On 6/21/2020 at 4:57 PM, birdguy said:

All opportunities that dropped in my lap so to speak.

I had an opportunity drop in my lap at a party one evening. I'm still sorry I didn't take advantage of it....Doug

On 6/20/2020 at 5:02 PM, HiFlyer said:

Well...... Imagine its a cyclic universe

 

 

If the theory of inflation is correct it may be.

Contrary to what most believe, inflation occured before the hot big bang, not after.

There may or may not have been a cosmological singularity, or there could have been just the inflation field (inflaton field) prior to the hot big bang.

The inflaton field would have been expanding exponentially. When it stopped expanding all that energy was dumped into the field and particles were created. Those particles jostled together and a hot big bang occured.

Now the point is that acording to our best measurements the universe appears flat thus infinite, so the hot big bang would have occured simultaneously across the entire infinate universe simultaneously.

Now here's the interesting bit... if we cast our minds forward trillions of years into the future, to when the space time is so expanded that even particles fly apart, we are left with a scalar field, identical to the scalar field that was the inflaton field. Now if that scalar field stops expanding, we end up with particles jostling together and a new hot big bang.

Nothing definitive, but interesting to contemplate.

At your present location, everything that has occurred and will occur is there, but you just can't sense it. Sometimes you get what's termed a deja vu experience, which means that you get a feeling that what just happened has happened before. The analogy is to one of those old reel to to reel tape recorders. On those, because the adjacent layers of tape slightly magnetized each other, during  very quiet passages you could barely hear "bleed through" music that was displaced in time by one tape circumference. Time and space interact in a similar fashion.

The more I think about the "big" questions, the more I think that anything is possible. For example, was there ever a beginning? If so, then how was everything that exists now created? Looking at it like that, you could argue (pretty convincingly in my opinion) that there is no beginning and no end. Does that make sense? Not to our mortal minds, and if you try to think about it for too long, you encounter a kind of "barrier" in your brain. It's as if the Universe (or reality itself) is warning you not to go there.

The more I think about that, the more interested I become.

Edited June 28, 20205 yr by Christopher Low

What happens when the universe runs out of steam and quits expanding?  It probably contracts until it becomes a singularity again and the next big bang in a series of infinite big bangs occurs.  It is in effect a perpetual motion machine forever contracting, becoming a singularity, exploding and expanding like the suck, squeeze, bang, blow, cycle of an internal combustion engine.

Noel

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

What happens when the universe runs out of steam and quits expanding?  It probably contracts until it becomes a singularity again and the next big bang in a series of infinite big bangs occurs.  It is in effect a perpetual motion machine forever contracting, becoming a singularity, exploding and expanding like the suck, squeeze, bang, blow, cycle of an internal combustion engine.

Noel

Well on another post a while ago, I presented something showing a somewhat bleaker possibility.......

 

That was interesting.  There is not telling how long this will all last.  Is there a graveyard of dead universes.  And what are they since there is no such thing as stasis.  Something has to keep happening.  Do they decay like our dead bodies do giving nutrients and energy to other universes?  Is our universe somehow being fed by dead universes?

Of one thing I am fairly certain.  It will never end.  Even though, as the video explains, time ceases to exist, it still has to exist for there has to be something happening a trillionth of a second after we think time ceases to exist.

I never went to college and never took physics in high school so I am just laying out what one layman thinks.

Noel

Must remember to take out the rubbish bin, and its contents of Dark Matter, on Friday.

😊

Also would like to mention a serious relativistic exception to the commentary at 26 billion trillion trillion years

14 minutes ago, WingZ said:

Must remember to take out the rubbish bin, and its contents of Dark Matter, on Friday.

😊

Also would like to mention a serious relativistic exception to the commentary at 26 billion trillion trillion years

Matter can't move faster than the speed of light, but space itself has no intrinsic speed limit. Matter contained within an area of space exceeding the speed of light from our perspective is itself not technically moving faster than light within that frame of reference.

That's how the alcubierre warp drive would work.

On 6/28/2020 at 3:20 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

At your present location, everything that has occurred and will occur is there, but you just can't sense it. Sometimes you get what's termed a deja vu experience, which means that you get a feeling that what just happened has happened before. The analogy is to one of those old reel to to reel tape recorders. On those, because the adjacent layers of tape slightly magnetized each other, during  very quiet passages you could barely hear "bleed through" music that was displaced in time by one tape circumference. Time and space interact in a similar fashion.

 

There's no scientific basis to that. Deja vu is a biological phenomenon. There are a number of biological explanations for it. 

 

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everything that has occurred and will occur is there

 

There is a theory that suggest time does not flow like a river but is a block universe, but it's not proven, not definitive. 

There's no sich thing as time, flowing or otherwise. That's why it has such a brief history. It's just a marketing concept concocted by higher primates to sell watches and clocks.

On 6/28/2020 at 3:23 PM, Christopher Low said:

For example, was there ever a beginning? If so, then how was everything that exists now created?

 

Well physics tells us that it is actually possible to create a universe from nothing. Important to point out though that science has redefined what nothing is. Quantum physics tells us that "nothing" is actually replete with particles popping in and out of existence for a very brief moment, particles of matter and antimatter, before destroying themselves. Not true particles, they are virtual particles. 

You might think a universe just popping into existence defies the second law of thermodynamics, but it actually doesn't, it doesn't because if you add up all the positive energy in the universe and all the negative energy, gravitational energy, the total is precisely zero. So you can create a universe from nothing if the total energy is zero. It's been describes as the ultimate free lunch. 

 

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that there is no beginning and no end.

 

As I mentioned previously, if the theory of inflation is correct, then prior to the HOT big bang, there was the inflation field, also referred to as the inflaton field. Now the inflation field may have been infinite and eternal, or alternatively there could have been a cosmological singularity prior to the inflation filed.  

On 6/28/2020 at 6:35 PM, birdguy said:

That was interesting.  There is not telling how long this will all last.  Is there a graveyard of dead universes.  And what are they since there is no such thing as stasis.  Something has to keep happening. 

 

Nope, "something" may not need to keep happening, although true nothingness is a very difficult concept to grasp. 

As for how long the universe will last, we don't really know. But current observations suggest that the expansion of the universe will continue to accelerate and that ultimately all matter, all particles, will be blown apart, and all we end up with is a field, a scalar field. So in that sense we are very lucky to be around at this time in the history of the universe, because in the distant future, no stars will visible, no galaxies will be visible, nothing will be detectable to a scientist in the distant future. 

Don't think think the idea of a cyclic universe is dead though. Roger Penrose has a fascinating Conformal Cyclic Cosmology theory.

 

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 Even though, as the video explains, time ceases to exist, it still has to exist for there has to be something happening a trillionth of a second after we think time ceases to exist.

 

Nope, there really doesn't. True nothingness, no space no time, absolutely nothing is feasible. 

22 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

 

That's how the alcubierre warp drive would work.

 

As soon as I confirm the existence of negative energy and generate some in my shed I'll build you one. Trouble is, according to Krauss, you would have to seed the entire length of your journey with negative energy, at sub light speed, to make ONE trip at FTL. Even Alcubierre himself said in a recent podcast that you would be better off trying to create a worm hole, which would still require hypothetical negative energy of course. 

🤪🚀