will galaxies collide?

bettysfetish,

If dinosaurs are hundreds of millions of years old, and man stood on two legs three million years ago, I doubt that the universe is 5000 years old.

Tom

 

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Damn, been put on the spot.

Joeblow, you say that if something came out of nothing 0=1. Why? I really do not see what you are getting at here.

Can something come out of nothing? Quite possibly, yes. Heinsenberg's uncertainty principle says that certain pairs of quantities are equal or greater than a constant, typically given as h over 2*pi, where h is plancks constant. One such pair is energy and time.

What this says, in the Copenhagen interpretation, is that you can have large amounts of energy for perriods of time less than the 'planck time' of about 10^-33 seconds. In fact, you can even break conservation of energy as the energy lasts for a time so short the Universe does not realise. That's using a classic analogy. It means that the uncertainty in time is so large the event can not be determined with any probability.

Sounds like a load of HS. Sure it does. But if this was true then a vacuum is actually full of this 'virtual' energy. According to mass/energy equivalence this energy could be particles, virtual particles. So if true a pair of parallel plates held very close in a vaccum would feel a pressure from the outside greater than the inside and they eould move together by themselves.

The experiment has been done and it confirms this view of a vacuum full of vritual particles. It's the famous Casimir Effect.

Now saying that, Joeblow has hit upon a point, I think. Physics really can not say what happened at the point of creation. We simply don't know yet. Nor can we say what happened before creation, it makes no sense. So Joe's hypothesis is as accurate as anyone elses. But so is the theory that magical pink fairies made the Universe. I don't mean that in an arrogant sense, maybe a little, just as a way of showing that ANY theory about what happened before the Big Bang has equal meaning.

At the moment great strides are being made in understeranding the Universe. Who knows what we might find yet.

 

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Thed,

If something came out of nothing then something and nothing are interchangable, therefore:

0=1 Nothing can equal something
1=0 Something can equal nothing

As you can tell, accepting this idea would be mathematical suicide.

I don't believe that the laws of conservation of matter and energy are ever broken. This is the Holy Grail of physics, and without it physics wouldn't exist.

I do believe that space is composed of the least dense form of matter. Actually, I believe that all the dark matter is hidden in space itself. I also believe that gravity is the result of space collapsing between to massive objects. After all, if space was made out of nothing, why would it take ten times longer for light to travel 10 kilometers of space, than it would to travel 1 kilometer??

Tom

 

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Faced with unknown are all theories equal?

Occam’s Razor gives more weight to simple theories. So “something from nothing” might be preferred over magical pink fairies.

A theory that projects what “is” to be what “will be” and what “was before” might be given more weight. (TV weatherman theory of the pre and post universe.)

One could apply Hamster’s Hairbrush. If one can’t have a good theory one might as well accept a fun theory such as magical pink fairies.

On the other hand there is much to be said for leaving it as “unknown”. Theory without evidence or hope of gaining the same is as fruitless as the musings of a bored hamster.

This hamster’s own view of the Big Bang is that the universe is like a train emerging from a dark tunnel, traveling for a distance in the light, and then, maybe, disappearing into another dark tunnel. The entering and leaving are transformations beyond current human ken. Present universal structure may hint as to what a “transformed” universe might be. It’s not clear what information or meta-information (if any) would survive the transformation.

(This post brought to you by Occam’s Garden Of Unearthly Delights, maker of the Occam Sockem Robots.)

 

I read that Occam's thing a while back. Not the interpretation many people have applied to it, but the original statement or idea by that guy. From what I read, it seems he did not say that "given two theories, the simplest is more likely to be true". In my own opinion, both simple and complex theories have equal chance of being correct. What he said, in the statement I read, was that one should not introduce extra and unnecessary factors into an experiment, as extra and unnecessary factors can only cause complication and thus reduce the likelihood of finding the fundamental truth sought.

 

In regard to the creation process, be it the Big Bang or Genesis chapter one, both have happened. In my opinion the universe DID start someday and maybe even somewhere (these are all subjective terms, of course). Therefore it should also have an end, even if the barrier is uncertain like the in the case of Earth's atmosphere.

We will never be able to penetrate Plank's Time with our normal physics laws. They just don't fit that reality. We'll never know if it was a suitcase, a grenade etc..

One interesting thing, though, in a lecture I once heard a comparison between the Big Bang theory and the Genesis story. It was given by the Head of the Physics Dept in a big university near where I live, and it's interesting ot see how, if you look at it in a certain way, things do look somewhat the same.

Of course, one is still hard facts and the other is a story passed verbally for 2000 years with no basic shred of evidence...

Cheers,

Guildenstern

 

Joeblow

Quantum Mechanics is a very strange theory but is fully accepted by the Physics community. Virtual particles are an accepted reality and used to explain how electromagnetic forces are interchanged.

Look it up. Modern theoretical physics is way ahead of what is commonly taught in schools/colleges.

Why light travels the way it does is fully explained in Maxwells Equations.

Your theory is not new, it is similar to the ether. The non-existence of anything resembling an ether was proven in the 1860's.

You are entitled to believe what you want but General Relativity fully explains what gravity is and has been fully tested and found to be true.

 

Thed,

Yes, General Relativity does explain gravity, and nothing else. My theory(when finished) could explain gravititational, electric, AND magnetic fields.

Tom

 

Joeblow

My theory(when finished) could explain gravititational, electric, AND magnetic fields.

I guess we'll be seeing you on the podium accepting a Nobel. Go get 'em!

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Andromeda Galaxy

approaching us at 68km per second, and will arrive in approx 6 billion years time. Should I set my alarm?

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http://www.angelfire.com/ab2/scouser/andromeda.html

 

Q,

When I do, don't applaud. Just throw money!

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Tom

 

When I do, don't applaud. Just throw money!

I will personally match, dollar for dollar, everything you deserve.

And the Q keeps his word.

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hey tom,

i agree when you that if the time is infinite, all the ways of something happen will occur. BUT it's not going to occur each time after each time, which mean that how can you know that the same atoms will together in the next time if there's an infinity of ways for them to combine? and even more, if there are infinite of ways for them to combine, what makes you think that two exactly same combinations will occur on one after another? (this time of the universe we are and the next one after this time of the big crunch).

actually, in the time of the big bang, the laws of nature couldn't aply. that means that some other force was present. i think we may never find this force (the one that started the big bang) because it's so different from what we have today. i mean, it could be some force that goes in the exactly opposite of the forces that we know today as everything we "see" today was created within the big bang.

yeah, quantum mechanics is really weird. maybe there's another part of the mathematics to be discoverd.

take care,
Lua.

 

it's true that the universe's expansion velocity is decreasing since the big bang happened, but it din't occur in "a fraction of a second". it is a process that takes billion of years.

just forget what the bible says about anything related to nature/universe. it's all wrong (if you don't wanna forget the bible entirely which would be better, but that's another thing).

if you look at it IN A CERTAIN WAY everything can sound like everything, i mean, the story can sound like my birthday party or the secod world war. interpretation are very easy to sound like what we want because they are so subjective and aplied to something we want to.

 

he actually said that the PROBABILITY of a simple theory over a more complex theory is bigger. he didn't say to disregard the complex theory.

 

Lua,

"i agree when you that if the time is infinite, all the ways of something happen will occur. BUT it's not going to occur each time after each time, which mean that how can you know that the same atoms will together in the next time if there's an infinity of ways for them to combine? and even more, if there are infinite of ways for them to combine, what makes you think that two exactly same combinations will occur on one after another? (this time of the universe we are and the next one after this time of the big crunch). "

The universe is a closed system. In a closed system the laws of cause and effect apply. If the Big Bang was to occur twice in the exact same way, wouldn't the resulting Big Crunch be identical to the Big Crunch before it? According the the laws of cause and effect, it would be. Now if the new Big Crunch is the same as the previous Big Crunch, won't the following Big Bang be identical to the two previous Big Bangs? As you can see the universe would fall into an identical repeating loop.

Tom