"I think I see my Dad."
Cameron Frye, Ferris Bueler's Day Off
Posted on 06/19/2003 7:54:36 PM PDT by DannyTN
New Hubble peers deep in cosmic past and future (2002)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A new wide-angle view of the universe looks back to a mere billion years after the Big Bang, revealing secrets about the lives of galaxies and the black holes at their hearts, scientists reported on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
"I think I see my Dad."
Cameron Frye, Ferris Bueler's Day Off
A special kind of mass. A weightless, massless mass. Yeah, that's the ticket.
That explanation has never flown with me. Sounds like an excuse for not thinking, IMO.
Now we must move into some physics more modern than old Newton's mechanics. Go beyond Newtonian mechanics to Hamiltonian mechanics. It's kind of mystifying the first time you see it, and it's difficult to talk about casually without sounding like Harry Potter. Like in the Matrix where 'there is no spoon': there is no gravity.
Ugh!
Ugh!
I agree.. ugh. But I also have to say that his statement is as likely to me as the hubble seeing something 12 billion light years away.
Here's my take: I'm sure you've heard the oft-repeated analogy between the two-dimensional surface of an expanding balloon and the expanding three-dimensional space we live in.
Imagine this two-dimensional surface when it's no larger than the surface of a proton, say (or even infinitesimally small, if you wish).
There's a Big Bang. The surface begins to expand rapidly.
Fast forward 13 billion years: Some critters have evolved on the surface of the now gigantic balloon, and they want to know "where" the Big Bang happened relative to their position on the balloon. Answer: The Big Bang happened everywhere, at every point in space, on that infinitesimally small surface. It makes no sense to talk about how far away you are from that point now.
Ok but they say we are seeing light that is 12 billion years old. Where was that point when the light was generated? On the balloon when it was much smaller. The light travels on the surface of the expanding balloon until it reaches us 12 billion lightyears later. Either as a result of traveling through space or through the expansion of space, we must have traveled relative to that point as a speed close to the speed of light. Is the expansion of space bound by the speed of light? Or is that one of those things that we don't know. And that the early universe might have broken the rules?
Then what caused the apple hit Newton's noodle?
I've heard that it was hugely superluminal in the very early universe. Even now, I think the expansion is still going on at relativistic speeds. These are good questions you've asked. I've racked my brain over them many times. Should've taken more physics! :-(
There is no apple :)
It's the intersection of unrestrained spatio-temporal geodesic lines, which are perfectly straight in generalized Hamiltonian continuum coordinates.
Certainly the concept of perceiving contains the notion that reality isn't mapped perfectly into our understanding. I believe some people have claimed that there is no reality, that it's all in our heads (why are they talking to us then?)
To me, life seems to work if you assume the universe is real, that our perceptions are fallible, and act accordingly. If someone tries to tell us we don't exist, guess we can pop them in the nose with impugnity.
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