The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart 231
KentuckyFC writes Revolutions in science often come from the study of seemingly unresolvable paradoxes. So an interesting exercise is to list the paradoxes associated with current ideas in science. One cosmologist has done just that by exploring the paradoxes associated with well-established ideas and observations about the structure and origin of the universe. Perhaps the most dramatic of these paradoxes comes from the idea that the universe must be expanding. What's curious about this expansion is that space, and the vacuum associated with it, must somehow be created in this process. And yet nobody knows how this can occur. What's more, there is an energy associated with any given volume of the universe. If that volume increases, the inescapable conclusion is that the energy must increase as well. So much for conservation of energy. And even the amount of energy associated with the vacuum is a puzzle with different calculations contradicting each other by 120 orders of magnitude. Clearly, anybody who can resolve these problems has a bright future in science but may also end up tearing modern cosmology apart.
"inescapable conclusion" (Score:2, Insightful)
> What's more, there is an energy associated with any given volume of the universe. If that volume increases, the inescapable conclusion is that the energy must increase as well. So much for conservation of energy.
???
Why cant the energy just be less dense?
Re:"inescapable conclusion" (Score:5, Informative)
The vacuum seems to have energy, so if space itself expands, the vacuum left has to either not have any energy whatsoever or drain the energy from nearby space. And since the energy of the vacuum seems to be constant, the conclusion is that the expansion is creating vacuum with its own energy
Seems... facile (Score:3)
How can we definitively tell if the vacuum over there has the same energy density as the vacuum over here?
Further, how can we tell if the energy we think we find in vacuum here isn't energy that arises from particulate contamination? Or, for that matter (ha) is coming from somewhere else? Has someone managed to (a) create a perfect vacuum and (b) measure its energy and (c) determine that whatever was measured as appearing at X, definitely hadn't disappeared from all the possible Ys? Somehow, I doubt it. If
Re:Seems... facile (Score:4, Informative)
How can we definitively tell if the vacuum over there has the same energy density as the vacuum over here?
Measurements of expansion rate from distances and from the CMB closely match models that have a constant energy density per unit volume. That is about as simple as it gets for the moment. Until there is good justification for why we would expect the energy to be different at different places, whether from large scale measurements, or theories about small scale things like QFT, there is no basis to assume things are different. But there is always the possibility things are more complicated than they seem.
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Re:Seems... facile (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAP, but my admittedly also very shallow understanding, is that when we're talking about the energy of the "vaccuum", we mean "energy associated with space itself".
A vaccuum is typically defined by the absence of matter in a volume of space (but not necessarily light or other energy). But let's exclude those too - there is no matter or electromagnetic radiation at all.
Even with those exclusions, at a fundamental level space appears to be a seething maelstrom of quantum particles popping in and out of existence. There seems to be some energy associated with "empty" space.
Some people posit that the vaccuum (i.e. space as we know it) may be "unstable" - that the particular energy it possesses could be lower than it is - and that we're just caught on a local bump in the energy landscape. If the vaccuum ever "fell off" that bump to a lower level, it would apparently spread at the speed of light across the entire universe from wherever it started, destroying everything that currently exists, and leaving behind... I don't know what. More vaccuum, but with a much lower energy associated with it, and with lots of new matter and energy created by the release of the vaccuum energy. Probably.
Anway, happy for a real physicist to correct me on some or all of the above - that's just my very lay understanding of what is meant by vaccuum energy.
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Re:Seems... facile (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't assume that everything everywhere behaves the same. You can't assume that energy drawn from one location will show up as a deficit in another (you find running water in the street's gutter... you learn Joe's pool is draining. Assuming Mark's pool is also draining doesn't follow.) You can't measure anywhere but (very) locally, which also means you can only measure data very near temporally -- and so you really have no bloody idea what is going on without resting your conclusion on assumptions made entirely free of supporting data.
What you're claiming is equivalent to saying you know exactly what's going on on a planet orbiting some star in Andromeda because you've done some observations as to what is going on here. Evidence is utterly insufficient to your claim.
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Yes, I do. Because we have no such evidence; we can't make the measurements it would take to get said evidence.
You are confusing assumption with evidence. They are not the same.
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You have not refuted any point I made.
What is the energy level of a cubic foot of space exactly 1 light year past the furthest star on a line directly away from us that is still technically in Andromeda? Presuming you could supply that information (you can't) can you assure me that said cubic foot is in no way contributing to the particular flux of a cubic foot of space one light year the other way? (you can't.)
So the delusion you're carrying around that you know what's going on and are able to definitively
Re:Seems... facile (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also no evidence that energy is being created.
This!
Given how quantum non-locality appears to work, we can in some cases be forced to consider that the energy in question is distributed until it becomes "not distributed" by some process that collapse it's superposition. Examination by most physical measurement processes does this.
Even though Einstein abhorred the implications of quantum theory, his own general approach to working out relativistic theory stands, which is to base our examinations of the universe on 2 things:
1- That which we observe and can confirm by experiment and
2- The implications of what we observe and can confirm by experiment which then must be observed and confirmed by experiment.
I do agree that there is a point where each explanation ceases to function to explain the whole, newtonian physics functions to explain how macroscopic objects behave to a certain precision and it breaks down when the curvature of spacetime is altered by extreme amounts of mass in a small place or limited masses being accelerated to such speeds that they require descriptions of how they alter spacetime by effect to be described properly. This description breaks down when we attempt to explain objects existing at the sub atomic level and a whole other set of rules come into play that exist in between the frames of the macroscopic and relativistic linear framework we are used to using to describe things. Beyond this we are at the point where we do not have the tools yet to perform experiments we need to test the implications of the things which we have observed at that level.
Sometimes analogies can be helpful, sometimes they can just confuse the issue. In the case of expanding space, I prefer to think of it as something analogous to plate tectonics, We know the Earth is not expanding, but we know that the floor of the Atlantic ocean is getting wider and wider across geologic time scales, matter is not being created, but the distance between the coastlines of the eastern United States and Western Europe gets a little larger each century. When considering vacuum energy I think of the plate tectonics analogy and remember that even though it seems like the vacuum energy should be becoming more vacant, the implications of what we observe in the Hadron collider confirms that when taken altogether, the total amount of energy in the universe balances out to zero and comparing different sized slices of this pie to one another confuse the issue.
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Nah, I just bought one from Dyson. Works great!
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Lemme look... on the vortex container (you know, where all the dirt swirls around), it says "US Mobius Glass, 4th dimension containment division. Certified for virtual particles only."
That help any?
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Nah, it's much simpler. The universe is floating in a sea of vacuum, which seeps through the pores of the universe, i.e. it's statistically unlikely but the energy balance is zero. You can immediately grasp the concept if you think of a squashed sponge ball, which as it expands, it soaks up air from its neighborhood. And of course if physicists are happy to buy into the idea that the Universe just sprang out of nothing, why not think that it sprang out like a sponge ball compressed (or nanoprinted) into a t
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But if cosmological constant [wikipedia.org] is greater thanzero, then our normal intuition of gravity is simply incorrect: what we perceive as gravitational potential is simply the crater at the top of a mountain of infinite height. No conservation law is being broken here, the universe simply contains a built-in wellspring of endless energy that's paying for the
Re:"inescapable conclusion" (Score:5, Insightful)
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I am pretty certain the idea's never been tested. And may not even be testable. So you might want to adjust your confidence level a bit. At least until we can go everywhere and measure everything. Breath-holding doesn't seem to be called for.
Re:"inescapable conclusion" (Score:5, Informative)
> What's more, there is an energy associated with any given volume of the universe. If that volume increases, the inescapable conclusion is that the energy must increase as well. So much for conservation of energy.
??? Why cant the energy just be less dense?
The FLRW metric [wikipedia.org] (which is what the equation that governs the cosmological expansion of spacetime) has a cosmological constant term in it, initially placed there by Einstein to maintain a steady state universe, but which we now know drives an accelerating expansion of the universe. This constant term is exactly that: a constant (negative) energy per volume of space. More space means more total energy.
However, TFS and TFA (I've only scanned the referenced paper, but that looks much more reasonable) are absolutely wrong about why this is a problem. It is a problem, but only in the sense of figuring out where it comes from (i.e. what exact mechanism drives the creation of this energy). The fact that energy is not conserved violates no law of physics: in fact, general relativity doesn't conserve energy anyways, and the expansion of the universe certainly does not (even without the non-conservative nature of gravity).
See, the conservation of energy is a result of Noether's theorem [wikipedia.org], which states that for any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system, there is a corresponding paired conservation law. For time symmetry, this is the conservation of energy. However, time on the scales of the universe is not symmetric. There was a beginning to the universe (which alone breaks the symmetry: you can't shift backwards in time more than ~13 billion years), and the universe as it is now looks nothing like it did 10 billion years ago. So we don't expect energy to be conserved in the universe as a whole (even if it is on local scales).
Re:"inescapable conclusion" (Score:5, Informative)
in fact, general relativity doesn't conserve energy anyways,
GR does conserve energy, but in a very messy way with a lot of subtleties that means it gets skipped over in the grad level intro courses. Especially when dealing with an expanding metric, it is possible to formulate a contrived analogy to potential energy.
There was a beginning to the universe (which alone breaks the symmetry: you can't shift backwards in time more than ~13 billion years), and the universe as it is now looks nothing like it did 10 billion years ago.
The beginning of the universe does not need to conserve energy, but things as far as we can tell are conserved after that. The fact that things look different doesn't contradict the type of symmetry needed by Noether's theorem, just as Noether's theorem applies just fine in classical mechanics despite the second law of thermodynamics.
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"The beginning of the universe does not need to conserve energy, but things as far as we can tell are conserved after that."
As fas as we can tell beig the important clause there. Besides which - the energy causing the expansion could be coming from outside our universe if one adhers to the multiverse theory , in which case all bets are off.
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I've always felt like the big bang was an easy out to both explain red shift and allow for creation. Not that I have a problem with creation or the existence of God even; it just seems awfully convenient.
$1 says we go back to a steady state universe in our lifetime.
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Enough decades ago, you would have found a great many scientists agreeing with you. Since then, the evidence for the big bang has been piling up, and pretty much everybody who's studied the evidence believes there was a big bang.
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I also agree with the evidence, and will be shocked if I win that dollar. But I do find the speculation interesting.
I'll disagree with piling up. We got red shift and the CMB, as far as evidence goes. That's about it.
Not everything would change with steady state, you'd just have to start with explaining those two things. And yes, a few theories of interest to nerds would change from those changes.
Here's a thought, the gravitational constant was part of Einstein's steady state universe. He was convinced othe
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The beginning of the universe does not need to conserve energy, but things as far as we can tell are conserved after that.
As far as I understand it, we're trying to figure out what's happening on the edge of the expanding universe, but we have no idea what is outside of our universe that it is expanding into. It could be something that doesn't follow any of our laws of physics and is inexplicable, all we know is that it not this universe. If we know our Universe started in NotThisUniverse, and you mention the beginning of th
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(which is what the equation that governs the cosmological expansion of spacetime)
The equation does not govern the expansion, the equation describes or models the expansion. In the same way that the map is not the territory, the math is not the universe.
--
JimFive
Re: "inescapable conclusion" (Score:2)
Clearly to zero.
Hence the article, and the questions.
Re:"inescapable conclusion" (Score:5, Funny)
void that killed the ether theory, explain why there is a limit to the speed of anything and would provide a medium of propagation for the forces without falling back to "magic" fields.
Any sufficiently advanced universe is indistinguishable from magic :-)
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Now that is an interesting notion. Unless you believe in the soul, or a "ghost in the machine" theory of consiousness, then pure logic, as a resident of the physical human brain, should obey the laws of physics just as any other physical thing obeys the laws of physics. In a sense, pure logic can be both an experiment and an observation.
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.
On the other hand, I believe
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Pure logic gives us tautologies and nothing more. (They can be very complicated, interesting, and useful tautologies, of course.) Since tautologies hold no matter what the state of the Universe, they can't tell us anything about the state of the Universe.
The idea of synthetic a priori knowledge comes, I think, from geometry and arithmetic. Way back when, these were recognized as pure logic, but they were also believed to be descriptions of reality. There was also metaphysics, which AFAICT was based l
Sure some theories will change but... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nope, but we have a name for it anyway: Dark Energy.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
That was my question as well until I read Brian Greene's explanation in his book, The Fabric of the Cosmos.
In short, the Higgs Field. Long answer, think of what we call space as a fabric (hence the title of his book). The Higgs Field is the fabric upon which everything else "sits". Even if there are no particles in a given unit of space, it is not empty because the Higgs Field is still there.
Start on page 254 of his book and work your way through as he describes the field and how it (supposedly) permeates everything.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Start on page 254 of his book and work your way through as he describes the field and how it (supposedly) permeates everything.
This just instantly makes me think of "The Force."
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George Lucas in Love https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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No, see, by definition, that's non-empty space. Empty space is... empty.
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Particles are not all touching each other, so the distance between them is necessarily considered empty. The space between a nucleus and electrons in an atom, the space between different atoms, etc. These spaces have field energy but no particles so they're empty.
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Since when did unknown == paradox?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the most dramatic of these paradoxes comes from the idea that the universe must be expanding. [...] yet nobody knows how this can occur.
Since when did "paradox" became a synonym for "unknown"?
Yeah, nobody knows how space expands, but how does that make it a "paradox"?
Re:Since when did unknown == paradox?? (Score:5, Informative)
Paradox - "a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory."
The paradox is that energy is supposed to be conserved, but space has energy and is increasing. So, we have a logically unacceptable a conclusion.
Just because it is a current paradox doesn't mean it can never be resolved. We find an energy source, or figure out the laws of physics which in this case allow for the creation of energy and is stops being a paradox.
Quantum physics calculations say the vacuum energy is one value while measurements of the curvature of the universe say it is a different value. That is a paradox especially when both Quantum physics and the physics involved in measuring the curvature of the universe seem to both be right in other respects such that making changes to resolve this paradox causes them to stop describing other things accurately. So, we have logically unacceptable conclusion.
The red shift thing doesn't look like a paradox, but a really cool test of our understanding of cosmological red shift.
And, the homogeneity problem could be a paradox linearity of expansion says the universe is homogenous, observations say it is not. But, they don't mention whether observations have done a reasonable job of determining the dark matter distribution of the universe.
There are paradoxes in the article, but it does drift into one topic that is not a paradox and another that is borderline.
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There are things called paradoxes in relativity, which tend to be people thinking in Newtonian terms part of the time.
The twin paradox: Harold stays on Earth, while George (separated at birth) travels at relativistic speeds for a while and then turns around and comes back. Despite the fact that from George's point of view Harold and the Earth went away and came back, George is nevertheless younger. (Harold's using the same frame of reference all the time, being unaccelerated - and we ignore general re
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In other words, if a paradox is a contradiction, then here we have all the evidence that shows something can't happen, plus evidence that shows it is happening.
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It just means there's something we don't know. The energy comes from something, much like potential energy can become kinetic energy.
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True, but paradox is a rather strong word to use in this case. Usually a paradox involves a careful chain of logic that inexorably leads to an absurd conclusion. Particularly when the flaw of reasoning eludes careful examination.
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The counterpoint to that is, speculation about paradoxes is one of the most fruitful methods for nutcases and weirdos.
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That's a bit harsh, isn't it? Wouldn't you say that investigations start with speculation?
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only if no one hears him
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Agreed. Also, if you someone is worried about conservation of energy you have to worry about the big-bang - where everything suddenly appears.
We don't yet have a good theory that includes quantum mechanics and gravity - and that seems to be central to all of these unknowns. Likely we will figure one out eventually.
Most of the issues with quantum gravity occur at scales that are not accessible in the laboratory. Every experiment we can do is predicted by existing theories, and we can't reach the conditions w
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If paradoxes are not real, how do we examine them? How do we even know about them, if they are not real? If they are not real, they must not really exist. So, are you saying the only true paradoxes are the ones we don't know about and which don't exist? Wow. I think I get it now. It has been 42 all along, but 42 is just a number. 42 isn't a real thing, and that is the true paradox. I don't know the answer, because paradoxes are not real,
because science (Score:2)
Coming up with better explanations is what science is for.
Summary: headline is sensationalist clickbait, Slashdot editors are whores, Netcraft confirms Slashdot is dying.
If the universe is a simulation energy is variable (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.simulation-argument... [simulation-argument.com]
But, that does not make it any less real-seeming to all of us being simulated...
And of course, the universe simulator could be simulated, etc....
It might be simulated turtles all the way down. :-)
YIC (Score:2)
It's virtual turtles, you insensitive clod!
LOL - Virtual vs. Simulated and acceptance (Score:2)
Taking your comment seriously, :-) are you suggesting simulated seems to imply fake, but virtual implies essentially the same? Maybe there is some related change in social consciousness on these topics reflected by "virtual" becoming a more commonly used word?
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... [wikipedia.org]
"Virtuality, the quality of having the attributes of something without sharing its (real or imagined) physical form"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
"Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real
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The simulation argument is nonsense that is only plausible to people who either haven't given it any thought or don't know any physics: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=... [tjradcliffe.com]
The essay falis to grasp "infinity" (Score:2)
As with many cosmological argument, that essay called "Imaginary Arguments" by TJ Radcliffe does not prove anything about a potential infinity of nested infinite universes. There is a key hedge there of "given what we currently know of physics". Much of physics (for example the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) is in essence a theory of what we could conceivably learn about the universe and beyond, not actual information on the universe and beyond. Likewise for saying we can see up to a certain distance of
Maybe the created "energy" is really entropy (Score:3)
As entropy in the universe increases, so does the amount of space.
Solution to the "vacuum energy" problem (Score:2)
The expansion of the universe is fueled by a continuous transition to lower-energy vacuum states. Unlike the normal "false vacuum" model, though, there are a lot of these lower-energy states, which become closer and closer together until they reach a limiting value.
The graph of these states would probably look familiar - it's similar to the electron transitions for the hydrogen atom, only with the orbitals replaced with "time since the Big Bang". The net result matches the lower value of the vacuum energy
not paradoxes (Score:2)
Those aren't paradoxes. So space is created. How is that a paradox? Did someone say space is not allowed to be created?
So energy is created. That violates conservation of energy, but conservation of energy is simply a law that we formulated from experience, and later proved using Noether's theorem by assuming that the laws of physics are time-invariant. Well, it's not valid to extrapolate from our small-scale experiences to the universe, and the laws of physics probably aren't time-invariant at cosmological
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There is a paradox in that the laws of physics simultaneously say that energy is being created and it can't be created.
Well, it's not valid to extrapolate from our small-scale experiences to the universe, and the laws of physics probably aren't time-invariant at cosmological scales.
And therein lies the source of the paradox: it arises because our understanding is incomplete.
Energy is not conserved in General Relativity (Score:5, Interesting)
It has been known for quite some time that energy is difficult to define rigorously in General Relativity. A good explanation can be found in this post by CalTech physicist Sean Carroll [preposterousuniverse.com]. Key point:
As a simple example, imagine a photon traveling through an expanding universe in a region with no other matter or energy (dark or otherwise). The expansion of space stretches the wavelength of the photon (cosmological redshift, which is distinct from Doppler redshift), causing it to lose energy. The photon loses energy with nothing around it gaining. Energy is lost because spacetime itself is changing, so Noether's theorem doesn't apply.
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Note that the linked blog post was in response to another Arxiv Blog article that makes the same mistake.
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When the photon's wavelength is integrated over the entire, expanding volume, is the energy still non-conserved? Sure, the kinetic energy depends only on the wavelength, but doesn't the photon also have a gravitational field whose source (energy) now occupies more space? Is the associated gravitational energy the integrated deformation of the space-time in which it resides? The deformation density has decreased with decreased kinetic energy density, but the deformation now exists over a larger region of
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Read the blog post I linked to above. There's no way to consistently assign an energy density to spacetime curvature. Quoting Prof. Carroll:
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As a simple example, imagine a photon traveling through an expanding universe in a region with no other matter or energy (dark or otherwise). The expansion of space stretches the wavelength of the photon (cosmological redshift, which is distinct from Doppler redshift), causing it to lose energy. The photon loses energy with nothing around it gaining. Energy is lost because spacetime itself is changing, so Noether's theorem doesn't apply.
I wonder if we could add a scale-invariant component, and make the lost energy just a property of measuring it in a non-inflating reference frame.
Or, I should say, I wonder what contradictions that would lead to.
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Consider the region of space that contains the photon. If each dimension of the universe double in size, then the photon loses half its energy. But, the vacuum energy increases by a factor of 8 (volume increases by 8 since space is 3 dimensional). This process can't keep energy constant.
You can also reason that different photons will lose different amounts of energy depending on the energy they started with. There's nothing to keep these changing energies balanced with the vacuum energy in expanding or cont
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True, in a contracting universe, photons gain energy. Noether's theorem says that energy conservation is a consequence of time translation symmetry (t -> t + constant), not reversal symmetry (t -> -t), so conservation of energy isn't required. The "energy imbued by the creation of the universe" seems ill-defined. If you believe Hawking and Krauss, this energy is zero.
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There is no Doppler effect for a single photon, unless that photon is emitting other photons.
The end of both QM and GR? (Score:2)
I think it is time to revise the foundations of both our great theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity. This has become more and more evident in the recent decade, but it has been obvious almost from the beginning, since the two theories have been known to be incompatible already since the Solvay conference, if not before, and I think I can see some signs that efforts are being made to move away not only from GR, but also from QM.
The big problem is of course the inescapeable success of both theor
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People have been trying to revise the foundations of those theories. The problem is that, while we know they're incompatible, it's apparently really hard to come up with a practical experiment where GR says one thing and QM says another. Given the lack of experimental evidence, about all we can do is come up with ideas on how to make them work together (like string theory), see if they match what we already know, and try to figure out how to get testable predictions from them. The real problem is that w
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Making more observations is getting harder and harder.
But that, in a way, is why I think it is necessary to start looking again at some of the things we haven't really got a good enough definition of. I remember Einstein worked at some attempt at defining what a particle is, but I forget which paper; that is the kind of things we need a better understanding of, is my feeling. I think it has always been obvious that 0-dimensional particles are a shortcut, a convenient way of not adrdressing the problem you don't yet have, and the same goes for things like charg
Statistical proof for turtles all the way down (Score:2)
What's science's answer to this one?
1. Any sufficiently advanced civilisation can create a simulation (or more) on a grand scale.
2. In a simulated world, intelligence and construction may arise, eventually leading to sufficiently advanced simulated civilisations
3. (... after some thousands of recursions, also recognising that there is plenty of 'time' for that because time is an internal variable of the universe in question...)
The big Q:
What is the likelihood that in the vast tree of simulated universes, we
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This depends on the possible quality and size of a universe simulation. Is it possible to simulate the entirety of a universe using only a finite subset of that universe?
If yes, then there are (at maximum) an infinite number of simulated universes and and infinite number of recursively simulated universes. Thus the probability of us being the root/real universe is zero ("of measure zero" if you ask a mathematician). Perhaps the holographic principle comes into play to allow the entire universe to be simulat
That's my beef against cosmology (Score:2)
It'a the only discipline where 120 orders of magnitude is a slight disagreement.
Original Article (Score:2)
Looks mostly theoretical.
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
I can offer a solution to the cosmology problem (Score:3)
On The Thermodynamics Of General Relativity.
http://vixra.org/abs/1412.0270 [vixra.org]
I have been looking for constructive feedback on these new ideas, so please do so if you have the time. I published this paper simply to get these new ideas out on the table for discussion by the community while I turn my attention to my next paper on solutions to the paradox of Special Relativity, and later the structure of matter and spacetime. The same solution fits all the open issues I know about.
Thermodynamic Unification Theory https://plus.google.com/u/0/+S... [google.com]
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This does happen, although I am not sure if it is seen in red shifts. It is definitely seen in the Cosmic Microwave Background where large cold spots are thought to be due to voids along the line of sight that the CMB photon traveled. I presume a similar effect would apply to any photon crossing that void.
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I am not a physicist myself, but physics is a very interesting topic for me. A long time ago I theorized along these lines, and when I spoke about it with physicists, they told me that my hypothesis has already been considered, and it has a name, and that name is "tired light".
See "tired light" on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The tired light theory is an interesting one, and I can see how it can fit well with observations. I like the tired light because it does seem to make the expanding universe less certain. Even the Big Bang becomes questionable and I see the CMBR as a possible detection of light that has given up the last of it's energy due to traveling too far.
I was more thinking about red-shifting accumulating due to the distance from the object. They always mention that further objects are more red-shifted due to them
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Yet you continue to visit, click, AND post.On almost every article!
How do you do it?
And you reply to your own post too...
I know the answer, you are a robot, I mean, I am a robot, oh god.... NO CARRIER...
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If you say it's black and I say it's white, that's not a paradox but a contradiction. If one theory says it's red and another theory says it's green, again that's not paradox but mere contradiction.
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OP says "paradox" but the issues discussed in the paper are not strictly paradoxes, just contradictions. There is a difference. If you say it's black and I say it's white, that's not a paradox but a contradiction. If one theory says it's red and another theory says it's green, again that's not paradox but mere contradiction.
But I'm here for an argument!
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OP says "paradox" but the issues discussed in the paper are not strictly paradoxes, just contradictions. There is a difference. If you say it's black and I say it's white, that's not a paradox but a contradiction. If one theory says it's red and another theory says it's green, again that's not paradox but mere contradiction.
But I'm here for an argument!
I told you once.
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Noticing does not mean we care :).
Karma -= 100...
Re:avogadro's constant and particle density in spa (Score:5, Informative)
Even professional physicists like some good numerology sometimes [wikipedia.org].
Also, just so we're clear, you took a number e-26, multiplied it by a number e+23, and you ended up with a number e+0?
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How did this get modded up? (Score:4, Informative)
I remember something like this vaguely coming up in a comment before on Slashdot, and I hope it was not you making the same mistake, as comments spelled out in those cases clearly that it was a case of density * avogadro's constant / number of atoms gives you the average atomic mass, which is pretty close to 1 for deep space.
so... i went... density = 7 * 10e-26, avogadro's const = 6.023 * 10e23, multiply the two together you get 4.2154. just for fun take the cube-root and oo! you get 1.6153982
No, you multiply those two numbers together, and you get 0.042, which is also a meaningless value because you now have kg/m^3/mol... and it is not like deep space is anywhere near a constant density, as there is a large variation in density and temperature (read about warm intergalactic medium vs. hot intergalactic medium).
I don't know how this got modded up. Not saying it should have been modded down, but you just took two random numbers, one of which doesn't even have that deep of a connection to space as you imply, and multiplied them together incorrectly, and tried to draw vague conclusions from that.
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A mole is a certain number of particles, not a physical unit in its own right. Multiplying the density times avogadro's constant (assuming you're allowing for molecular weights, which is about 1 gram for a mole of monoatomic hydrogen) is the right way to find the number of particles.
Of course, (a) OP got his or her decimal place screwed up, (b) density does vary widely, and (c) given an arbitrary number, if you try enough ways to manipulate it, you're going to come up with something reasonably close to
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Avogadro's number (along with molecular weight) is precisely what you need to convert between mass per unit volume and number of particles per unit volume. For monoatomic hydrogen, multiplying grams per unit volume by it gives you the number of particles per unit volume pretty precisely. A mole of particles is a certain number of them, not a unit in itself.
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Still, as they find slowly their way through what Plasma in space can achieve, mainstream science is blinded by Gravity only suppositions turned into "reality" with an increasingly set of fudge factors. TFA just list a small number of them. But talk someone on the "mainstream" - including just self-presumed scientifically educated persons that the Big Bang perhaps did not take place, and point to the political and social movements inside Science that led to its conformation, and you are as an "heretic" as
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One thing is obvious: you and I have not known the same scientists. Are you sure you've talked to scientists about that? It sounds to me more like people who are interested in the results of science and don't understand the process very well.
And, yes, gravity dominates over long distances. The strong and weak force are actually limited in range, and although electromagnetism is far stronger than gravity it isn't additive: add positive and negative charges together and you get something not strongly