Posted on 03/28/2004 4:53:18 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The Universe was not born in one Big Bang, it has been going through cycles of creation and annihilation for eternity, according to a controversial new mathematical model1.
It's a compelling claim. The new cyclic model removes a major stumbling block common to existing theories of the Universe - namely, that physics can't explain what came before the Big Bang.
Because the model relies on new mathematics, it is having some teething problems, admit its proposers. Indeed, most cosmologists are treating the hypothesis with interested scepticism. Some are vociferously critical.
Criticism is to be expected, concedes Neil Turok of Cambridge University, UK, who developed the cyclic model with cosmologist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University in New Jersey. "We're taking on some very fundamental issues here," says Turok.
Strings attached
Steinhardt and Turok draw on the emerging science of string theory. This mathematical idea uses up to ten dimensions - instead of the usual four - to explain the weird behaviour of tiny things in physics called fundamental particles.
When applied to big things like cosmology, string theory invokes weird mathematical entities called membranes - branes for short. In the cyclic model there are two branes at any one time, one containing our Universe, the other a parallel Universe that is the mirror image of our own.
The researchers suggest that these branes regularly collide, as they did 15 billion years ago, resulting in the massive release of energy previously ascribed to the Big Bang. And just like the Big Bang, "this collision made all the radiation and matter that fills the Universe," says Turok.
The branes are then flung apart. The Universes on each brane expand outwards over billions of years, as ours is doing today.
According to the model, a fifth dimension that we can't see or travel through bridges the branes. As each Universe expands, its matter and energy spreads ever thinner and is diluted. When the spring-like fifth dimension overcomes this expansion energy it heaves the branes back together, they collide, and the whole process repeats. "It's just like reproduction in biology," says Turok.
As well as solving the problem of what came before the Big Bang, the cyclic model could explain numerous other cosmological conundrums, such as dark energy. Our Universe should contain more energy than can be measured, and there are no good theories to explain why. Turok and Steinhardt's model suggests that this is because energy, in the form of gravity, leaks across the fifth dimension between our Universe and its complementary braneworld.
No braner?
Steinhardt and Turok's idea sounds appealing, but fellow astrophysicists are not greeting it with open arms. "The community is very, very sceptical," says David Lyth, a cosmologist at the University of Lancaster, UK.
Others are more scathing. "It's a very bad idea popular only among journalists," says one of the chief critics of the cyclic model, Andrei Linde of Stanford University, California. "It's an extremely complicated theory and simply does not work," adds Linde, the originator of a rival model of the Universe.
String theory is still in its infancy, and applying it to cosmology stretches it to its limits, explains Cambridge University cosmologist George Efstathiou. "Its connection to fundamental physics is really rather weak," he says, so until string theory matures, models that use it will be flawed and misunderstood. But on the whole, he says, "the cyclic model is a cute idea and some elements of it may survive."
Steinhardt and Turok agree that problems with the mathematics could be their undoing. "There may be disasters waiting for us at higher levels of calculation," says Turok. But, if it does add up, their theory overturns many ideas about the Universe, they say - like time and space being created in a Big Bang.
Footnote 1: Steinhardt, P. J. & Turok, N. A. Cyclic model of the Universe.Science, published online April 25 (2002). |Link to Science online.|
Theme for an Imaginary Western (Bruce / Brown)
When the wagons leave the city
for the forest, and further on
Painted wagons of the morning
dusty roads where they have gone
Sometimes travelling through the darkness
met the summer coming home
Fallen faces by the wayside
Looked as if they might have knownO the sun was in their eyes
and the desert that dries
In the country towns
where the laughter soundsO the dancing and the singing
O the music when they played
O the fires that they started
O the girls with no regret
Sometimes they found it
Sometimes they kept it
Often lost it on the way
Fought each other to possess it
Sometimes died in sight of day
Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?
I hope not - I hated that song. Right up there with "Stairway to Heaven" as the most overplayed song in radio history.
One of the things that I have always understood was that this statement was wrong. There is only one infinity.
You can disagree if you wish, but if you really understand the concept of "Infinity" there cannot be separate "Infinities."
The concept implies unity.
I never heard that. Explains everything to me. Can't question what we can't answer.
The only alternative is Faith in what we can never know.
Same movie.
How do you know THAT? This presupposes a knowledge that you cannot have based upon your next premise. . .
This necessarily means determinism; i.e., every current action, down to those of the smallest subatomic particles, was predetermined 16 billion years ago.
You cannot know that there is "determinism" because this presupposes a knowledge you cannot have if you are utterly predetermined. You don't "know" anything. You are a bunch of chemicals reacting to other chemicals.
Thus the following is nonsense.
This necessarily means determinism; i.e., every current action, down to those of the smallest subatomic particles, was predetermined 16 billion years ago. Emotions are just predetermined chemical reactions. There is no free will.
You cannot know what happened "16 billion years ago" because it was totally determined. You cannot "know" that those numbers are accurate. You whole argument falls apart.
And, you cannot postulate a "God" because you have no basis upon which to know anything. If you do not accept the validity of your senses you have no basis upon which to understand anything, including the concept of said, "God."
You cannot escape free will because you must chose whether to eat or starve, jump off the bridge or not, get a job or not, go on welfare or not, whether to masturbate or not. You are confronted with free will every moment of every day, in almost every situation. You cannot, from an apriori supposition, as you are doing here, assert that free will doesn't exist, because you cannot prove the apriori supposition. BY DEFINITION.
One of the first things I learned way back before the internet and it was all BBSs was that people make mistakes in spelling and this didn't mean they were "invincibly ignorant." I have long since quit nitpicking over such crap.
That is reserved for the intellectually vacant who have no other arguments.
It borders upon the Fallacy of Composition, but I find it difficult to conceive that INFINITY could contain any fewer qualities, including intelligence and personality, than I possess.
It would violate the definition of "all inclusive."
Define your concept of "God."
I get into a lot of trouble here, but the problem is in defining the concept. People rarely understand this aspect.
How did you come by this concept, "God"? What does it really mean? Have you ever 'experienced' it? Or is it just a floating abstraction that has no relation to reality? How did 'God' do 'it?'
To say, "nobody knows" isn't good enough because then you have to admit, you don't know that "God did it."
I will say this one time. I'm not questioning your belief. I'm questioning HOW you know your belief. Until you can answer that, you have nothing really.
Then your understanding is wrong. You might start with Vilenkin's "Stories About Sets" to get a better understanding.
BUMP
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