Quote:By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.
http://www.physorg.com/news199591806.html]Article here.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
while interesting I won't pretend to grok what is being proposed.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
As far as I can tell, they're saying that as the universe expands, everything in it is 'stretching out', and the so-called constants (speed of light, gravitational constant) that determine the ratios between the three dimensional qualities (space, time, and length) are therefore changing with it.
One of the things about the Big Bang theory is that it's basically based entirely off of extrapolation of current
apparent motion of the visible galaxies. They all seem to be moving away from each other, and scientists traced the vectors and they all appear to point back to a single point. There's no actual evidence that everything was ever actually
at that point, though. In fact there's some pretty compelling evidence that either it
wasn't, or that constants like the speed of light weren't what they are now during that initial expansion.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
ECSNorway Wrote:One of the things about the Big Bang theory is that it's basically based entirely off of extrapolation of current apparent motion of the visible galaxies. They all seem to be moving away from each other, and scientists traced the vectors and they all appear to point back to a single point. There's no actual evidence that everything was ever actually at that point, though. In fact there's some pretty compelling evidence that either it wasn't, or that constants like the speed of light weren't what they are now during that initial expansion.
Actually no current model says that the universes is expanding from a certain point. The universe does not have a "center" as we think of it. All of the universe is expanding away from all of the rest of the universe.
To picture this get two pieces of those transparent celluloid papers used for overhead projectors. On one piece of paper draw a simple square matrix of black dots; four dots across, four dots down (for a total of sixteen dots in the matrix). Draw all these dots exactly two centimeters apart. Now choose one of those dots as an "origin" point. We'll choose the thrid from the right, second down (3,2). Take your second piece of paper and draw another matrix of 4 by 4 dots, but place all the dots exactly four centimeters from each other.
Overlay the two pieces of paper such that the "origin" point on both papers are overlapping. That is the (3,2) position on both grids occupies the same space. By looking at the grid you will see that all the other dots in the matrix are moving away from the origin point apparently (that is the underlying two centimeter matrix will have all the dots in its matrix closer to the origin than all the same dots in the overlaying four centimeter matrix). However, this is true no matter what origin you pick. If you overlayed them so the 1,1 was the starting point everything would seem to be moving away form 1,1. If you choose 2,4 it would all appear to be moving away from 2,4.
The only reason the universe might appear to be expanding from a point is because our relative position (Earth, Milky Way) stays constant so everything appears to be receeding from us. But if we had a different point of view everythign would be receeding from that point of view. Thus physics does not postulate a single "origin point" for the universe, since such an origin would be meaningless given the expanding nature of the entire universe.
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Epsilon