Posted on 03/20/2002 6:47:11 AM PST by dead
Wave goodbye to the universe. The expansion of the universe, which began about 15 billon years ago with the Big Bang, is mysteriously getting faster, Australian and British astronomers say.
However, they admitted yesterday they did not have a clue what "dark energy" was driving the galaxies to defy gravity and fly apart with ever increasing speed.
"We don't understand the physical process," said Matthew Colless, of the Australian National University.
But, "eventually the universe will accelerate so rapidly the more distant galaxies we can see today will move away faster than the speed of light and will disappear over the horizon."
Expansion faster than light is possible because, not only are galaxies flying apart at extraordinary speeds, but space itself is expanding, carrying the galaxies away with it.
Until 1998 astrophysicists were debating whether gravity was slowing the expansion enough to eventually cause the universe to collapse in a Big Crunch.
That year other astronomers, including Brian Schmidt, of the ANU's Mount Stromlo Observatory, near Canberra, produced the first solid evidence that the expansion was accelerating.
Studying exploding stars, they found that the more distant ones were fainter - and thus further - than seemed possible. They concluded an accelerating universe was to blame.
"It was a huge surprise," Dr Schmidt recalled yesterday. "I was rather scared to go out and tell people. I thought they'd laugh me off the planet."
Dr Colless, one of the first he told, was "shaking his head".
The new project, involving the ANU, the University of NSW, the Anglo-Australian Observatory near Coonabarabran, and British scientists, led by Cambridge Professor George Efstathiou, used a different method to reach the same finding.
They spent five years mapping the position and speed of 220,000 galaxies. They then compared the data with microwave radio charts of other scientists to "map" the universe as it was 150,000 years after the Big Bang - before the first galaxies even lit up. They found that only an accelerating universe would have allowed it to grow to today's size.
"Now we have two independent pieces of evidence that both give exactly the same answer," Dr Colless said. "I didn't believe Brian at first ... you have to rearrange the mental furniture."
While most galaxies would vanish from view, the Milky Way, and its nearest neighbours, glued together by gravity, would travel on alone. Dr Schmidt said the confirmation was "great news for me. I can sleep a little better. It's evidence we didn't screw up four years ago."
By the way, on your link, what are the units for speed of light? kmh can't be kilometers per hour - that's too slow.
"All things, by immortal power, near or far
Hiddenly to each other linkèd are;
That thou cans't not touch a flower
Without troubling a star."
--Francis Thompson, The Mistress of Vision
Nope Just had dinner at the restaurant at the end of it last week (Or many Billions of years in the future... depending on your perspective)
LOL! Didn't even see that. Its kilometers/second!
Why do you say this?
It's not infinite. There is a theoretical end to the known universe.
It is expanding like a balloon expands, everything goes farther out, and individual galaxies move farther away from each other as the universe expands. The essential qualities of space include: gravity, the strong force, the weak force and electromagnatism. Without these forces, time and space cannot exist.
No he isn't. That's just a reflection of his first post, like those galaxies in post 47...
So what's on the other side? You know, the "non-universe" side?
New Jersey
My guess is that this theory will get swept under the astronomic rug.
Interestily what relitiviy predicts is that you would see you tail lights function as normal. However the light from all the stars in front of you would be squished and you would they would see a shift to blue.Ligth from stars in the rear would appear to be streched out and would appear to be more red.
Unlike most star trek movies you would still see the stars appear to be relitively stationary. If astronomers are correct in saying that the the nearest start is many light years away that it would still take many years for you to pass that star while the surrounding starts would have moved so little you would hard pressed to notice.
LOL! Damn, I just lost $5 to my friend here, I said it was Hope, Arkansas.
Have a great day.
In addition, I understand that black holes have a gravity well that is not that wide, but exceptionally steep once entered. Perhaps this configuration means that most of its own gravity is swallowed up at long distances.
Ordinary stars may pull on every other object in the universe, but black holes only pull (with their full strength) on things inside their event horizons. Things outside are pulled on with a quantum tithe of gravitry, i.e.- Only those gravity "waves" able to escape the event horizon due to the fluctating nature of the quantum world near the edge of the event horizon.
Whut U ThAnk?
Ditto! But couldn't the Big Bang have been God's Way of starting the Ball rolling and further how does the Cow Flatulence/GlobalWarming/Oceans Rising theory fit into god's plan?
Like I've said before "Cows Farting and causing the Oceans to rise and wipe out New York City, L.A., and San Francisco seem very comforting."
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