Universe May Be Running Out of Time 343
RenHoek writes "With heat death, the big crunch and quite a few other nasty ways in which the universe could see its demise, we can now add "running out of time" to the list. A team of scientists came up with a new theory that would solve the problem of the elusive dark energy that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe. They figure that the universe is not speeding up but we are, in relation to the outer regions of space, slowing down. Tests with the upcoming Large Hadron Collider will give more insight if we're going to end up frozen in time."
last post! (Score:5, Funny)
Ha, you only think this is offtopic!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
You should keep watching it...it's an entirely different
Re: (Score:2)
Re:last post! (Score:5, Funny)
Time ... (Score:5, Funny)
CC.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Time ... (Score:4, Funny)
actually we're in a time loop already (Score:3, Informative)
ManBearPig! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:ManBearPig! (Score:4, Funny)
EXCELSIOR!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:EXCELSIOR!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, that's the funny part of it. He can only actually get recognition if he fails.
If the environmentalists are successful, then nothing will happen.
It's like the Y2K bug: All those people working to ensure that nothing happens. So when in Y2K, nothing happened, the general response was "huh, guess there never was a problem after all."
Can we stop it? (Score:2)
I need a beer.
Add to that (Score:2)
Will time run out before then?
Re:Add to that (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can we stop it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it could do anything (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it could also flip us all upside down and turn everything a light salmon color!
Note to self: Patent method for garnering scientific celebrity. Come up with outlandish theory, then claim that LHC will move it to the mainstream.
Er... wha? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And after the beginning came the heaven and the earth. And it was good.
And after the heaven and the earth there was no time.
And after there was no time there was neither after nor beginning.
There was nothing, which exploded.
event horizon (Score:4, Funny)
kinda freakin' me out here people, if time slows down too much, it'll be 2:45 Friday afternoon forever!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At this rate, we'll never get to go home
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point.. would you rather it be 2:45 Friday afternoon forever or 8:30 AM Monday morning?
time? (Score:2)
how many billions of years are we talking about?
should we (with our tiny lifespans) care whether the universe flies apart into nothingness or crushes itself?
dont we have more pressing issues as humanity to worry about (take a pick: global warming, george bush, global recession, peak oil)?
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps there would be relief from the perceived pressure if humanity would overcome anthropocentrism on a much broader scale than already suggested by some, and maybe cosmology helps to attain that.
CC.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
3d Realms call to action (Score:5, Funny)
Read the last line of the article first (Score:2, Interesting)
"If that happens, then these kind of theories will move out of the realm of speculation and into the mainstream."
There are a gazillion of these unsupported hunches out there, believe which ever one you want. Physics has become the domain of science fiction authors.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Read the last line of the article first (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you need to educate yourself on what science, precisely, is. If this is a legitimate hypothesis with a legitimate experiment to test it, then there's absolutely nothing unscientific about it, whether you think it sounds outlandish or not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't believe me subscribe to new scientist for a while. Every issue a new multi dimensional theory that could help to explain some feature of the universe but can only be proved/disproved at energies th
Time for Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's... (Score:4, Funny)
Wait... (Score:2)
and Bill Gates.... (Score:2)
Time better not stop yet! (Score:5, Funny)
Great! Just Great!
My daughter is due early May 2008... not sure what would be worse.. my wife stuck forever pregnant, baby (diapers), or her as a teenager!
You'd never know (Score:2, Interesting)
A big stretch (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again I only took one entry level university class on the whole thing so I don't think that qualifies me. I just like to think of apposing theories
Expansion, and then contraction (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other side of the balance are the black holes, which suck in energy and condense it into a singularity, which has mass. More light falls into the hole, the more massive the hole gets, the more space it sucks in, the more it shrinks the universe. At our current point in the cycle there are more stars than there are black holes, so the universe expands at an accelerating rate. As stars burn out and become black holes the expansion will slow and eventually reverse as all the radiation eventually finds its way back into a black hole. Black holes coalesce and the larger ones can explode, creating material for star formation, thus continuing the cycle. See? No mysterious dark energy is needed; only basic physics.
Run out of time? (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Babylon 5 quote (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone else notice? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think Freud had an opinion on this.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tempting Fate (Score:2)
This reminds me that at the time of the first atomic bomb test, there was concern that it might ca
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_(2006_film) [wikipedia.org]
Failure of Context (Score:5, Interesting)
If time slows down, we slow down with it, and we don't notice because everything looks normal. This is precisely the gedankenexperiment of the moving train. If you can't handle the relativity, read some science fiction that uses it, such as Tau Zero (the ship can't stop accelerating and ends up crossing the entire universe and watching the big crunch and next big bang) or the Heechee stories (where the guy leaves the rest of his crew trapped around a black hole, and they're recovered decades later, havening spent weeks waiting).
To have an absolutely 0 tau would require a completely flat universe. As long as any matter and/or energy (dark or light) exists, this is impossible. The rate may approach 0 but cannot achieve it. Thus, there will always be duration, and we will experience it just as we do now.
Time could be speeding up and slowing down right now, like a lead foot motorist stuck in a traffic jam. We'd never notice because we're stuck in it, no matter what its rate is, like a passenger in said vehicle that can't see outside (minus the inertial effects, because we're talking the universe here, not a locally observable phenomenon).
The same argument applies to "the universe is expanding". We couldn't detect that either, because we're embedded in space time. We'd expand too. All we can see is the supposed effects of previous expansion, that of Hubble red shift. Try the dots-on-the-balloon experiment. The dots get farther apart. But the distance between them as measured by the size of a dot remains constant.
It's the same argument because time and space are integrated as space-time. It's essentially the inability to get outside a frame of reference known as "universe".
Whenever I see one of these goofy assertion articles, I hope for a summary of the math. These goofy results must be arrived at due to an error in assumption. Such an error, if considered to be a valid point, may be just the error that prevents us from integrating gravity with the other forces, and so illuminating and fixing that error could be a major step in theoretical physics.
time to buy a hybrid watch (Score:2)
What did McKay do this time?? (Score:2)
or did they star messing with the ANCIENT TIME-LOOP DEVICE again?
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... did McKay ever actually use a time dilation field? SG1 did on the replicator planet when the first human-forms were introduced, thanks to the Asgard... and then Carter did it again in the final episode of the series (time dilation field, blew up a star, tell me she's not the most dangerous woman in the history of sci-fi!), but I don't recall McKay ever doing one (doing one? initiating one? setting one off? How exactly *does* one state it when someone is responsible
Re: (Score:2)
Splitting hairs I suppose... if one can build a device to go back in time at all it's probably a little over-the-top to criticize if it doesn't work *quite* right!
Vinge's a genius (Score:2)
We're moving out of the Slow Zone.
If there was ever a SF plot device I wished was true, that's was it.
Speed of light slowing down? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy ... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm also slightly disturbed by the fact that you copied your post paragraph verbatim from http://www.khouse.org/articles/1995/58/ [khouse.org], a web site that has as its mission statement, "To create, develop, and distribute materials to stimulate, encourage, and facilitate serious study of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God." Probably not the best source for a discussion of theoretical physics, methinks
Let's all concentrate... (Score:3, Funny)
Wake-up Call (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps something corn-based.
Outa Time (Score:2)
Fundamental error (Score:4, Funny)
When you account for this 1:4 ratio, the extra dark energy drops out of the equations, and the universe does not collapse into an academic singularity, but into four nodes, two major and two minor! The academic community will not teach this because it is brainwashing.
(Actually, I just really want this story to have the Time Cube metatag.)
But there are more than four time zones (Score:3, Interesting)
Their calculations are off because they are educated to be evil, and fail to appreciate that each day is actually four days long!.
I tried to understand what the Time Cube page meant by four days in one, where it is simultaneously morning, noon, evening, and night. And then it hit me: he's talking about time zones. In the Time Cube world, each day has a 24-hour day for each of the four non-polar faces of the cube, with time zones spaced six hours apart. But there are a lot more than four time zones [wikipedia.org] on this planet.
Absolute Zero (Score:2)
preprint (Score:4)
A preprint of the paper is available from arxiv.org [arxiv.org].
The general idea seems to be this. We observe that distant galaxies have an anomalously low redshift relative to the expectations of the linear Hubble relation, and we interpret this as evidence that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating. General relativity allows you to interpret a redshift as a difference in the rate of passage of time, so then an anomalously low redshift correponds to an anomalously low rate of passage of time, for us, compared to the distant galaxies, which were in the ancient universe where time was passing more quickly.
A couple of things leave me scratching my head:
Infinite universe after all? (Score:3, Interesting)
An astronaut falling toward a black hole (assuming for the sake of argument that he does not get torn apart by tidal forces) perceives that it actually takes forever to fall into the black hole. Externally we would seem him slow down and then stop at the even horizon, but this "stop" is merely the curve receding into infinity, so that further increments are so small we cannot see them. But the astronaut's subjective time becomes infinite.
So if time is slowing down locally, I guess that means in a few billion years we'll all be living in a static (albeit smaller) universe that goes on forever.
the Doctor said it all (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:We'll have to rethink everything (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity [wikipedia.org]
"Although special relativity makes some quantities relative, such as time, that we would have imagined to be absolute based on everyday experience, it also makes absolute some others that were thought to be relative."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
er...define 'constant'... (Score:5, Insightful)
But how can you measure the "rate" at which time itself is changing? If "change in time" (dt) is going to go in the numerator, what will go in the denominator? Can't be dt, of course. So how do you define the "rate" at which time changes? I can't think of anything. It's like asking the price of money. "Price" means "how much you get per unit money." You can't ask how much money you get per unit money. (Note to nitpickers: the price of currency, e.g. the price of dollars in drachma, is not a valid counterexample.)
I'm sure the physics makes sense, but the language in this news article does not. If anyone knows what the actual science is, I at least would be grateful for a better explanation than this news article provides. Anyone?
Re:er...define 'constant'... (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA, please (Score:3, Interesting)
Having actually read the linked article, it's funnier. What it seems to actually say is that the time of the whole universe runs slower now, than it ran some billion years ago. It's not "dt(here)/dt(there)", but "dt(now)/dt(back-then)". If that makes any sense.
Let's say we look at the light of a star, some 5 billion light years away. The important thing there i
Re:er...define 'constant'... (Score:5, Funny)
Try to visualize this using kettles. The easiest way to slow the progress of time is to watch a kettle while it boils. If that analogy doesn't work for you, you can get a similar effect by boiling an egg or visiting a proctologist.
In order to replicate the study, you start with a single kettle (today) and then progressively add more kettles until the universe is composed entirely of kettles boiling water (end time). Kettles all the way down, as it were.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:er...define 'constant'... (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't a new concept. Someone's just come up with a new theory to support the concept. This may just be another way of viewing the oft proposed heat death of the universe due to entropy.
Stephen Hawkin amongst others has explained this before. In short, time as we know it didn't exist before the Big Bang. During the inflationary period of the Big Bang time was probably faster than we observe it today. Currently time has stablised somewhat but is probably slowing due to the expansion of the universe.
All this suggests that time may be intertwined with space and now we're back to Einstein's space time continuum. This is one of consequences of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Me? I'm going to hide under a rock with a case of beer until this all blows over.
Re: (Score:2)
I like your example, and agree completely, but this is Slashdot so I have to nitpick.
The price of money is the interest rate. If I want some more money, to buy a house or something, the interest rate represents how much money that money will cost me. Unsurprisingly, interest rates are impacted by supply and demand (of money), just like other goods. (Of course, interest rates are also affected by other things, like the Fed deciding it wants them to be higher or lower, but supply and demand plays a big r
Re: (Score:2)
Re:er...define 'constant'... (Score:4, Insightful)
First, imagine time can be described in term of space, that is perhaps 1 second = 1 meter. Now as you move through just the time axis you take a measurement with a piece of string, say to about 0.5m, then you keep going down the time axis for a bit and you take another measurement with another piece of string to 0.5m again. Then you compare the string lengths, the second would be shorter if this theory were correct.
Okay, that first one doesn't make a whole lot of sense so let's move on! Consider Spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold [wikipedia.org]. Now consider the metric [wikipedia.org] on this space, at least the time portion of it, as tending to zero as t->infinity. That is the distance between points shrinks on the t-axis*.
That may not be the best of explanations but hopefully that helps a bit. My second example is very colloquial, I'm not a physicist so this is just how I can picture it =P.
*For an example of a Non-Euclidean Metric check out The Riemann Sphere. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Once you understand that "time" is itself a relative term, i.e. observer-dependent, it isn't terribly hard to take any one "dt" and put it into the numerator and some other "dT" and put it into the denominator. Obvious choices that pop up in GR textbooks all over the place might include co-moving (i.e. "proper") time vs "time as seen by an outside observer".
Note that even in simple vanilla special relativity people speak of "time slowing down" for fast-moving objects. What they mean is that a pion that is
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately you cannot just "fill up" on time, however you can stop wasting time and look into saving what time you have. May I suggest that there's no better place to save it than at the Timesaving Bank [wikipedia.org].
Re:Running out of time (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No time to lose?
No! Time to lose!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:So we are becomming a black hole? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, then, I'll cheer you up. It turns out that running out of time is the one way to ensure that the universe will never see its demise. Think of heat death as like the universe dying of asphyxiation. Running out of time is like dying in your sleep. Better, it's like going to bed and never bothering to wak