Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: ebzZzZ on 17/02/2004 01:17:11
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a friend of mine has just published a paper
which is the start of the end of the big bang.
how long it will take the others to catch up
i don't know :)
to put it simply he has used the radio communication
anomalies with the pioneer space probes to proove the
solar system is expanding, via hubble effect, which
is clearly rediculous. this throws the whole universe
expansion idea and with it modern cosmology into chaos.
http://rgouin.home.mindspring.com
the pioneer paper
http://rgouin.home.mindspring.com/pdf/pioneer.pdf
ebzZzZ
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The big bang theory predicts space should be expanding. If this is true, then it should be expanding everywhere, even inside our own bodies. It's just a very small effect, and neglectable, just as general relativity is neglectable for near-earth situations.
Recent experimental results show that space is expanding faster, not slower. The day may come that these effects become dominant, and our solar system, the earth, and even the atoms in our bodies are torn apart by it.
General relativity admits to this possibility, depending upon the value of the cosmological constant. General relativity does not give us that value, however.
So the big band theory is already in a state of change, as it always has been. This is fitting, for a theory that is about change. The theory will change to suit our observations, as it did in it's beginning.
One thing thing we do not expect is a return to any kind of steady-state universe theory.
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True- some observations do indicate that the universe's expansion is accelerating, possiblely due to properties such as antigravity which may be exhibited by "dark" matter.
However, no matter how fast the universe expands, its effects in small regions of dense matter such as the solar system are extremely minimal due to the effects of gravity.
On a smaller scale, such as our bodies, electrostatic forces (between charged ions) which are several orders of magnitude stronger than gravitational forces dominate. It would take an extremely fast rate of expansion to tear our bodies apart - as even if the space between the atoms expands, the attractive forces will still hold the atoms together, shifting the atoms' position in space initially instead of pulling them apart outright.
One thing does seem strange about the accelerating rate of expansion. The fastest rate of expansion so far has been at the instant of the big bang, where the expansion was many orders of magnitude faster. What has made the expansion first slow down and now accelerate? And for how long has it been accelerating?
"I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it."
-Edgar Allan Poe
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These are theories that I know very little about, however just by following all natural trends in this universe, I have a feeling that the math must be wrong in one of those two cases, very few things on that large of an order speed up, slow down, and speed up again. Unless its following some sort of a sine function?? But what sense does that make??
When 900 years you reach look as good you will not, hmm??
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I may be being totally idiot here but I can link this to what I said in the topic thread:
Universe: To be or not to be infinity?
I put forward the theory that there are many universes and as such our one occasionally hits another. This could be in accordance with the slowing down and speeding up of the expansion of the universe.
I may of course be being totally wrong and ignorant in this case but it's not often I get the chance to put forward my views on the cosmos.
I Love Caesium!!!
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It's true that the expansion-rate problem has been a serious one for the big-bang theory from the beginning. In fact, the term "big-bang" was coined by a detractor as derision. The various problems caused Fred Hoyle and collaborators to put forth a steady-state theory, that ws pretty well thought out. I read a book by one of them written some time ago titled "The Big-Bang Never Happened". In it, the author points out the expansion problems, and showed that the big-bang could never have produced our universe unless it had an enoromous initial expansion rate that suddenly slowed. Just a few years later, that is exactly what the "Inflationary Universe" showed happened, if you can believe it. A false negative vacuum energy caused gravity to become inverted, and it inflated the universe from smaller than a quark to larger than a galaxy with a 10^(-34) second doubling rate. Then it went through a phase change, where gravity became positive again. The release of gravitational energy created the mass and energy of the universe...if you can imagine it.
Now, having swallowed that story, now the dark energy is threatening to pull the fabric of spacetime apart. In the future, the night sky will become devoid of distant galaxies, local stars, and in the extreme case, our very atoms will be torn apart. If dark energy grows to dominate the other four forces, we will be ripped apart. Space is NOT Newtonian, and it does not exist apart from the mass that is in it. Will such a dark end happen? I don't know. I'm having trouble believing that the data is correct. It's based on the brightness of Type 1A supernovas, which are believed to be "standard candles", similar to Cepheid variables. If you can believe that the physics is well enough understood about type 1A supernovas, then it is true: The universe is expanding. I just don't think enough is known about them to make such sweeping statements. There could be other variable effects that are small about the binary stars that produce Type 1A that could cause the data to be skewed. Maybe with more data, these effects will average out and we'll get a better picture.