Posted on 05/09/2006 11:09:53 PM PDT by Dallas59
A joint UK-US team has put forward an alternative theory of cosmic evolution.
It proposes that the Universe undergoes cycles of "Big Bangs" and "Big Crunches", meaning our Universe is merely a "child of the previous one".
It challenges the conventional view of the cosmos, which observations show to be 12-14 billion years old.
The new ideas, reported in the journal Science, may explain why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, the researchers say.
"At present the conventional view is that all of space, time, matter and energy began at a single point, which then expanded and cooled, leaving the Universe as it is today," said Professor Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, New Jersey.
"However, this new theory suggests that there's a continuous cycle of universes, with each a repeat of the last, but not an exact replica.
"It can be thought of as a child of the previous universe."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Secondly, this is an old, old theory once called the "Oscillating Theory of the Universe." Of course, some of the details are different now; there was no Dark Matter Universe back then. They used to argue that if time is infinite and matter finite in an oscillating universe, then every possible combination and permutation of protons and neutrons and electrons will occur given enough time (oscillations). In other words, we've all been here before -- infinitely many times. And we'll all be here again -- infinitely many times.
Better luck next time, eh?
Yes, it's a very old theory...
You mean I gotta live upstairs from "them" again? Forever????
L
The oscillations of the theory of the cosmos gives me a headache! I used to think there were just too many lawyers, I'm starting to look at physicists the same way.
That was the point of "dark matter"; provide enough mass in the universe to hit the brakes for a "big crunch". A universe that expands forever without stopping not only can't produce a "next" universe, it can't be explained by the collapse of a previous universe.
If you want to believe in a self-explanitory universe with no end and no beginning (and more to the point, no Creator), then you need an oscillating universe. You could theorize that each successive cycle somehow loses mass, and that at some point a universe would form that reaches equilibrium and never collapses again. However, if the chain of universes were infinitely old, then this case would have already happened and we wouldn't be posting here! Equilibrium would have been reached eons ago and this last universe would have suffered heat death long, long ago.
A universe with a definite beginning and end could cause a crisis of faith for some in the Academy.
Gregory Benford wrote a terrific description of this theory in the intro to a collection about Far Future stories. It sounds perfectly plausible to me, but ultimately I'm too busy to think about it all. ;)
So as the universe crunches and then bounces back, it expands to a larger size each time. Sounds like someone watched the Nutty Professor too many times as a kid. < /flubber>
Nietzsche postulated something like this this 150 years ago, saying that the universe and time just keep repeating
themselves endlessly.
I remember those "Bizarro" comics from the 50s and 60s. Now I live in them!
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