Cosmologists say universe leaves them in the dark

The News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne) ^ | 10/20/03 | Tom Siegfried (Dallas Morning News)

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Strangely, I have never had a problem with the idea of negative gravity.

I have absolutely no problem with adding a new fundamental force to the list. I do have a problem calling it dark energy, b/c, for instance, the units aren't even the same: energy is measured in Joules, and force is measured in Newtons.

[RightWhale]

It's still handy to think of gravity as a force, but it is the result of a field. The field is a potential energy field, abbreviated as just energy. Such fields seem to surround material objects. It might be that what they are calling dark energy is nothing more than the total effect of alternate positive and negative gradient potential energy fields combined. The totality would be apparent only over intergalactic distances or over galactic cluster distances. Locally it would be just ordinary gravity and those inside the field couldn't tell if it were positive or negative gravity.

[SunkenCiv]

a space list ping?

[Focault's Pendulum]

42. Always has been....always will.

[TheLion]

The universe is infinitely un-understandable.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from October 23, 2003.

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[onedoug]

Though one would think an observer on the far side of the universe would see us expanding at near light speed as well, which to us however is clearly not the case. Thus it would seem that some sort of relativistic illusion is possible.

[LibWhacker]

which to us however is clearly not the case.

We are receding from them at near light speed, and they from us. The Big Bang and dark energy have pushed us up to this breakneck speed which, of course, we don't sense and can't see if we only look at things near to us. But to anyone who looks out at the most distant reaches of the observable universe, it looks like expansion. The universe scares the crap out of me.

[onedoug]

The universe scares the crap out of me.

Why?

[LibWhacker]

It’s too weird. I wouldn’t mind if physicists never fully understood it. I just don’t want weird.

[onedoug]

I think God is pleased that humans use their inetellect to try to figure it out, and pass it on to whomever else might be interested, so long as we husband the process. That it seems weird is a reflection of God in that sense, Who has made it good in the image of His goodness.