Posted on 07/19/2016 12:47:11 PM PDT by MtnClimber
For nearly 20 years, physicists have known that the expansion of the universe has begun to speed up. This bizarre acceleration could arise because some form of mysterious dark energy is stretching space. Or, it could signal that physicists' understanding of gravity isn't quite right. But a new study puts the screws on a broad class of alternative theories of gravity, making it that much harder to explain away dark energy.
The study is also path setting because it exploits an effect called weak lensing in which the gravity from closer galaxies distorts the images of more distant ones. "That's the future," says Bob Nichol, an observational cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the study. "If you look to the next decade, there's going to be an explosion of this data."
Physicists had expected the universe's expansion to be slowing as the galaxies pull on one another with their gravity. But in 1998, two independent teams traced the history of the universe's expansion by studying type 1a supernovae: stellar explosions whose colors tell when they went off and whose brightness reveals how far away they are now. Both teams found that the expansion is speeding up, suggesting that dark energy is blowing up the universe like a balloon.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
Exactly. Balancing equations. If something is missing in an equation, give it a variable name and dimensions and call it something cool like dark matter.
Increasing with distance... Maybe the frame of reference is not the micro but the macro. That the cause and effect is flipped — and the expanding universe is producing the force and not the other way around?
“That the cause and effect is flipped and the expanding universe is producing the force and not the other way around?”
Perhaps. I have a similar hypothesis, but about gravity, which I see as kind of the flip side of this force of expansion. I believe gravity is simply an effect of drag caused by the interaction of the expansion force and the inertia of the matter that the expanding space is trying to pull along with it. Spacetime is free to expand where there is no matter, but when matter is present, its inertia resists the expansion, causing spacetime to distort when it tries to pull the matter with it, and this distortion in the geometry of spacetime causes the gravitational effects we are familiar with.
In that case, what is making the universe expand?
“Dark energy” is just shorthand way of saying that something is missing from relativity or the standard model, something that we can only observe across vast scales.
ROFL!!! that was great.
It’s evil, dark energy!!! I can feel it!!
I dont know what the #### it is.
Wow. Very interesting idea!
So there is a larger all encompassing force (super negative gravity) and gravity is simply an artifact of that force. That would explain why it repels versus attracts.
Cool.
Have you tried to prove this mathematically?
Bkmk.
If your math will not work unless you add in something you invented then you should question your basic assumptions.
There is so much we dont know.
...
But our knowledge keeps increasing every day.
The knowledge does keep increasing for sure. Gut we have no way of knowing if we are at 20% or 80%.
The universe needs more cow bell.
The Big Bang theory devotees are crying.
“Have you tried to prove this mathematically?”
Nah, it’s just a concept I’ve been toying with, I’m not a professional so when it comes to tensor equations and fourth dimensional math, I’ll get lost :)
I think the basic math is already there though, in general relativity, because Einstein had to account for this “cosmological constant” in order to make it work. So if my idea is correct, there should be some solution to the GR equations that would show how to derive the equation for gravity from the equation for the cosmological constant. I’m just probably not the guy to figure out what that solution is.
Agreed.
So, they are stating that the 'observable' universe is expanding. Then they assume that the non-observable universe must also be expanding. And they assume it's size. Neither of which is provable, at this point.
We have no more proof it is expanding than we do that it is collapsing (although the collapsing theory would eventually be 'prove-able').
What really happens is that as our technology improves, our 'understanding' of the universe evolves. We went from collapsing to expanding. It may end up that neither is true.
Or... the Planck Constant.
Is it just a coincidence the human brain looks like a pile of spaghetti ?
Heat.Heat causes expansion. If we take away all sources of heat, there would be nothing in the Universe, ergo it would not exist.
(kind of like the inside of my brane).
"Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, And He who formed you from the womb: I am the Lord, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself...""
-- Isaiah 44:24
Exactly.
Or pi?
Pi makes the world go round.
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