New Universes Will be Born from Ours 440
David Shiga writes "What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now, scientists have combined these two ideas to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces. Each shard would then subsequently grow into a whole new universe. The model could solve the mystery of why our early universe was surprisingly well ordered."
Re:as is says in prophecy... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Evidence (Score:5, Informative)
This scenario is explored in more detail here [ucr.edu].
However, it's possible that the dark energy is dynamical instead of constant, and so the expansion of the universe could accelerate or possibly even reverse and decelerate. With enough deceleration, a Big Crunch is still feasible. There are also the scenarios in which our universe spawns new "universes", such as the one discussed here.
The paper (Score:5, Informative)
DO NOT READ PARENT, CONTAINS SPOILER!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mystery (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mystery (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mystery (Score:3, Informative)
Also, I could modify that last line of yours to say that majority of the religious community used to believe (and some members STILL believe) that the Earth is flat. Based on your post, I should say that you should believe the Earth is flat, too. It says so in your Bible.
No, wait, you're an idiot (Score:3, Informative)
Not the adjective 'hyperbolic' as in 'exaggerated'. It's called 'hyperbolic' cause it's related to hyperbolas.
Re:Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
See the Big Rip paper [arxiv.org], page 2.
Re:Evidence (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Evidence (Score:2, Informative)
Big bang has the most support over alternatives like steady state - which evidently still has some adherents - apparently like halton arp.
Despite being the most supported, there seem to be more kludges and band-aids on the theory than seems reasonable. The latest is that apparently, we're accelerating rather than slowing down. That's an experimental observation based upon supernovae intensity - which like most other things - can have alternative causes.
What's worse, it seems that searching for star trek solutions is more lucrative than for more mundane ones. Hence, what is called dark matter is now primarily exotic new previously undiscovered phenomenon - rather than regular matter not radiating. It's very much the same sort of thing as lawyers seeking to establish precendent with new laws rather to gain a reputition rather using existing laws that have all the precedents taken care of and it's merely making use of it.
One of the most recent 'proof' or 'evidence' of dark matter is a photo that surfaced recently showing gravitaiton lensing concentrated around a galaxy colision where the visible gas clouds had been swept out and were located elsewhere. The obvious conclusion was that since the gas was moved, all the matter was swept out of the area, leaving only mysterious dark matter. While gas can tend to be swept out, it doesn't happen to larger bodies like planet type bodies (or primordial fog particles). Perhaps such things are quite mysterious as they are unknown - but it doesn't necessarily mean they are made from something exotic or mysterious.
Like most things nowadays, a healthy dose of skepticism should be in order. Certainty is only for religions.
If there really is an acceleration of separation in the universe, then it would imply that the universe will die spread out and dark. However, considering that there isn't a real cause known for such an event - it means we don't know enough to have a clue what will happen in future and perhaps we are clueless as to what happened in the distance past. It might even mean we are back to square one for the infinitely large and the ultra small.
Some things seem to imply that all of space and time is totally connected turning things into a jumbled knot.
Considering that some quasars show as many as 13 or so different red shifted renditions of absorption lines - it just might be possible that there's a lotta stuff out there that just isn't glowing - and hence is dark matter.
Despite the apparent preponderence of evidence (note that a general agreement of scientists cannot be proof of anything)which points to the big bang, that doesn't mean the steady state theory is totally gone. Arp may be virtually the last high powered holdout, but being the last one doesn't guarantee that he is wrong or the multitude is right. And, it wouldn't be the first time such a serious swapover has happened. The earth centered cosmology competed and dominated the sun centered cosmology for over a thousand years, providing superior predictive power and showing more promise than the sun centered which even suffered from a negative result experiment that seemed to actually falsify it (failure to find parallax in any of the fixed stars). It was only later that in the midst of a religious battle between a sun worshipping cult and the catholic church that scientists actually started to determine that despite its successes, that perhaps the greatest philospher of all time was in error, the catholic church screwed up taking a position on the wrong side of reality and that the whack-job sun worshippers were actually right about the sun being the center of the universe - at least as understood at that time. It was only duringthe 20th century that it started to become evident that the totality of all things was more than just the milky way.
Re:Depends on what your definition of a universe i (Score:3, Informative)
Since they are receding at 100% of c, you'll never see them; their light cannot ever catch up to us: we are (relative to them) moving away from them at the speed of light and since neither can go faster than c, whatever distance separates us can never be crossed, it is infinite: no matter how long you travel at c, you get no closer.
This is the same reason we see galaxies receding from us at nearly c; if they were red-shifted any more (receding at c), they would be outside our light cone and invisible in every sense. They would not exist as far as we are concerned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_