Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: john on 24/01/2009 23:55:28
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john asked the Naked Scientists:
According to stephen hawking and other prolific theoretical physcicists, the
planck wall is 10 to the 43rd power seconds(minus) after the initial "explosion. that is obviously a mind boggling short amount of time. it takes
light longer to cross the length of a proton. they then postulate that within
trillionth's of a second,the universe as we know it,including all matter, expanded from about the size of a grapefruit to approximately the
diameter of our current solar system.
my question is this. how could matter within this "big bang" grapefruit expand to the width of our solar system within trillionths of a second as this would EXTREMELY violate the speed limit of the universe, namely, the speed of light?
186200 miles a second is fast indeed,but they are postulating that matter during the first trillion billionths of a second during the birth of the universe,matter was traveling at billions of times the speed of light. how is this possible?
What do you think?
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I agree that this extremely fast expansion seems difficult to visualise and against the rules but it is space itself that is expanding as the universe expands from the big bang until now. The expansion of space itself does not require anything to move faster than the speed of light.
The simplest way of visualising this is to think of there being individual "particles" of space an under certain conditions these particles can interact and effectively create another particle of space from the energy they contain.
The latest thinking and modelling of the gravitational equations suggests that the universe was probably contracting before it expanded it probably had contracted to the extent that the conditions suddenly changed to allow more space to be created and hence the big bang.
I have my own opinions on the detail of how this might happen but they are not part of standard theory and so only presented inn the new theories area under the topic of evolutionary cosmology. Although this area is due for an update because I have found some new information
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As someone said; things just keep getting weirder and weirder. That's probably how folks felt just before they discarded the notion that the earth was the center of the universe. We know that the size of the universe is too big to have been formed within current physical laws. If your faith is powerful enough, you can just say, well, current physics only applies in current times.
But then, if we discard physics like that, lots of things we think we know might not be as we think they are [:)]
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I agree that this extremely fast expansion seems difficult to visualise and against the rules but it is space itself that is expanding as the universe expands from the big bang until now. The expansion of space itself does not require anything to move faster than the speed of light.
I know that this is the current thinking; but I was wondering how it is that we expand space without expanding time with it. Light is still limited to c within the expanded space. Now we even need space to expand faster than the speed of light. I think the system is about to break down[:)]
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The light-speed restriction only applies to matter or energy, not to space itself, which is neither matter nor energy. Also, I understand that at this phase of the BB there wasn't any matter; it wasn't created until after the cosmic expansion phase.
Even now though, matter and energy at the opposite sides of the observable universe is receding from each other at > 'c'. This isn't due to the matter and energy moving through space though, but once again, because space itself is expanding and carrying the matter and energy with it.
If we imagined that there was a maximum speed that boats could travel on water, then if the water was in a lake, with no flow, nothing could travel faster than the maximum water speed. However, if the water is in a river and has it's own flow then the maximum water speed could be exceeded with reference to the river bank, but not with respect to other boats.
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Yes; I understand the concept LeeE. But I think the concept is becoming so complex that it may break. If you think of light as ageing such that its energy decreases with time in a non linear fashion, you can explain observations without stretching space.
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What is complex about it? It's a really simple concept. Also, it's not a work-in-progress but is already complete. As such, how can it become more complex and then break, through some undefined mechanism, as a consequence?
The idea of light aging, once again, by an as yet unidentified mechanism, sounds not only more complex to me, but is also incomplete and will remain so until a plausible mechanism for the aging is found. Right now, it's not an explanation of what happens based upon the available evidence; it's just an idea.
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Tired light just seems more natural to me than the simple concept of expanding space; but that is what is accepted and I certainly can't create an alternative.
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thank's for the reply's.after reading your thoughts and doing some more investigating(i am infinitly fascinated w/ space/time mechanics,quantum mechanics etc etc,even tho i was a horrible math student)i can conceptualize space expanding faster than the speed of light since outside of the "space" that is expanding,is nothing(?). i picture an egg expanding in all directions at once,with no limit to the speed of the expansion of the "eggs shell" outward,since outside the egg,there are no applicable laws of physics,arbitrary or not. but within the egg itself, the "yolk" or matter,particles,everything etc... has a limit as to what it can do since it is contained within the "shell".perhaps their are some basic,fundamental flaws in our theories of space/time which will be revealed in the future.like,if space is expanding,WHAT is it expanding to?or in?if their is no space beyond space,what exactly or where are we expanding into?Non-Space? Non-Sense?the proverbial "THEY" say that at the point of singularity,all of our agreed upon laws of physics break down,and cannot/willnot explain what happenned at time 0. trillionsth of a second after "time zero" suddenly they apply.i dont know. maybe since their is no gravitational equations to deal with out side of the "shell",speed does not apply.or even possibly speed does not exist at all as an observable/measurable quanity.(?)and what about tachyons? if i remember correctly,i read some where that they do indeed travel faster than light.i agree with you about the universe contracting first,the BIG CRUNCH.i think it is an endless cycle of expansion until the oringinal enrgy of the "bang" runs out,then all matter begins falling back in on itself due to mass/gravitational mechanics,until the whole thing reaches critical mass,the singlularity,and like a nuclear weapon whose mass/matter whatever is crunched hard and fast enough(light speed?)explodes out ward once again.over and over and over ad nauseum.but then again their's that whole static/non-static universe deal which i admit i know very little about exept whether or not the velocity of expansion outweighs the mass/gravitational properties of the universe and it will keep expanding infinitly until the night sky is eventually just empty of any visible objects.unless we can still see the light of something trillions and trillions of light years away(assuming we sre here to see it).not sure which side of the static/non-static unverse side of the fence i sit on.or all this string theory stuff.bottom line for me i guess is,if their was a big bang,if it is cyclic or just happened once and we are all just floating away from each other for all eternity,before space and time and everything,where the hell did whatever happened come from?everyone tring to figure out what exactly happened at the point of the bing bang,weve got it down to what<googleplex of a second after? thats great>but about time-0.is that where religion and creationism comes in?Because "GOD" is un-quantifiable?any way,my e-mail is gnomosao@hotmail.com,and besides FULL TILT on-line poker,talking about this sh1t is endlessly entertaining to me.again,thanks 4 your comments,hope they keep coming. i tend to ramble and jump around alot,so thanks 4 yuor patience. peace
JOHN.
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We know that the size of the universe is too big to have been formed within current physical laws.
Not quite. It's the homogeneity of the universe that prompted the inflationary theory that gives rise to estimates of the universe being larger than we can see. We don't know that it's that big.
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One often sees this figure quoted that the original universe was the size of a grapefruit, would this correspond to the mass of the universe compressed to Planck density ?
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syhprum - I've often wondered if there is an ultimate density rather than infinite density. Loop Quantum Gravity seems to suggest that.
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We know that the size of the universe is too big to have been formed within current physical laws.
Not quite. It's the homogeneity of the universe that prompted the inflationary theory that gives rise to estimates of the universe being larger than we can see. We don't know that it's that big.
Absolutely true; but it we use that criteria there are many other more fundamental things that we don't know for certain. That would probably include just about everything we think we know. I think it was Will Rogers who said:
It's not so much that we just don't know, it is that we know so much that just ain't so.
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Was he paraphrasing Artemus Ward? “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so”
Absolutely true; but it we use that criteria there are many other more fundamental things that we don't know for certain. That would probably include just about everything we think we know
Agreed up to a point. There are certainly some things that we don't know for certain, the size of the universe being just 1 example.
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I'm exercising my 'petidea' now.
If you allow for time to be bound to spacetime with a arrow macroscopically.
But allow it to behave differently when being in a quantum mechanical state.
What hinders that quark gluon soup from inflate in 'indefinite' time?
Meaning that time might have been anything between null and going both forward and backward at that point
Coordinate systems are what we define, in them we define a vector.
But you can also define only a vector (speed and direction) not bothering with the coordinate system.
A coordinate system is what we find natural when viewing spacetime.
It has a long tradition macroscopically, first the map, then the vector.
But what if there was no coordinate system at that 'point'
And what if it is this indeterminate 'point' then somehow 'split itself up' into an immense lot of points.
Only being able to create what we call 'space' with 'direction' and 'distance'.
As well as 'times arrow' after or under the 'time' we started to get 'matter'?
Then what we define as coordinates is only definable to 'spacetime'.
And spacetime is a result of 'matter creation'.
If you look at how closely 'matter', 'gravity', 'time' and 'distance' are coordinated, it seems very hard to lift any of them out by itself.
We by tradition sees them as 'isolated' things, just as we expect our 'map' to define the velocity.
Giving it a 'meaning' in spacetime.
But to me they are as a 'whole', treated that way you need to look to what really differs in our universe.
There are some things I find truly fascinating.
One is the idea of fractals and chaos mathematics.
Another is macroscopic phenomena as compare to quantum mechanics.
It is very hard for me to see how we get to the phenomena of 'matter' from QM.
But what we do know is that they differ.
I don't agree to time being events (yet:) and I see it all 'gravity' and 'space' (3D) plus times arrow as a direct result from there being matter creation.
We do have a coordinate system macroscopically, it is defined by times arrow and our other three dimensions.
We also have a thing representing energy that we call light.
As far as I know it's the only QM phenomena that we can register by our own un-augmented senses
It is bound to 'c' in our spacetime and follows gravity's geodesics.
So if by definition we accept that motion, gravity, distances and time only is 'relations' giving different results, depending of what frame of reference you are defining yourself and others from then our questions about inflation, as it to me seems to be a quantum mechanic phenomena, loses its 'validity'.
I don't think it ever will be answered from that perspective, inflations 'solution' belongs to QM:s 'rules'.
And there we find all sorts of strange things, entanglement, quantum teleportation, frozen light, etc:)
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Was he paraphrasing Artemus Ward? “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so”
Maybe so; I had never seen the Artemus Ward saying. Will Rogers was an American comic of the 20's.
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yor_on; I will study that post of yours some more in the morning; I've gone over it three times now and I still don't get a clear picture. I know there is some good stuff there having to do with time and space and I would like to understand it.
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Artemus Ward (real name Charles Farrar Browne) was an American humourist born in 1834.
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yor_on; I will study that post of yours some more in the morning; I've gone over it three times now and I still don't get a clear picture. I know there is some good stuff there having to do with time and space and I would like to understand it.
Same here
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It's not complicated.
It just states that 'time' to me behaves differently QM wise:)
And that when 'isolating' forces to see them 'better' we are missing the 'picture'::))
and that's why I really really would like to understand what makes 'matter'.
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Quote the idea of light ageing by an unknown mechanism. There is such a mechanism, if a photon from a distant galaxy moves in a curved path it will lose energy didn't Einstien say space is curved.
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Some boffin has theorised that the speed of light has slowed since the Big Bang. Can't think of his name now.
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Why would it slow free space shouldn't change.
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Why would it slow free space shouldn't change.
Check it out:-
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/constant_changing_010815.html (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/constant_changing_010815.html)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html?full=true (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html?full=true)
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Thinking about it, it may be true the excess radiation would change epsilon'r and mu'r and the speed of light would be faster at the beginnig and slow down after the expansion, but I don't see how this would effect the path of a photon today the universe must have settled down by now, if not one would be able to measure a change in the background radiation the universe would get colder.
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Very interesting DB.
If I understand it right time don't have anything to do with photons?
Even though we measure them in 'time':)
They just 'wander around' happily whistling, freed from any interaction by times arrow?
As they are 'timeless' internally.
So the photons don't have any 'speed' internally.
Spacetime does impose it though.
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It's not complicated.
It just states that 'time' to me behaves differently QM wise:)
And that when 'isolating' forces to see them 'better' we are missing the 'picture'::))
and that's why I really really would like to understand what makes 'matter'.
Okey; this morning your posts about time and QM seem more clear; I don't find anything to disagree about. It may well be so that we can't isolate forces at all and must think of them as systems in which all the forces present must be considered.
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Quote the idea of light ageing by an unknown mechanism. There is such a mechanism, if a photon from a distant galaxy moves in a curved path it will lose energy didn't Einstien say space is curved.
Space-time, in our universe, is curved but it's not directly apparent to anything in it's own region of space-time unless it spans a such a steep gradient in the curvature such that the degree of curvature on one side of the object is significantly different to that on the other side.
We can see, for example, that space-time is curved around the Earth because the satellites we launch up there follow a curved orbit. The satellites themselves though aren't aware of this and as far as they're concerned they're following a straight path. I don't see, therefore, why a photon traveling through curved space should lose energy just by virtue of the curvature of space. Have you any ideas where the 'lost' energy goes?
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Space-time, in our universe, is curved but it's not directly apparent to anything in it's own region of space-time unless it spans a such a steep gradient in the curvature such that the degree of curvature on one side of the object is significantly different to that on the other side.
This is in accordance with current mainstream theory. However, it is very easy to describe a universe in which space-time is not curved. Here is an example. (http://www.ag-physics.de/) I don't agree with the example completely, but it does show a flat space-time concept.
The commanding thing about flat space-time is that the phenomena of relativity is demanded at the fundamental core of the concepts, and the thinking by the advocates is that any theory that does not demand relativity phenomena is lacking.
Any fundamental theory that fails to demand relativity phenomena at its very core, can not be what is real in nature. The reason it can not be real is that we easily observe that relativity phenomena is real and it is present in every physical reality that we know about.
So the first question about any fundamental theory should be: How does this theory demand the existence of Relativity Phenomena? Because we can know with certainty that if the theory does not demand relativity phenomena it is unnatural and does not represent reality. This is how we know that although the theory predicts reality with great precision, the most fundamental idea behind Quantum Theory is wrong.
That's why we say that QM is philosophically flawed.
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AD are you sure those photons traveling in curved paths lose energy.
Do you know any experiments proving that?
How can they lose any energy if freed from the arrow of time.
To me all of those phenomena comes when interacting macroscopically with matter.
Like meeting an atom, but then as I understands it the 'original' photon disappears and a new one will continue.
But the idea of that a photon 'traveling' in spacetime will follow a curved geodesic, that is due to space 'bending' under the influence of 'matter', isn't it?
And seen from the photon I would call it the path of least resistance.
So it's the straightest path that photon can take to my eyes:)
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AD are you sure those photons traveling in curved paths lose energy.
Do you know any experiments proving that?
How can they lose any energy if freed from the arrow of time.
I have a very speculative idea about how photons would lose energy when their path is bent by gravity. It comes from the notion that electric charge develops from the bent path of photons.
If the developed charge interacts with any space debris, ions, etc, the photon must lose energy to the space debris.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fphotontheory.com%2Fvern.gif&hash=c22996c1b3c68c693722af86eb9eafb9)
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reasonable Vern.
Do you describe the same phenomena that i would put to the interaction with an atom in space?
But from another perspective.
But there are two perspectives here, or?
If it is a ion missing an electron, what would happen then?
Or having one to many.
Or.. It doesn't 'matter' at all:)
As the photon is a specified light quanta that just interact with a certain amount of 'force'?
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My view is that the reaction could be with any charged particle or even the bent path of another photon. The idea came to me when I was trying to figure out just exactly what the Fine Structure Constant was, since physics seems in the dark about that. It came to me that the FSC is the ratio of the charge amplitude of an electron to the radius of the path of the photon that comprises the electron.
This was after I had completed my very speculative photon-only universe scheme. (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=19366.0)
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To yor-on I don't know of any experiment that has been done to prove it. I know one that will and that's during a solar eclipse the position of a star is moved if one measures the stars light at the same time a red shift should be observed. When I was taught about the Bohr atom I was told that the electron would lose energy in it's circular path and radiate EM and fall into the nucleus, quantum energy levels were invented to overcome this problem, no loss of energy..
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To yor-on I don't know of any experiment that has been done to prove it. I know one that will and that's during a solar eclipse the position of a star is moved if one measures the stars light at the same time a red shift should be observed. When I was taught about the Bohr atom I was told that the electron would lose energy in it's circular path and radiate EM and fall into the nucleus, quantum energy levels were invented to overcome this problem, no loss of energy..
This sounds interesting but how would it prove it. What are we trying to prove? If I remember correctly it is that photons may lose energy when passing close to a massive object when charged particles are near. I don't see how your suggestion could test that.
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AFRAID OF AN ANTI-MIRACLE
The entire basis of man’s struggle to understand the truth is analogous to finding the “quantitative parameters” of a quality; like we have to have in cyclic symmetries or similar to trying to find a quantum particle in flux that makes beauty of a totality beautiful (individual continuum) on to the oneness of a whole which is, in oneness of its own flux!
Is it then possible to find a tangible quantitative parameter for a very fundamental attribute to our universe at large?
That is why one could even almost say that we have a model for GOD built by CERN through to energize (accelerate) protons to seven trillion electron volts making them to run around an 18 mile underground racetrack outside Geneva so as to crash them together into PREMORDIAL FIRE BALLS, ………Helpfully and also mercifully, by the grace of a superluminal, seven trillion electron volts speeding message transfers since the necessary influence would in that case have to be transmitted only with a speed faster than light obliterating the order of time once and for all.
This, in order to establish communication and solicit a bilateral-coordination with forces and particles that are now incommunicado but reigned supreme during the first trillionth of a second of the BigBang, like the particle twins in the EPR (THOUGHT) experiment had, A NON LOCAL CONNECTION in a system of zero spin.
MORALITY; the idea of physicists, Holger Bech Neilson and Masao Ninomiya that Higgs producing collider machine (LHC) would be sabotaged by its own future and the proposal to engage the people at CERN in a game of chance, such as card drawing etc. to discern the bad omen is to believe the wave function that yields (collapses into) the possible one amongst many probable results as per Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
That apart it would be better to remind the people at CERN to see what has happened to the object in the experiment depends upon the context of the object’s interaction with the observer that only makes their results meaningful. The observer’s interaction with nature and her creation would ripple backward through time’s reversible arrow of movement that communicates with the PRIMORDIAL-FIREBALLS; that were performing under the care of the primordial conscious state during the first moments of forming of our universe 15 billion years ago.
But then, hopefully it is all a successful story by the grace of a superluminal message transfer conveyed by the observer’s state of mind in its totality of attention which remains in choiceless and noncomparetive, stoic awareness in observation of the Absolute that once split the universe in a primeval ball of 10^–27cm. in 10^-43sec. from the 4D continuum of space time into 3D plus one space and time coordinate systems of which we, the experimental devouts (empiricists) are a part and parcel there of and in, also for mutation (splitting)of our own brain cells; only later to be called
‘THE GODS IN ANTHROPOMORPHISM ’…….“AMEN”.
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Oh dear, just the random use of capitalised words is enough to dissuade me from reading this.
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Some boffin has theorised that the speed of light has slowed since the Big Bang. Can't think of his name now.
Several. Maybe more.
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I can't even source this, but I have heard that the Universe is going through another period of inflation. How does the speed of light slowing from the start of the Big Bang allow for this?
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I don't see so much another period of inflation as I see advocates of an expanding universe. I am not an expert on the inflation theory, but I'm not sure it is necessary if we accept the idea of constant inflation that is still going on.
The notion of expansion was developed to explain the apparent acceleration of distant galaxies. I suspect that both the notion of inflation and the notion of expansion are wrong. But I'm still waiting for a good explanation of the observations.
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I can't even source this, but I have heard that the Universe is going through another period of inflation. How does the speed of light slowing from the start of the Big Bang allow for this?
One can account for the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe by, in effect, assigning a force that works counter to gravity at large distances. The effect of this force over time can be used to distinguish between a constant force and one that varies. If the force varies in a certain way, it may be the same force that caused inflation in the early universe.
I'd have to think a bit on the exact effect of slowing light. it's somewhat complicated.
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Phys,
Early Galactic Inflation is described as a 'scalar field'. Mostly its a convenient terminology to explain the inexplanable. A scalar field, I believe, is simply a phenomena that has a limited geographic or time limit after which it is expended.
IMHO, the current 'increased velocity of expansion' could very well be just one more of these scalar fields that will simply run its course and stop.
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OK, what is the maximum red shift? The Htz of a photon is reduced by expansion. At what point does the expansion reduce a photon to near zero Htz? At that speed of expansion, the photon might have a velocity of C, but a propogation of zero.