Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

I can't find the first book you talked about, but I can easily get hold of Faster than the Speed of Light and the First Three Minutes. I'll take a look at them over the weekend and next week (it's the last week of the first half of semester this week).

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

The first one was wrongly titled as it is actually a paper,
tracked it down here.

I think the two books would be much more useful on average, depends on how you feel about pouring over the maths :)

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

its great stuff but hard to really grasp it. Our brains just can't imagine the extra dimensions and how they interact with our universe. Hell, most of us can't even fully understand the 4th dimension of time! Kinda like teaching algebra to a dog, right.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

l cant get that link to load necro ?
Did it work for you pedantic ?

Never mind my abode needed updating !

Fascinating read.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

I like this theory better. The whole big bang eventually reaching its limits and collapsing back in on itself destroying humanity with no hope of escape has never sat well with me.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

It's been 13-odd billion years and the universe is still going at a fair clip. If I were to bet on it, I'd say that we'd die out before the universe stops expanding.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

I agree, self-annihilation or some other form of extinction would almost seem guaranteed on that timescale .

However current observation suggest an accelerating rate of expansion, so not necessarily ending in the big crunch

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

l have a question for you Necrosect, how long do you think the human race can survive based on everything 'you' know about us and our universe ?

Some scientists believe, [ NASA documantries ] that humans could evolve to be a space bearing race and survive indefinately, so long as ''space time'' as we know it continues.
Some believe we cannot escape our planet.And cannot breed in space and never become space bearing as a race.
Some believe we may explore our solar system but cannot see how we can escape our solar system.
Some of the more exotic' minds suggest we could beat the distances of space and actually spawn the gallaxy possibly the universe.

l was wondering, since you are a scientist working on unlocking some of the universe's secrets what you actually thought, and do your college's at the place where you work, think similar to you in this regard ?

curious.

Its understood that the big bang is accellerated or accellerating, how does that work with light speed, isnt it expanding 'at' light speed, so if physical matter can expand faster than the speed of light, doesnt it open a pandoras box on our current laws of physic's ?
Or does expantion into nothing [ outside our universe ] change our law of physic's, allowing for a kind of ''one off'' event ?
Something we may never reproduce in an experiment.

To imagine for a minute, that humans beat the distances of space, and spawn the entire universe, and imagine the universe just expands forever, with no big crunch, at some point if everything [planets solars systems, gallaxies] is moving away from eachother at light speeds almost, or at light speed even, its really hard to imagine what any species could do at that point in time, to beat it.One could assume for all sentient life this would be the end of the universe as we know it, kind of like how we believe now that time as we know it started with the big bang.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

To be honest, my only honest reply can be "Your guess is as good as mine". My grounding in science is mainly based on physics, which I don't think gives me much insight into how long our species will survive. The best I can say is how long we "could" survive, i.e. how long would it be until we are definitely wiped out (based on our current understanding of astrophysical process). I can imagine some method for at least some humans escaping all but one scenario - the end of the universe (be it through collapse or heat death). Planetary destruction, the "death" of the sun, the collision of our galaxy - all of these I can imagine that by some (in one case, unlikely) method the human race could survive. However the end of the universe I cannot imagine a way around. This does not (obviously) mean that in some future (that I can't possibly predict) discoveries wouldn't allow us to get around this, speculatively one could say "artificial" universes may be created that would allow us to survive indefinitely. In this case no one can really predict how long we can survive, and anyone who tries to act like they have "good idea" about the statistics of it is talking out of their ass.

(for more details on the end of the universe: wiki: ultimate fate of the universe

One can speculate that we might wipe ourselves out, or that some extinction event may occur, however predicting these with any certainty of occurance is useless (as, IMO, is all "futurology" which for the purposes here I am defining as anything speculating on the long term behavior and occurances affecting the human race).

See above.

As I've said I believe speculating on future technological developments on this sort of time scale (more than 50 years hence) is futile at best.
Again, see above.


I would imagine most people (in my area) would agree with my interpretation above (and asking around a couple of people nearby this seems to be roughly true, give or take levels of certainty).


To save me waxing lyrical on relativity (as what you present is a common problem people imagine when dealing with relativity for the first time) I would look at Wiki:Metric Expansion of Space, particularly this

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia While special relativity constrains objects in the universe from moving faster than the speed of light with respect to each other, there is no such theoretical constraint when space itself is expanding. It is thus possible for two very distant objects to be moving away from each other at a speed greater than the speed of light (meaning that one cannot be observed from the other).

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

In other words there may be no limit to speed outside the known universe, with metric expantion.
My cells are getting bigger as we speak !

And the idea of artificial universe's is intreging.Havent seen that one on NASA.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

NASAs main interest is in space exploration and development, not theoretical cosmology nor particle physics (so to speak).

That's not what it says, the metric "defines" distance, so what is expansion is actually an increase in relative terms of what a given unit of distance is. Since speed is measured by these units you are still constrained by the speed of light, yes I know this is a bit of a head$@^! but unfortunately that's relativity.

Basically space is "allowed" to expand "faster" than light as technically it's not doing any travelling. I think the balloon analogy works here. Imagine inflating a balloon - the surface can expand at ANY speed as it stretches, however things living on the surface may only travel at a certain maximum speed. Maybe that helps.

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

So the balloons edge is expanding faster than light itself, everything in the balloon is limited to a speed under that of light and its waves, and l come back to, the edge of the balloon is matter, travelling into the unknown at over light speeds ?
Isnt that matter, even if unrestricted by our universe's laws, moving faster than light at the edge ?
And isnt the expantion effect, in effect undetectable, as all particals expand at the same rate.
So in effect it could be several times the speed of light, we just cannot test to tell what the expantion rate is properly ?
Are these two things not seperate things ?
l assumed that expantion didnt have an effect on our speeds because everything is expanding at the same rate, and we dont see it because of this.
Our universe being a bubble still expanding, and from what we can tell faster and faster, if the edge can beat light speeds, one would then assume an utter mother CRAP LOAD of dark energy yet unseen out there.
omg, the GOD partical popped into my head !

lm used to seeing explosions inside our universe, they have alot of unseen energy released, expand and dissipate, the particals inside the explosion dont expand expedentually, but the edge of the explosion, if we take a nuke for exsample, will expand rapidly [shock wave] and roughtly 3/4 through the explosion the energy will start to dissipate.
The big bang, an explosion, expanding into nothing has no restrictions, that we can see anyway, how can we tell if our matter/particals are actually getting bigger metrically or if they are travelling at beyond light speeds ? All theory ?

Yes relative ! no relativity ! LOL ! Time expantion along a metric dimention, only moving in one direction.l grasp it, just find it mindboggling !

Re: Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.
 

Bump.

The nature of the universe: Ye cannae change the laws of physics | The Economist

I'd never heard of the fine-structure constant before, but given the terms used to make up a are all constants themselves, if a is variable across space then that means at least one of those constants would have to change too.