Posted on 10/22/2002 10:29:40 AM PDT by yankeedame
Tuesday, 22 October, 2002, 06:33 GMT 07:33 UK
Universe is 'doomed to collapse'
"It is all going to disappear one way or another"
By Dr David Whitehouse,BBC News Online science editor
Forget the idea that we live in a youthful universe.
If two American professors are correct, the cosmos is middle-aged.
And it has not got an old age to look forward to.
Despite what recent observations suggest, Professor Andrei Linde from Stanford University and his wife Professor Renata Kallosh say the universe will stop expanding and collapse in the relatively near future.
New insights into the mysterious "dark energy" that appears to be pushing the universe apart suggest it may eventually lose its power.
Turning away from the dark side, the cosmos will then collapse, as if everything was falling into a black hole, say researchers.
Islands of dying stars
It was in 1998 that two teams of astronomers discovered that not only was the universe expanding, it was doing so at an ever-faster rate.
Their astonishing findings were based on observations of supernovae - exploding stars that can be seen on the other side of the universe.
To explain this puzzle astronomers resurrected an idea originally from Einstein that there is in seemingly empty space a form of vacuum energy, sometimes referred to as dark energy, which is pushing everything apart.
The expansion of our universe at an ever-increasing rate implied a dark and lonely future for our galaxy.
All the galaxies would move far apart from one another, becoming isolated islands of dying stars with each galaxy no longer visible from any other.
The standard vision at the moment is that the universe is speeding up so we were surprised to find that a collapse could happen within such a short amount of time.
Professor Andrei Linde
Our own Milky Way would become an isolated island adrift in an unchanging sea of totally black space 150 billion years from now.
Over time all the stars in all the galaxies would fade, leaving an ever-cooling collection of stellar cinders and frozen planets that over billions of billions of years would become swallowed up by black holes.
But a new look at the fate of the universe adds a new twist to this so-called "heat death" scenario and suggests the fate of the cosmos is to become thin and lukewarm.
Doomed to disappear
The new approach does not deny that the universe is accelerating.
But it predicts that this acceleration will cease and be followed by a cosmic collapse in a "mere" 10 to 20 billion years.
Professor Linde said: "The standard vision at the moment is that the universe is speeding up so we were surprised to find that a collapse could happen within such a short amount of time."
Prof Linde and Prof Kallosh are highly respected physicists ©Stanford Univ
The couple - both physics professors - have produced two companion studies which suggest a cosmic "big crunch" is possible despite the observation that the universe is expanding.
Professor Linde said: "The universe may be doomed to collapse and disappear."
According to Professor Linde and Professor Kallosh the properties of the dark energy could be changing in a way which will eventually neutralise its influence.
Professor Linde said: "We have found that some of the best attempts to describe dark energy predict that it will gradually become negative, which will cause the Universe to become unstable, then collapse."
'Middle of the life cycle'
To put that into perspective, the universe is estimated to be about 14 billion years old, so according to the Stanford pair it has now reached middle age.
Professor Linde said: "Physicists have known that dark energy could become negative and the universe could collapse some time in the very distant future, perhaps in a trillion years, but now we see that we might be not at the beginning, but in the middle of the life cycle of our universe."
The good news, say the professors, is that "we still have a lot of time to find out whether this is going to happen".
Because of too many SUV's, I presume?
And you people were worried about the sniper!
CRAP. Guess I don't need to hop in the shower after all.
Tony
Here is a brief review of his book:
There's a reason "astronomically large" means "larger than the scale of ordinary life": normal scales of time and space for astronomers involve millions of years and anywhere from thousands to quadrillions of kilometers. Even for astronomers, University of Michigan professor Fred Adams and his former student Greg Laughlin think big--really, really big--and their planning is really, really long-term.
In The Five Ages of the Universe, Adams and Laughlin present their vision of the history of the universe, from the big bang on. They've had to come up with a new unit of measure to make this timescape intellectually tractable: the "cosmological decade." When the universe is 10 to the n years old, it is in the nth cosmological decade; we are now in the 10th, for instance. Each decade is thus 10 times as long as the one before.
All the stars will have stopped shining in the 14th cosmological decade, about 100 trillion years from now--which is a mind-bendingly long period of time by most standards.
But Adams and Laughlin are just getting their speculations warmed up. They go on to fold, spindle, and mutilate your time sense as they discuss the Degenerate Era (out to decade 39), the Black Hole Era (to decade 100), and the possible creation of new universes in the Dark Era (after decade 101 or so).
It's the most fascinating, mind-expanding trip inside eternity you can read. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Mike
Mine just does color and hair cuts.
What?
Oh.
Never mind.
I was planning on moving anyway.
Is that a fact? Yet again the Bible is far ahead of science.
Is 24:20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again. 21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
Luke 21:26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Matt 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
Joel 2:10 The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining: 11 And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it? 12 Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning:
Is 13:6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. 7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt: 8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. 9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. 10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. 11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. 12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. 13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. 14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.
Ah well, you get the picture, or don't.
I hate it when that happens
Oh, right. How silly of me to forget!
("Teach science?? I didn't even pass it!" Fran Dresher, The Nanny)
Over time all the stars in all the galaxies would fade, leaving an ever-cooling collection of stellar cinders and frozen planets that over billions of billions of years would become swallowed up by black holes.
Dang, I need to make sure I've backed up all my important files...
Signed, Al Bundy
"Women and minorities hardest hit."
/john
Is that a fact? Yet again the Bible is far ahead of science.
Oh really, can you give me some evidence that what is predicted in those fairy tales will actually happen? Although the scientist who made his theory is operating mostly on conjecture, at least he has some mathmatical formulas to point to.
Hmmm, if you can't see the connection between tax reduction and the reduction of dark matter in the universe, then ... well, I can't help you. ;)
That's what happens when you have a contractor who throws the whole thing up in six days.
Setting up the new Office of Home Galaxy Security.
Given the proven track record of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies (300+), there's a fair to good chance of the fairy tales happening.
BTW, of which fairy tales are you speaking?
I say the Fall elections are a more immediate priority then!
This article reinforces my view that most of what comes off as "expert" analysis regarding the universe is just conjecture. There's too much going on out there we'll never understand.
If advances in human longevity continue accelerating at rate that they are you may live to know. Not that far into the future people working in longevity-related fields will be adding one year of life over the course of one years research. After that, each year of research will add more than one year to human longevity. Within the first half of this century, barring nuclear, chemical or biologic holocaust, human biologic immortality will be achieved. What about so many religions that are in part based on end-time death of the conscious being?
I laugh at politicians, bureaucrats, media personalities and academics that claim that without politicians and bureaucrats to save us from ourselves, that man will run himself and society headlong into self-destruction.
Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely, with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.
Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite the federal government -- politicians and bureaucrats -- creating on average, 3,000 new laws and regulations each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to "justify" their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are necessary, "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from running headlong into self-destruction.
Forget the Universe collapsing. Our solar system will be extinct long long before that happens. Our sun only has about 4-5 billion years left, after which the earth will cease to exist.
Well, that should give Earthlings more than enough time to figure out how to escape that event. Consider this:
There's roughly 200 million galaxies in our Universe and each one averages 200 million stars. That's 40 quadrillion stars... 40,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 probability against the Sun being the only star that has an orbiting planet containing conscious beings. Perhaps researchers have, through the process of elimination, come closer to identifying conscious life on other palnet(s) by eliminating half those stars as being unsuitable to support Earth-like orbiting planets.
If there are conscious beings living elsewhere in our Universe some planets may support conscious beings that are many millions of years more advanced than Earthlings. It's highly improbable that if they move about the universe that they would do it by space ship. (The time frame from the creation of one technology to the creation of a more advanced technology decreases with time.)
For example, just in our 3,000 years of technology advancement research scientists have discovered quantum entanglement. That's where the spin of one particle is entangled with the spin of another particle. When the spin of one particle changes the other entangled particle instantaneously changes spin. That simultaneous spin change occurs without regard to the distance between the two particles. Thus, it's natural to speculate that information transfer could occur outside of the boundaries of time.
Combine that with the infant presence of nanotechnology. Those two, quantum entanglement and nanotechnology, point to speculation that information describing every atom of a conscious being could be instantaneously recorded at two distant points and that nanotechnology could construct the conscious being living at planet A on planet B.
That speculation is based on a mere 3,000 years of conscious beings advancing technology. Conscious beings with millions -- perhaps billions -- of years of technology advancements under their belts would have solved the problem of moving about the Universe. (The notion of traveling trillions of miles -- from one star's planet to another star's planet -- by spaceship seems to be a product of self-limiting, boundary-orientated Earthling thought processes.) That is, if conscious beings living elsewhere in our Universe even have a need to move about the Universe. That stars have a finite life span points to the need to move about the Universe. Movement then, if for no other reason than to not be destroyed when their "Sun" burns out.
Another speculation is that technology-advanced conscious beings control the Universe so that it is eternal.
Mysticism-plagued Earthlings initiate force against one another. Sometimes they kill one another. Mysticism-free conscious beings living elsewhere in the Universe have been and are being born into civilizations wherein their earliest ancestors cured conscious death because they learned that the conscious being is the most valued entity in the Universe. Initiation of force is unknown to them. Preserving conscious beings and ensuring their well-being and unhindered freedom to prosper and live happily is their nature.
There's six billion people populating Earth. We are the earliest ancestors of future generations of mysticism-free conscious beings.
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