Giant space-time ripples may cause cosmic expansion

New Scientist (U.K.) ^ | March 18, 2005 | Maggie McKee

[snarks_when_bored]

Maybe accelerating cosmic expansion is caused by space-time ripples rather than dark energy, as Riotto, Kolb and their team suggest, or maybe not. But, either way, it's not always appreciated that inflationary cosmology predicts that our visible universe is just a mere speck in a vastly larger 'global' universe:

During inflation, space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. As it did so, random quantum fluctuations that popped into being produced ripples in space-time. These swelled to fill the entire "global" universe, which is about 10¹⁰⁰ times as large as the universe we can see.

Our "observable" universe is confined to a region with a radius of 14 billion light years because only light from within that distance has had time to reach us since the big bang.

It's not easy to comprehend what scaling up 'small' quantities by a factor of 10¹⁰⁰ does. Try it.

[snarks_when_bored]

Ping

[mgc1122]

Look for the headlines to scream Women and minorities affected most - President Bush to blame

[snarks_when_bored]

Links to a couple of "Powers of Ten" websites (but notice that they range over only 42 or so orders of magnitude, not 100):

Powers of Ten

A Question of Scale

[muir_redwoods]

Does anything exist in quantities as large as 10 to the 100th power? Are there even that many atoms in the observable universe?

A number like that makes my hair hurt.

[snarks_when_bored]

Does anything exist in quantities as large as 10 to the 100th power? Are there even that many atoms in the observable universe?

Nope. Last I heard, the total number of elementary particles in the observable universe is something on the order of 10⁸⁰, give or take a few.

[zoso82t]

I'm an engineer, but stuff like this makes my brain hurt.

[johnandrhonda]

"space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. As it did so, random quantum fluctuations that popped into being produced ripples in space-time."

Just as I thought...

[snarks_when_bored]

Yeah, the idea was so obvious, you didn't even bother to write it up... (smile)

[Tom Bombadil]

random quantum fluctuations that popped into being

I burp once in a while and I almost never have any warning.

Maybe it was kind of like the sneeze in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

[Savage Beast]

I'm glad to learn that the global universe is so much larger than the observable one. I was beginning to feel cramped.

"the ripples...flowed through all of space...leaving behind a gravitational wake that can still be felt"

No wonder I feel wobbly!

[Nowhere Man]

Bump for later reading.

[snarks_when_bored]

Here's a link to a pre-print of the paper by Edward W. Kolb, Sabino Matarrese, Alessio Notari, and Antonio Riotto:

"Primordial inflation explains why the universe is accelerating today" [Abstract, PDF]

[quantim]

cosmic speed-up using "inflation"

We could ask Jimmah Carter to give us a synopsis in simpler terms.

[Route101]

....Dark energy is not necessary to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe observed by astronomers, suggest controversial new calculations. Instead, gigantic ripples in space-time - larger than the observable universe - may be the cause....Does this explain the dark energy called Hillary?....

[Route101]

...and her gigantic ripples???...

[Sarajevo]

The Nexus commeth!

[rellimpank]

-b-

[cpdiii]

You are a Trekkie of the first order. Live long and prosper.

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for the ping. This is a different title, and a whole different article, but I'm pretty sure it's all about the same subject as in an earlier thread:
Was Einstein right when he said he was wrong?