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Scientists observe gravitational waves from the Big Bang for the first time
- Thread starter Cromat
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Space and matter more than 13.7 billion light years away.
Alcoremortis
Member
They should. If we had all the answers, there'd be no drive to find out the particulars. We can't prove undeniably that the universe started in a big explosion, but all the evidence seems to point in that direction. We can't say how big the universe is, exactly, but all the evidence points to it being bigger.
And this is why more scientists are needed. Because there are a lot of really annoying questions that need to be answered and not nearly enough people to answer them.
The Release Date for The Last Guardian.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
This won't ever get any better. In fact, it will get worse.the arrows in this pic
what is beyond the visibility diameter??
yankeehater
Member
Is the rest of the universe definitely expanding faster then the speed of light?
No, but at some point it will.
that's why my theory was that before the big bang, black matter was all there was.
but is that black matter blackness really something?? I hope dark matter/energy can be confirmed soon, that would give me some peace of mind
what is your take regarding the form of the universe?
on the one hand, if the universe were, (let's just say) round and a single entity, like earth, then multi-universes would have to be a truth since there can not be "nothing on the other side".
As long as there is a space (distance) interval of any dimension, being small or big, the universe we know continues.
but on the other hand, an absolute infinite universe..... HOW?? my brain starts to melt there.
I think the answer is in the numbers, they are infinite and we humans just have to deal with it,
All this subjects sound important and interesting but my brain is too primitive to really get what the hell it all means, what i find really mind blowing is how people like Einstein or other brilliant minds basically "guessed" or deducted so much shit from nothing, i can't wrap my head around that.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
No, but on the universal scale, the accelleration is exponential and over the order of billions of years, all other galaxies outside of the Virgo supercluster of galaxies will have redshifted so far that they will be more or less invisible to us. The observable horizon is essentially shrinking over time as space itself expands. So, hope to hell that the folks over in Andromeda are nice folks.
Phoenix
Member
Or what if the universe was created as a result of an experiment in another universe which was destroyed when ours was created. There are so many what if possibilities that are fun to explore from a scifi perspective, but tend to pollute the stream when you try to tie them to the stuff that we know. Maybe God farted and the universe was created. Who knows
That's how it's portrayed, that Einstein developed special relativity apropos of nothing but really it's all built on previous work. The importance of the speed of light and it's link to the properties of space came out of the study of electromagnetism.
I wonder if the fact that we exist in the era of galaxies biases our predictions of what the next stage is (expansion, heat death, etc). Could there be forces that haven't even come into play yet on scales we can't imagine? Imagine being an observer in any of those other eras, could that observer predict everything that came after based merely on observation and scientific method? The timescale of eras increases exponentially, but how long that time seems to us is just relative to how we experience it. In the universal sense, could this era just be another one that blinks by in a procession of infinitely longer line?Looking at the bing bang timelines for the first few seconds/minutes is incredibly fascinating; when the first few subatomic particles formed, unreal.
we can only draw conclusions from observable evidence
Can Crusher
Banned
All I know is if Black Holes grow, then maybe universe expands and then crunches. Resulting in a big bang.
BH x ∞ = BB = Time is a flat circle.
BH x ∞ = BB = Time is a flat circle.
speculawyer
Member
They've been trying to detect gravitational waves for decades with no success but I guess this is a clever way to indirectly detect them.
Simon Belmont
Banned
The density of matter in the Universe is not high enough to overcome the speed at which it is expanding. A big crunch scenario is unfortunately unlikely, despite how poetically satisfying it may be.
Partial Gamification
Banned
JWST website is really digestible, check it out if you haven't.
Here's a 40min Progress report, from last month, they go to the lab too.
Occulus Rift and NASA/JWST
edit: Deployment Sequence
This finding is awesome, if able to be verified. JWST will be able to check these findings. I heard there were other teams looking for this and the announcement was a little rushed.
Can Crusher
Banned
Humanity will never find closure.
I know, it's just fun to consider. I have to think that existing at the time point we exist in gives us some observational bias, but I could be wrong.
Simon Belmont
Banned
Haha, well we definitely will in 3 billion years or so when the sun expands out to our orbit.
You're definitely right about that, but the problem is that we don't know what we don't know, you know?
You could live to be 2000 and still never know everything.
WITH THAT ATTITUDE!
Can Crusher
Banned
I smell a hero's call.
Simon Belmont
Banned
Go punch that sun, right in the kisser.
Can Crusher
Banned
Imma just build some rockets and push the earf out of teh way. Brains over brass breh
Of course. .. scientists ponder if a future race could make the same leaps in science we have once other galaxies are no longer observable
There are no definites, if it is then we'll never know as the light will not have have a chance to reach us. In principle (per General Relativity) it is still expanding and maybe even creating an infinite number of universes.
Alcoremortis
Member
Well, I'm not an astrophysicist and I'm only very technically a physicist, but I've read a bit into the various theories floating around about universe shape and creation.
There's definitely some ideas for extra dimensions, such as M theory, which has a total of eleven dimensions, only four of which we can perceive. There's Rainbow physics, which attributes red-shifting to slight fluctuations in light speed depending on different wavelengths of light and therefore negates the universe expansion idea (though, I kinda think this one is bullshit). There's the idea the universe is a super advanced hologram, which never really made sense to me, but is nice if you want to justify the possibility of being able to manipulate reality.
It would make sense to me that the Universe would be round, but that's just because that would my first guess as to the most entropically favorable shape, but that there would be no edges. It would be a bit Heisenbergian, but on a larger scale. You would never be able to reach the "end" of the Universe, because as soon as you get there, it will have moved. And honestly, the idea of alternate universes is more terrifying than the idea of one infinite one. Because I can only imagine that you wouldn't be able to have a finite number of alternate universes.
Bah! This universe stuff is crazy-making. It's turtles all the way down, I say!
SpoonyBard
Banned
Only massless particles can reach speed of light. I presume you have mass, so you'd need infinite amount of energy to reach speed of light. And going faster is probably not possible.
edit: and I don't believe black holes have infinite density, let alone zero volume, that sounds just silly to me. So you wouldn't reach speed of light even when infinitely close to one.
Simon Belmont
Banned
No. As you approach the speed of light time slows down, ensuring that you would never *quite* get there.
No, but you might go really fast though.
I think a healthy dose of humility is always good for science. We shouldn't presume truth too much.
Let's not forget...
Turin Turambar
Member
I read about them some time ago, I remember being fascinating. I wonder, can anyone explain EPR Paradox / Bell's Theorem and modern QM experiments, and the implications?
I remember a Youtube video that went over them, but hell if I can find it again.
Rodney McKay
Member
I always hated the concept of Induction, but I read something interesting regarding it and science.
I'm paraphrasing, but it basically boiled down to: If there was an observable/replicatable "fact" that suddenly changed (say the speed of light changed a tiny bit), science wouldn't suddenly collapse. Instead it would continue to study this phenomenon and discover new theories to explain it which would cause everything to be seen in a different light.
And if too many fundamental aspects of the universe suddenly began to change every day in completely random, unpredictable, untestable ways, then humanity (or all matter+energy in general) would probably cease to exist and we probably wouldn't even be around for Inductionists to gloat about it.
Just take it with you.
Member
Intelligent life forms living at a latter time may not even be able to come to the same conclusions as us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sUH77mYBUtM#t=2819
Supposedly, the Sun will cook us long before that happens.
Simon Belmont
Banned
If that were the case would we not expect to see galaxies flying in all directions, not uniformly away from us?
And you've now stumbled into multiverse theory.
That too. I was taking his question to mean 'within the same universe'
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
So have they identified which universe the waves are coming from? The one above us or the one to the side of a few moments ago?
I don't know what I'm doing 0_o
Oh it will for sure. The goldilocks zone as they call it for Earth is very narrow. Earth will cease to support human life and most in general long before the sun expands out this far.
Read up on vacuum metastability events and live in fear that a universe destroying wave is expanding at the speed of light from somewhere straight at us.
IAmRandom31
Banned
Heh, you are stepping into the " creationists " world without even knowing it.
I look at DNA like computer code. There is always someone behind the scenes writing it. Look at the Big Bang and such .. I dunno. Blah blah.
VanquishUK
Member
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