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

[Mr. Pedantic]

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).

[Showd0wN]

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

[fungames]

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.

[jackripped]

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

Never mind my abode needed updating !

Fascinating read.

[Red Menace]

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.

[Mr. Pedantic]

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.

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.

[Showd0wN]

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

[jackripped]

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.

[Showd0wN]

Originally Posted by jackripped

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 ?

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).

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.

See above.

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.

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.

Some of the more exotic' minds suggest we could beat the distances of space and actually spawn the gallaxy possibly the universe.

Again, see above.

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 ?

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).

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 ?

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

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).

[jackripped]

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.