‘Non-discovery’ of space-time ripples opens door to birth of the Universe

The Times ^ | 8/20/2009 | Mark Henderson

[GraceG]

How do we know that that universe wasn’t created in a lab by beings who created their own version of “Large Hadron Collider” and in their time frame our universe will exist for a nano-second and blink out, but to us it lasts for Billions or Trillions of years?

If you inflate a small “chunk” of space time using massive amounts of concentrated energy you may be able to create a “pocket” or basement universe. We could be someone else’s science experiment.....

[Eaker]

I believe Theodor Seuss Geisel did some preliminary research in this area which he published in a paper titled, “Horton Hears a Who.”

;<)

[jpsb]

186,200 miles / second

[El Gato]

One can say that one clock is off because gravity created a dilation of time, just as the counter argument says gravity simply affected the other clock, the measuring instrument, not time.

How to explain then that subatomic particles traveling at near the speed of light, decay much more slowly, compared to the rates at which they decay when at rest relative to us. They do so at just the rates that would be expected given time dilation. In that case the clocks that are measuring the phenomena are at rest.

Remeber the very best clocks are based on just such subatomic decays.

[El Gato]

Sorry, not so. Because we all began from the same point, the epicenter of the big bang, and have just been gradually drifting apart, we are only as old as the point from which it all began to now. And since we don't really know how fast this expansion was from the epicenter at first, compared to what it is now, we can't calculate how old we are based on the distance we are from the epicenter of the big bang today.

You almost got it, but no cigar, because there is no epicenter, at a particular point, today. Put another way, *everywhere* is that epicenter. Everything is moving away from everything else (over long enoungh distances, locally things can be and are moveing towards each other).

[El Gato]

Darn, here I come screwing up years of theory that took bags and bags of weed smoking to come up with...

You think Einstein smoked weed? If he did, I want some of what he was smoking.

Now Einie himself thought the quantum mechanics guys were smoking dope, even thought much of their work was stimulated by his earlier work on the photoelectric effect, for which he received the Nobel Prize. (There's a Politics of Science story there, BTW). Eventually he came around, kinda sorta as was his wont, to their way of thinking.

[2harddrive]

Hi, Habibi. Sorry, I did not get to it today.....but I shall. It will only take an hour or so to put on paper, once I get rolling - but this was a BUSY day here. Go with God!

[Wuli]

“How to explain then that subatomic particles traveling at near the speed of light, decay much more slowly, compared to the rates at which they decay when at rest relative to us.”

I am not a physicist or astrophysicist, but those who are and who write arguments against the dilation of time theory believe that there again, gravity “relative to us” is affecting the rate of decay, not “time”. The affect is an “apparent” alteration of time only because we do not actually measure the energy/wave form we call “gravity”, though in many ways we claim to measure its affects - sometimes.

[El Gato]

I am not a physicist or astrophysicist, but those who are and who write arguments against the dilation of time theory believe that there again, gravity “relative to us” is affecting the rate of decay, not “time”

There is no difference in the gravity. Both the "at rest" (Meaning not moving anywhere near the speed of light), and the "high fraction of "c" (like 99.99%) particles are in the same gravity field. That of the earth. The only difference is the relative motion.

[Mr. Lucky]

OK, now this is the PBR thinkin’ more than me, but wouldn’t the image in the mirror merely be of the place the scientists were standing at the moment of the big bang?