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."
Please... (Score:5, Funny)
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It used to be that metaphysicians were physicists with a massive inferiority complex. But now it seems that the physicists have decided to become metaphysicians. It would be as if all of a sudden all other engineering students decided they would like nothing other than to become Civil Engineers. Sound likely to you? Me either.
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Re:Please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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One single, three-letter word is all we need to answer this question, no models necessary: "GOD."
I don't understand why we need to make up so many other ideas.
Yeah, why have science at all?
"Why is there lightning?" "God did it."
"How did mountains form?" "God did it."
"Why do massive bodies attract each other?" "God did it."
"How do cells reproduce?" "God did it."
"Why is there disease?" "God did it."
Who needs those complicated science models. Three words, no models necessary: "God"
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Because every scientist is a human being first. Why toil to understand the coils and springs of the universe if life has no purpose? Why inquire? Why even eat or breathe? Rocks and trees don't need a reason to exist. They simply do. Humans need a reason to get out of bed in the morning, because out ongoing existence is a daily choice. We are wired to require greater meaning, whether it exists or not
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So make meaning in life. Even the most fundamental christians believe in free will, so they all pretty much s
Re:Please... (Score:4, Insightful)
Who says there's a meaning to life? We want there to be one. Doesn't mean there is one. The fundamental purpose in life can be summed up thusly: "Successfully reproduce before something eats you". Do that and you've done what you are here for. Now, we as human beings can add more to that. We can, because of our intelligence, give our lives a "greater" purpose. What that purpose is is up to each of us as individuals. If you want your life to be spent helping those less fortunate than yourself do it. If you want your life to be spent eating as many donuts as you can go for it. It's your life to fritter away im whatever way suits you best.
The chances are better for random chance than for God. We have proof the universe exists. We can see it, smell it, measure it, predict its behavior, etc... We can do none of these things for God. Add to this the fact that all previous religions and gods in history are mere myths and the chances of God being real drops even lower. Why is the current myth any more real than the previous ones? Other than you were raised to believe in this one?
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The fundamental purpose in life can be summed up thusly: "Successfully reproduce before something eats you". Do that and you've done what you are here for.
Even in denying that life has meaning, you have difficulty escaping from teleology. From a naturalistic/Darwinist perspective, it's a mistake to claim that reproducing is our "purpose." The genes and behaviors we have as a result of natural selection just are. There's no purpose. The purposes we make up for ourselves don't fare any better. They are just an illusion created by our grey matter. Living for them is as silly as believing in real meaning.
As for the rest of your post:
1. "The chances are be
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Maybe if you started using English words normally you wouldn't be so confused. As it is, you're just jumbling words together. Let me start with "meaning of life". What could that possibly mean? I understand what it means to say "what is the meaning of this word?" 'Meaning' makes perfect sense when talking abount communications. But what does it mean to ask for the meaning of life? Unless you're asking for the meaning of the word 'lif
Re:Please... (Score:5, Funny)
What are the other two words?
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This is so you would understand that the food you eat (that rains help grow) comes from someone that can turn night into day (lighting) and make you shake in your boots (thunder).
"How did mountains form?" "God did it."
This it signify to you that someone can build things that are bigger than you can build.
"Why do massive bodies attract each other?" "God did it."
This is so you would understand that there is a relationship between EVERY part of this world to antoher.
"How
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Questions of this scale are just too big for faith OR science, I think.
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.
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For example, I know I am going to be disliked for saying it, but the theory of evolution is full of this very thing. It is a non-reproducible theory which is called "science".
That is, of course, completely absurd. It is a highly explanatory theory which has been extensively tested for over a hundred years. Its predictions are far more detailed than "time and chance did it", and far more successful.
But to point out its flaws publicly means far le$$ grant money and ridicule.
Scientists point out flaws in evolutionary theory every day. They get more money for doing so. It leads to improved versions of evolution. The ones who are ridiculed are the creationist idiots who claim that evolution has been falsified.
Meanwhile, anything that happens to overlap religion is instantly "not science"
Evolution and Big Bang cosmology arguabl
Re:It is sad that physics has been taken over by h (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care about the spam or about how blantanly bad your posts smell of a marketing .
I care about your mental health. Usually spammers and scammers stand to gain from their activities. That's not the case with you. I suspect that you simply are mad.
So
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Here's how we can define it:
"The fourth dimension is expanding rleative to the three spatial dimensions."
What laws or axioms or postulates has the above statement violated?
None that I can see.
What the author seems to be saying is that time is an emergent property of this underlying physical reality, which they then use to unify seemingly disparate physical phenomena.
"The fourth dimension is expanding rleative to the
I was going to write something insightful . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Just think, if only one percent of those billions of new universes repeat our time-stream, this joyous moment will be repeated . . .
whoa, they maple bars this morning. I'm out of here. Priorities . . .
Procrastinator's Dream (Score:2)
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I like Isaac Asimov 's interpretation better.... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~mlindsey/asimov/question
Brilliant analogy (Score:2)
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1. You provide no examples.
2. "Quite close" is subjective, and therefore a useless metric of success.
3. Even if you did provide several strong existing examples, it would say absolutely nothing about the accuracy of this particular Asimov short story.
The only reason people want to daydream about how accurate this particular short story could be is because they hold their own intelligence to be an object of personal vanity.
And not that it matters, but here are a few science fiction pieces that were way
Re:I like Isaac Asimov 's interpretation better... (Score:3, Insightful)
I do wonder though: How did the very first one occur? If this universe is from the last one, then there must have been a first one somewhere.
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I do wonder though: How did the very first one occur? If this universe is from the last one, then there must have been a first one somewhere.
No, there doesn't have to be a first one. It's perfectly possible for there to have been an infinite series of previous ones.
In fact, if you accept that something can't come from nothing, then the very notion of a first one at all
First Causes and Infinite Serieses (Score:3, Insightful)
Either something can come from nothing (good luck with proving that) or something comes from something (good luck proving that too). And in the latter case, if something is only possible from something then something can't exist; it's a paradox.
You're right that we can't prove either way whether it's possible for something to come from nothing - it's just a generally accepted premise. I'm not aware of anyone who has seriously doubted it. The closest I can think of is
Re:I like Isaac Asimov 's interpretation better... (Score:2)
Asimov writes:
"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."
100% incorrect. Stars are born right now that will last billions of years longer than the sun. Stars don't die out all at the same time.
DO NOT READ PARENT, CONTAINS SPOILER!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Black Hole Suck (Score:4, Funny)
And no, that wasn't a Spaceballs reference!
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My universe was ripped apart..... (Score:5, Funny)
Baby come back!! No more dark matter - I promise you a Big Bang this time!
Bah humbug (Score:5, Funny)
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Lugwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [uni-heidelberg.de]
The question is how to let thoughts seem to be reality, though.
CC.
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Quick... (Score:2)
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Hopefully (Score:5, Funny)
Possible (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah, i'm just about willing to believe anything right now.
The Hobo-verse (Score:5, Funny)
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Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank you,
-CGP [colingregorypalmer.net]
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.
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But, describing the start of the universe as a singularity in the same sense as a black hole is somewhat missleading, in a black hole, matter is effectively point like, warping space around it but leaving most of that space essentially empty. In the Big Bang 'singularity', matter is uniformly* distributed in a point like space.
* That it was almost perfectly uniform while containing som
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Imagine a submersed mine in the ocean going boom. It blows, and all the gases in it expand out to create a "bubble". That bubble created by the big bang is our space/time.
Now, the underlying question remains, WHY? By what mechanics did a completely random explosion create wh
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Assuming the big bang/crunch theory is correct and (here's the unlikely bit) time and space are not relative (unlikely I know) what are our odds of ever being able to detect the preceding receeding universe "shells".
We can't; they're forever outside of our causal horizon. The best we can do is find indirect evidence for them (e.g., a dark energy theory, verified by cosmological observations, which has these "causal patches" as a predicted but unobservable side effect ).
Final stupid question, with the constant speed of light providing an indication of a "stopped" position in space is the centre of the known universe stationary or moving?
There is no center of the universe. (See this FAQ [ucla.edu].)
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Why is the universe {insert idea here}? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is frequently used to support the idea of divine intervention.
If you ask such a question or make such an observation, you have to remember:
The fact that we are here to observe it greatly restricts the possibilities, so what seems like "long odds" isn't long odds after all.
To put it another way:
If you play in the Superbowl and win, and your friends congratulate you, you don't say "What are the odds of my friends congratulating me for winning the Superbowl? There are 300,000,000 million Americans and only a few dozen have friends who congratulated them for winning the 2007 Super Bowl. That is rare, this is proof of divine intervention in my life."
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The fact that we are here to observe it greatly restricts the possibilities, so what seems like "long odds" isn't long odds after all."
actually it was extremly long odds over a very long time.
The fact that it happened doesn't mean ther odd were long.
If you have a 1 in 80,000,000 chance of getting the winning lottery numbers and you get them, your odds were still 1 in 80,000,000.
Inversely proportional to the number of Americans. (Score:3, Funny)
The correct analogy would involve you having no idea whether other Americans exist, but thinking: "Hmm, the more Americans there were, the lower the lik
Alien language (Score:5, Funny)
The paper (Score:5, Informative)
Engrish? (Score:4, Funny)
Creation vs Big Bang (Score:2, Funny)
I call it the "Big Burrito" theory.
Details forthcoming after lunch....
yeah.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well-ordered? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The model could solve the mystery of why our early universe was surprisingly well ordered.
Not really - you've just pushed the problem back one level. Where did the well-ordered universe shards that made this universe come from? It can't be "turtles all the way down"
Depends on what your definition of a universe is (Score:5, Interesting)
If parts of our universe started out in the same singularity as us but are now outside of our light-cone, then they are in effect physically separate from us, so that places them in a different universe, doesn't it? If they are outside our light-cone, and can no longer affect us, then they are not in our universe anymore but since they still exist, I think you have to consider them as being in a different universe.
Of course it means they have to be outside of our entire universe's light-cone...
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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
Newborn universes (Score:2)
What, our universe gives its life up so another can be born, and we don't even get to name it?
New Universes, eh? (Score:2)
The mormons were right?!?! (Score:2)
confound it (Score:2)
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IT is just a model, when they lok at it closer they will find that it doesn't account for some thing and discard it, or they will be able to use it to make predection, it which case it won't be discarded unless something better comes along.
FSM is a modern day version of the teapot analogy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot [wikipedia.org]
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Re:as is says in prophecy... (Score:4, Interesting)
It was originally written in hebrew. Guess what? It's still read in hebrew.
I may not follow the jewish religion spiritually or even traditionally...but I still feel we have the holy text that is closest to what how it was originally written...
That doesn't explain why using electricity on shabbat is considered work but walking five miles because you aren't supposed to drive is NOT considered work. Fuck that.
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Tennyson!
Excuse me, Lord Tennis-ball's son.
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Its not mythology.
Explain to me the cosmic background radiation, the galaxy redshift, the decrease of the alpha constant... the big bang theory has explanations for these.
You are yet another one of the persons who falsely believe that science deals with truths. Guess what: SCIENCE DOES NOT DEAL WITH TRUTHS. It deals with MODELS, called "theories". No one claims that the big bang is "the truth". It is the best thing we have, however, since it explains most phenomena. Your jain stuff has to be verifiab
explanation (Score:2)
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- the background radiation's homogeneity
- why the redshift is so uniform, e.g. why galaxies seem to be moving away from one another
Note that these are also the main reasons why steady state theories are dismissed.
occam's razor (Score:3, Insightful)
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why it is expanding: (Score:2)
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I suppose that ambulances could be altering the pitches of their sirens as they drive by to provide the illusion of a doppler effect. As well as the satellites that I've listened to changing in transmit frequency as they fly ove
that's bizarre (Score:2)
in other words, using your rationale, i see the big bang as suspect, the more bizarre answer, not the simpler one
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--Jeremy
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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 s
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http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/is/11.html#12 [skepticsan...dbible.com]
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/dan/4.html#10 [skepticsan...dbible.com]
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intelligent design is not a theory (Score:3, Insightful)
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Hoyle's theory postulated that hydrogen atoms appeared in the gaps between galaxies at just sufficient rate to keep the universal density constant. That was consistent with what was known at the time, but even Hoyle gave it up in the face of evidence for the Big Bang. This theory is very different.
OTOH, variations of t
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The word delegate means different things to a security guard at the UN, and a C# programmer.
Re:for the future! (Score:5, Funny)
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Or not.