End of the Universe · 10:04pm February 11th
I am working to finish Infinite Imponability Drive as soon as I can. Unfortunately the last two weeks have been so crazy that it’s been hard to set aside more than a few hours to do any writing…
Meanwhile, let’s get back to talking about random physics. It seems as good a time as any to consider the ultimate fate of our world. How will the universe end?
Short answer: we don’t know. For a full answer, I refer to you refer you to top science communicator and astrophysicist Katie Mack, who has written a book, and done many talks on this.
The first clear sign that our universe has a finite age, and might not continue to exist forever, came about a hundred years ago when Edwin Hubble looked at distant galaxies from the Mount Wilson Observatory in California and shows that they are all moving away from us, and the speed with which they are getting away increases the more distant they are. This fitted Einstein’s equations nicely. Extrapolate back in time and we see that the Universe began with a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Since light travels at a finite speed, if we look far far away, then we can look back in time and see it, in the form of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
By 1978, when Douglas Adams wrote his radio comedy that would become a multimedia phenomenon, this was well established, although it was not clear if the initial bang was big enough to keep the universe expanding forever, and leading to a future when everything just becomes colder and darker (the Big Freeze), or if the gravitational pull of everything would eventually bring the universe back together in a final Big Crunch.
Answering this question was frustrating, as the measurements showed the universe seemed to be remarkably well-balanced, right between the two possible scenarios. This was later explained by Inflation Theory. Things got even more interesting around the turn of the millennium, when it was realised that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. This is driven by Dark Energy, a kind-of intrinsic density and pressure of the vacuum of space itself, which we still don’t really understand.
This does seem to support the Big Freeze outcome, but as it also highlights the fact that we don’t really know what is going on. Dark energy is currently causing the universe to expand ever-faster, but who knows, it might change in the future.
Real life takes precedence! We can wait for pony, and it's very worth waiting for n_n
Also, neat science!
My favourite explanations currently are that the reason the universe exists is that we wouldnt be able to exist to deny it if it didnt, is one.
Douglas Adams declaration of Spontaneous Existance Failire has a direct mathematical equivalents in the maths that lead to Grahams Number, bt which further research into that particular problem has Greatly reduced the Upper Bound, and has many other similar examples. Basically, what teh chance of such an event occuring, or rather, what the largest structure you can make before a given event HAS to occur as youve exhausted All possible alternatives. ?
The trick with the Singularity, is that it only occurs in a perfectly non rotating structure. and rotation and you end up with a ringularity.
The big trick with a ringularity is that to keep the solutions sane, as in all values given by the function are equally valid and cohere to a single equivalent solution, is that the ringularity cant exist. In something that can be interacted with, only virtually, as a mathematical structure. The Virtual focal point of a Convex mirror, or the ring around the outside of the waist of a hyperbolic cooling tower, where the observed surface is not just the inner surface of the tower, but the percieved 3D event horizon of the structure is the 3D equivalent of a 4D hyperbolic structure, which the diagram shows as a 2D ring for a 3D drawing?
For the Universe expanding, the reason I like the Open universities physical model of the full infinite universe, is that they used to demonstrate why the observed universe was flat. They only showed the current half of the infinite Universe however, from the Big Bang to Omega 1, without going into adding the prior structure showing possible Oscilatory solution, or with a bit of string, suggesting how the entire infinite open universe could be represnted as a single closed temporal loop build, without changing any current measurements?
One of the srangest things Ive thought I might have seen though involves abuse of quarks and gluons behaviour. When you pump energy into the bond, the quaks pull apart, but the strain between them increases. Until you put enough energy into the bond that a fresh quark, Antiquark pair and gluon appear and the bond snaps back. So, take every quark in the universe, which are stuck together with gluons. As time goes by the quarks stick together, until after long enough you reach the state of a single line of quarks and gluons expanding outwards. Until all the folding and kinks and reactions have gone nad youre left with a single circular chain expanding outwards, the straining bonds generating more ring to fill in before gaps occur. If Dark Energy is claimed, and continues to increase, teh ring will remain getting ever larger. If whatever causes Dark Energy repulsion has decayed by now, eventually all that energy qill be absorbed generating quark gluon pairs, the expansion will come to a halt, and the bonds will recoil if still strained, or wiggle is not because of Graham, which causes instability and the whole structure starts to collapse once more. Information can be passed from one side to the toher, because the instantaneous moment of halting, would be the node of all frequencies.?
Well, its a nice relatively simple theory, I have absolutely no way of understanding it. But as everyone who knows me or Pinkie says about any question.
Dont Ask.
Looking forward to the wrap-up of Infinite Imponability Drive!
It seems intuitively obvious to me that gravity would have to bring expansion to 0 at infinity time. Everything would have to add to 0.
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Well, that's leaving aside Dark Energy. With that stuff in the calculations we may be in for the Big Rip. Even without it, if the universe is expanding faster than light, gravity won't have a chance to affect the most distant particles. But who knows for sure? We'll just have to wait and see.
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Dark energy is probably just the pressure of particle popping in and out of existence, generating an expansive pressure.If the universe would be flat and we would have no dark energy, we could, in principle travel and see infinitely far away, but it would take an infinite time to do so. As it is, most of the universe we see now will fade from view and is inaccessible. Any fool going to far outward, could not return and would endup isolated from everything.