Posted on 12/18/2007 5:03:53 PM PST by bruinbirdman
It's the end of the world - but not as we know it.
A Spanish scientist suggests that the universe's end will come not with a bang but standstill - that time is literally running out and will, one day, stop altogether.
Professor Jose Senovilla, of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, has put forward the theory as a rival to the idea of "dark energy" - the strange antigravitational force that is posited to explain a cosmic phenomenon that has baffled scientists.
It was noticed ten years ago that distant stars - the ones on the very fringes of the universe - seemed to be moving faster than those nearer to the centre, suggesting that they were accelerating as they shot through space. Dark energy was suggested as a possible means of powering that acceleration.
The problem is that no-one has any idea what it is or where it comes from.
Professor Senovilla's theory does away altogether with dark energy. Instead, he says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock that needs winding.
While the change would be infinitesimally slow from an ordinary human perspective, in the grander scales of cosmology - in which scientists study ancient light from suns billions of years dead - it could be easily measured.
Astronomers are able to decipher the expansion speed of the universe using the so-called "red shift" technique.
Light from stars that are moving towards the earth is of higher frequency than that from the same sort of stars moving away. The principle is the same as that of an ambulance siren which gets higher as it comes towards the listener but lower as it moves away. Similarly, a star moving away appears redder in colour.
Scientists look for exploding stars, or supernovae, of certain types that provide a benchmark to work against.
However, the accuracy of these measurements depend on time remaining constant throughout the universe, says Prof Senovilla.
If time is indeed slowing down, then the far-distant, long-ago stars seen by cosmologists would be from an era when time ran faster. It would therefore, from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.
"Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," said Senovilla.
He takes the basis for his idea from the superstring theory, which suggests that dimensions of time and space can move around and change places. His suggestion is that our solitary time dimension is slowly becoming a new space dimension.
In some number of billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether - and everything will stop.
"Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," Prof Senovilla told New Scientist magazine.
"Our planet will be long gone by then."
While the theory is outlandish, it is not without support. Prof Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, believes the idea has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect," he said.
God said in his word that he would speed things up near the end. "And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the Elect's sake those days shall be shortened" (Matthew 24:22).The old Hebrew gentlemen who stitched together the good book got this one wrong.
Due to the tides, caused by the moon, the length of day is increasing, not decreasing, and long before time stops in the universe (if it ever does), the earth will become tidally locked to the sun, and will present the same face to the sun all the time, just as the moon is now tidally locked to the earth.
Wrong - your REFERENCE of time has changed because when you were four, a year was twenty-five percent of your lifespan; at forty, a year is two and one half percent and as you are blessed with longer life and your age increases, your reference of a year's length appears "SHORTENED" (Matt 24:22).
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Hey????
Have we met???
Eccl 3:15 That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.
Time is the created, just as you and I, it’s a creature we view in events sequenced in succession. Beyond the created, time’s restraints are abolished, hence eternity.
LOL! I was thinking that too - hope I'm at home doing something interesting and not sitting at the office...
I think the universe is pouring from a galactic spring as we rush along a universal puddle... outward... outward...
lol... i am not sure, but great tag line
Ah, so true, but is there any other way to measure time and speed, without a reference?
Meat Loaf should be happy about this news.
:’) Moral relativism, but I like it.
The universe is unbounded, no edges.
The problem is our "reference" point is faulty because it isn't fixed since it is part of the created realm. Any physical reference point we have is and always will be bound to time, hence governed by that which it is trying to measure. Time is also relative to points in space, ie. a year on Pluto isn't equal to a year on Mars, etc.. beyond our solar system, time has a far different reference point - but what is it? the center of our galaxy? and beyond our galactic body, what then is the point of reference?
See Tagline...
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