Posted on 12/22/2002 6:07:08 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Space might end up dark, thick and boring.
The Universe is not as bouncy as some think, say two physicists. If a Big Crunch follows the Big Bang, it may get stuck that way for ever1.
A fluid of black holes would bung up space. There would be nothing to drive another Big Bang, and nowhere else to go. The Universe would be, you might say, stuffed.
In a bouncing universe, all the matter currently flying apart slows until it reverses and falls towards a Big Crunch. Some physicists think this could ignite another Big Bang, in an unending sequence of expansion and contraction.
An idea called M-theory suggests how the switch from crunch to bang could happen2. The details depend on the shape of space: whether it is infinite and flat, or finite and curved like the surface of a balloon or a doughnut.
Thomas Banks of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Willy Fischler of the University of Texas at Austin have considered a flat, infinite space in which particles get ever closer and ever denser.
In a space with such features, the smallest kinks in density are amplified into black holes, the densest objects in the Universe. So the whole of space-time would congeal into a very lumpy soup - a black crunch.
"We don't really know what this fluid is made out of," Fischler admits. But he and Banks argue that it may reach a pressure at which it cannot become any denser. At this point, the speed of sound equals the speed of light. Deadlock results.
No theory can cope with a Big Crunch. Because of this, says Fischler, the analysis that he and Banks have performed remains speculative. And a doughnut-shaped Universe could meet a quite different fate, he adds.
References:
1. Banks, T. & Fishler, W. Black Crunch. Preprint http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0212113, (2002). |Article|
2. Khoury, J., Ovrut, B. A., Seiberg, N., Steinhardt, P. J. & Turok, N. From Big Crunch to Big Bang. Preprint http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0108187, (2002). |Article|
[See the original article for links in the footnotes]
Only one is necessary...if she's very, very good. ;-)
Yes indeed. The one I particularly enjoyed was when he told you to shove it. LMAO! You of all people...Dr. Nice-Guy...what an maroon (him, not you)! :-D
Feel sorry for his instructors...just imagine what this kid is like in lecture!
I'm right with you...we'll dance the night away :-)
Why should I bother to refute you on any other level...? You don't listen to anything but your own self-absorbed, hormonally-induced, aggrandized prattle. Up until now you've been quite entertaining, so let the show continue!
Sigh! Although I'd love to counter this with an appropriate vaudevillian response, I should instead make a blanket disclaimer to spare my dear friend's reputation on FR. RA and I are engaged in legitimately under-funded research and that's all. I do enjoy the heck out of teasing him, though.
The fact you do not "give a damn" about such rules bespeaks a lack of discipline in your writing, and hence your thinking. This is, sadly, the state of the publicly-educated mind nowadays. My 17-year-old daughter is also a student of the e.e. cummings school of writing, making email communications with her problematic.
An object rotating in space (the outer kind) is technically a perpetual-motion machine (an object in motion will remain in motion; an object at rest will remain at rest; until acted upon by an outside force). However, extracting energy from such an arrangement introduces one or more outside forces.
Can I quote you on that? </creation_mode>
Which; one Dominatrix, or one slave?
;-)
Well, you better disengage before you get caught in that configuration!
Hell, I'm just waiting for him to finally spell existence correctly.
Now, back to the universe thingy: Everything except us is standing still, we are just moving backwards really, really fast.
It is condensing?
Creative guess, wrong nevertheless. Everything is receding from our viewpoint because we are the malodorous, wormy rectum of the universe.
Yes, I have trouble with "existence." Sometimes I even use the wrong "your." Finding the latter too late makes me suicidal for a few minutes.
But there's something about misspelling a subject you're thumping your chest about having passed in High School. Did you look at the book? Did the teacher write it on the board the first day of class? What does it mean, anyway, to have passed a course in High School where notoriously you pass if you don't get arrested?
In other words, I don't believe trigonometry is a prerequisite for college.
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