The Universe

[Sweet Pete]

I feel your pain Dude....if indeed your empty shell allows you to feel pain.

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I feel nothing. Unless she tells me to. Then I feel a verbatim quote of whatever she said.

[sjc]

 

I feel nothing. Unless she tells me to. Then I feel a verbatim quote of whatever she said.

Reminds me of a 7year relationship I once had.......we're here for a good time not a long time

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[Sweet Pete]

Reminds me of a 7year relationship I once had.......we're here for a good time not a long time

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That's the real truth of the universe. Amen, brother.

[Boghead ranter]

As for the guy who asked earlier what lies beyond the edge of the universe, well.....that's what I can't get my head around. There has to be something, there can't physically be nothing, how do you quantify nothing, and how can the universe continue to expand into the realms of nothing, if there's nothing there to expand into?

Exactly my thoughts! My head hurts, then I give up any time I try to figure it out.

[pandarilla]

I like it when we talk about the deep stuff

[sjc]

 

That's the real truth of the universe. Amen, brother.

Exactly....hence I'd smash Jess for 30secs and apologise for nothing!

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[Confidemus]

Another little fact about light speed, if we're ever going to try and explore our stellar neighbours, without the use of curving or bending space time.

It's estimated that, in order to get an object the size of a bowling ball up to 99% the speed of light, it would take all the energy consumed on Earth in a week.

[Sweet Pete]

On the subject of quantifying nothingness, I've always enjoyed the story of the Madgeburg Hemispheres experiments, where Otto von Guericke pumped all of the air out of a metal sphere and then tried to open it to see what "nothing" would look like, only to find that he was unable to open the sphere, even when pulling it in two different directions using horses. Because there is all of the atmospheric pressure of the Earth outside the sphere and only "nothing" inside it, it cannot be opened until some air is allowed back into the sphere to balance the pressure.

[RandomGuy.]

This dominated my thoughts for weeks after I read it, amazingly I still remembered how to find the link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3352360/Scientists-glimpse-dark-flow-lurking-beyond-the-edge-of-the-universe.html

Something lurks beyond the edge of the observable universe, drawing unimaginable numbers of stars towards it.

[RandomGuy.]

Interestingly though, and despite the Universe being as vast as it is (and there are some argument that the Universe is maybe not as big as we think, it's still bloody big of course) it's at the quantum level that will provide the answers to why the whole thing operates as it does.

Do you think it's possible that beyond the visible Universe lies a ring of Dark Matter that's drawing the entire Universe towards it, slowly consuming parts of the Universe until ultimately only this Dark Matter remains?

[djchapsticks]

This dominated my thoughts for weeks after I read it, amazingly I still remembered how to find the link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3352360/Scientists-glimpse-dark-flow-lurking-beyond-the-edge-of-the-universe.html

I think it's Cthulu.

[RandomGuy.]

The Milkyway galaxy isn't even a dot on this...

[The_Kincardine]

I can't recommend the Astronomy Cast podcast highly enough - http://www.astronomycast.com/

I also like the Exposing PseudoAstronemy podcast which looks at various conspiracy/bad science topics associated with astronomy - http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/index.html

Good finds......thanks for posting. I've listened to two of the Exposing PseudoAstronomy podcasts. Good stuff.

[Ric]

This dominated my thoughts for weeks after I read it, amazingly I still remembered how to find the link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3352360/Scientists-glimpse-dark-flow-lurking-beyond-the-edge-of-the-universe.html

Do you think it's possible that beyond the visible Universe lies a ring of Dark Matter that's drawing the entire Universe towards it, slowly consuming parts of the Universe until ultimately only this Dark Matter remains?

No, not at all. There is "nothing" beyond the universe, certainly not in the sense that we would consider it. The Dark Flow theory has been given a fairly hefty dent with the Plank telescope providing absolutely no evidence to back up the earlier claims.

What is more interesting about Dark Energy is that scientists are coming round to a theory that it's not always existed, and it's a "relatively new" (in cosmological terms) occurrence. Possibly within the last 5 billion years. We know from the redshift that the universe is not only expanding, but the speed of that expansion is increasing. Dark Energy is one reason for this, well as the theory goes, however if you look at the speed of the expansion the universe should be bigger than it is if Dark Energy was a constant.

This gives rise to the idea that perhaps there is a structured life cycle of a universe, which makes somewhat uncomfortable reading. With entropy we understand that the energy whithin the universe will slowly dissipate, spread more evenly throughout and with the universe expanding that quickens the entropy. In a sense though that in itself is quite comforting. We can predict what will happen and how long it will take. If suddenly we are given a glimpse of the bigger picture we could technically be in a pre-ordained set of steps of which we cannot predict and we have no idea how it will effect us, let alone what is around us.

Of course a structured life cycle also suggests that this universe is not a one off and that it is a "regular" occurrence. There is certainly some level of theory to back this up, just no evidence in order to tie it down. The problem being that we can't observe from the "outside" as it were.

[st jude]

The Milkyway galaxy isn't even a dot on this...

[Ric]

There has to be something, there can't physically be nothing, how do you quantify nothing, and how can the universe continue to expand into the realms of nothing, if there's nothing there to expand into?

This is where a common misconception happens. The universe doesn't expand "into" anything. There is no beyond or outside. All existence is within the universe (or universes if you wish to support M-Theory).

I understand why people assume there is something for it to expand into because we look at it like a 3 dimensional puzzle. If you want to build an extension to your house then there must be land there to build on. This is how humans see the world and in a sense what we have evolved to deal with. It just doesn't work like that when you are discussing the edges of the universe.

A better way would be to consider it as the universe stretching. It still has all the component parts it always had (albeit in a different form from it's inception) it's just that those things are now farther apart because the space between them has stretched.

[Confidemus]

No, not at all. There is "nothing" beyond the universe, certainly not in the sense that we would consider it. The Dark Flow theory has been given a fairly hefty dent with the Plank telescope providing absolutely no evidence to back up the earlier claims.

What is more interesting about Dark Energy is that scientists are coming round to a theory that it's not always existed, and it's a "relatively new" (in cosmological terms) occurrence. Possibly within the last 5 billion years. We know from the redshift that the universe is not only expanding, but the speed of that expansion is increasing. Dark Energy is one reason for this, well as the theory goes, however if you look at the speed of the expansion the universe should be bigger than it is if Dark Energy was a constant.

This gives rise to the idea that perhaps there is a structured life cycle of a universe, which makes somewhat uncomfortable reading. With entropy we understand that the energy whithin the universe will slowly dissipate, spread more evenly throughout and with the universe expanding that quickens the entropy. In a sense though that in itself is quite comforting. We can predict what will happen and how long it will take. If suddenly we are given a glimpse of the bigger picture we could technically be in a pre-ordained set of steps of which we cannot predict and we have no idea how it will effect us, let alone what is around us.

Of course a structured life cycle also suggests that this universe is not a one off and that it is a "regular" occurrence. There is certainly some level of theory to back this up, just no evidence in order to tie it down. The problem being that we can't observe from the "outside" as it were.

Given that entropy is concerned with the process of a state of order becoming a state of disorder, it seems reasonable to suggest that heat death will be the universe's eventual fate.

What's amazing if you read into that is that some stars will eventually turn into black dwarves. There are no black dwarves yet, because the universe isn't old enough!

Man, I love this shit!

ETA: And by black dwarves I don't mean Gary Coleman.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Confidemus

[WFAANW]

I've came to the conclusion that i must be a massive geek as this thread is like a wet dream

[Ric]

Given that entropy is concerned with the process of a state of order becoming a state of disorder, it seems reasonable to suggest that heat death will be the universe's eventual fate.

Certainly "our" fate will be determined considerably sooner, as we are on course to smash into the Andromeda galaxy in anywhere between 3 and 5 billion years. To suggest this would be of a minor disruption would be to suggest that Neil Lennon may be a minor bit ginger. Essentially we have a few million years to figure out how the f**k to get off this planet, out of this solar system (technically these two have already happened), out of our galaxy, out of our local cluster and finally... to somewhere safe.

Anyone fancy the odds of that happening before we either (a) manage to blow ourselves up, or (b) get taken out by something big and nasty lurking in the outer reaches of space?

[Confidemus]

Certainly "our" fate will be determined considerably sooner, as we are on course to smash into the Andromeda galaxy in anywhere between 3 and 5 billion years. To suggest this would be of a minor disruption would be to suggest that Neil Lennon may be a minor bit ginger. Essentially we have a few million years to figure out how the f**k to get off this planet, out of this solar system (technically these two have already happened), out of our galaxy, out of our local cluster and finally... to somewhere safe.

Anyone fancy the odds of that happening before we either (a) manage to blow ourselves up, or (b) get taken out by something big and nasty lurking in the outer reaches of space?

But what's going to happen first, the galaxy collision, or the sun dying and becoming a red giant and crossing our planetary orbit and killing us all?