out? when we do not even understand what is really happening right now.
Predictions, experimentation, data confirms or not, replication over and over again until 100% sure. That is how we really understand the real universe and real physics (and anything else for that matter).
Well Bill you really hit it right on the button.
The reason some people think nothing is happening, is that they believe that the real universe is sitting and waiting for the “average” that it is supposed to respond too.
But the average was always some time in the past, so it is too late to react to it. So everything physically real happens right now; cause and effect are simultaneous, at least down to the shortest time scales we can currently measure (maybe atto-seconds).
So let’s not wait for the “Grim Ripper !”
I think I’ll go and get me a beer.
g >> G
I am uncomfortable with the “dark matter” theory. To me it sounds like a variation on the old “Luminous Ether” theory of the 1800’s. Of course, the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved the existence of luminous ether, but the idea seems to live on.
Ho, hum. Another theoretical, mathematical, sound-and-fury tour-de-force signifying…, er…, what??? It would be nice if the research funds allocated to such mental manipulations were allocated instead to solid, evidence-based science.
Excellent. As soon as all particles with non zero rest mass are ripped apart, time &. distance loses its meaning, because no clock can be constructed from massless radiation, so only conformal structure of spacetime is preserved. Therefore an exceedingly dilute &. cold universe, ripping apart, is equivalent to one just inflating from a hot dense state, that is, the Big Rip can be connected smoothly to a subsequent Big Bang. I believe Sir Roger Penrose had an idea like that.
However, one has to be careful with black holes. What happens to them during a Big Rip, specifically, what happens to their entropy?
For even a cyclic universe needs an efficient entropy sink, otherwise no arrow of time is possible.
How about that BP. After all that s*** happens, Maxwell /Hertz EM radiation still survives.
It is the Planckian black body notion that is the real BS.
They apparently just dissolve. Kinda anticlimatic for such lethal structures.
“Big Rip” or “Big Roar”?
Before the “Big Rip” I expect the “Big Roar” 2 Peter 3:10
Well there can’t be a “big roar” because nobody will be there to hear it, nor any compressible medium to conduct the sound waves.
george e. smioth Some will chose to then hear harps. Others will chose not to.
David,
I’m way late, but had a full weekend. Interestingly, the Greek word here for dissolved is the word luo, to loose. Implying that the uneducated Peter was predicting that the universe will end when the bonds that hold things together are dissolved. Serendipity with the above? Pure luck? Or advance knowledge?
pbh
The scientific method has been ripped from science, ending with men and women daydreaming while inferring images from the amorphous clouds floating above. The continuity and uniformity is breathtaking as they construct unicorns and castles in the sky.
That said, we “know” the universe began with spontaneous conception, and it will end with spontaneous eruption; but, we still don’t know or are not willing to publicly admit when human life begins. A paradox to occupy the dreamers’ day.
What is “you”? Where do “you” begin and “not-you” end?
There is an oxygen molecule just beyond your nose. It is clearly not “you”. You inhale, and it rushes into your nasal passages. At what point does it cease to be “not-you” and become “you”? Is it when it enters your bloodstream — or does it suffice to enter your airstream? Your mitochondria — those litle intracellular entities with their own, different from “yours”, genetic code: are those “you”?
We have problems with borders, edges and boundaries. Boundaries are needed to tell “this” from “that”, and we can (and do) get into fights as to whether the boundary itself is a part of “this” (since without the boundary, we would not be able to recognize “this”), or whether it is a part of “that” (for the reciprocal reason), or an entity unto itself, which begs the question of the boundary between the boundary and the thing(s) bounded.
We have problems with infinity, with imagining things (universe, time) with no end point — and yet, once we imagine a beginning or and end, we immediately wonder: what was before the beginning? what will be after the end? what is beyond the outer edge?
The ancient Greek Parmenides proved, logically, that change is impossible, and no thinker since then has been able to refute him — and yet change is an everyday experience.
The trick is that the world of discourse — whether in words or mathematical symbols — is, and shall ever be, different from the world.
“The ancient Greek Parmenides proved, logically, that change is impossible, and no thinker since then has been able to refute him — and yet change is an everyday experience.”
Aristotle for one. See: http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/change.html