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Universe May Have Been Around Forever, According to Rainbow Gravity
- laureny 13y agoI don't see why the idea that "the universe might have been around forever" is so surprising since as far as I know, the prevalent theory is that time started at the big bang, which means that saying "before the big bang" makes as much sense as "going north while standing at the north pole".
- Natsu 13y agoIf you posit that our universe is embedded in some higher space, it might still make sense to ask what's above the "north pole."
- loceng 13y agoI think our best guess is that our universe is connected to other universes, perhaps through a larger bubble / body, and perhaps through that connecting through to perhaps infinite other universes.
- loceng 13y agoPeople find comfort in knowing when something starts, and when something ends. It stems from controlling, wanting control over your environment. You can let that go though, and then the universe being infinite is beautiful.
- sev 13y ago> the prevalent [in the general public, and therefore in the scientific community] theory The reason it's prevalent is because it is the most easily understood and acceptable by most people/religions/cultures - not because it is the most accurate or plausible explanation.
- chc 13y agoI don't think that's actually how the scientific community as a whole evaluates theories.
- sev 13y agoI'm not talking about the scientific community. I'm talking about people in the world. Christianity for example has accepted the Big Bang Theory as plausible and has not accepted others. This fact alone will help 70% of the world make a theory more prevalent.
- russellsprouts 13y agoBefore the Big Bang theory, most Christian thinkers accepted the universe as eternal.
- dctoedt 13y agoCitation, please. (Contra: Genesis 1:1.)
- doorhammer 13y agoThis is an anecdotal reposnse mostly based on having grown up in a strongly charismatic Christian background, but the folks I knew probably would have said that god existed forever and the universe started when he made it. Obviously that's going to depend on who you ask in the denomination and what denomination you ask. My experience is that you're not generally going to get a very nuanced view of space and time but occasionally you'll be a little surprised. Again. Anecdotal. Ymmv
- saraid216 13y agoGenesis 1:1 does not reflect the thought of any Christian thinkers.
- tedunangst 13y ago
- chc 13y agoBut that still isn't the same thing as "forever." Time does not go back infinitely — according to current theory, the universe definitely has a beginning in time.
- jckt 13y agoThe whole dimension-tautology has always irked me. Time, as a unit, is simply the "time" it takes for light to travel a certain distance. Distance, OTOH, is the "distance" it takes for light to travel under a certain amount of time. AFAIK one of the authors of this theory is a proponent of a variable speed of light. So if at some point in time light didn't move, then time didn't move, then that would mean that our universe existed since forever...? Not a physicist, but sometimes I feel weird when I am reminded of the fact that the Big Bang had a definite starting point 13.8B years ago (as you have done so), and then think about how time is really... a function of length and length is just a function of time.
- baby 13y ago> Time, as a unit, is simply the "time" it takes for light to travel a certain distance. Without time there is no interaction between two atoms. There is no movement. It's not only about light traveling. > The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. -Albert Einstein
- stephenwinter2 13y agoThe Einstein quote is great. I would add: The only reason for time is so that everything can't be understood at once. 'Stretching' and 'scaling' as the foundational principle of distances and time makes the idea of a starting point needless. I wrote about it here: http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-bang-cosmology.html http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-bang-...
- gizmo686 13y ago>Time, as a unit, is simply the "time" it takes for light to travel a certain distance. I believe that time is currently defined in terms of the period of a Cesium isotope.
- Strilanc 13y agoIn this case forever doesn't refer to "all of time" but to "an unbounded past".
- foxhill 13y agogiven that a sensical idea of time couldn't really exist before the universe, i believe it is sound to say that current understandings of the universe already state this. just that "forever" is 13.8 billion years long and counting..
- dhughes 13y agoI've always wondered if in the entire universe we humans are the first creatures to have evolved and we will spread out populating the universe.
- jdjb 13y agoSeems statistically unlikely given the hypothesized number of life-supporting planets + our planet's age versus the age of the universe.
- stefan_kendall 13y agoUnlikely but possible. Much like the creation of a universe, perhaps. Given infinite time, you might flip heads a million times in a row.
- meric 13y agoOr might not, no matter how far you go, there are no even numbers in the infinite set of odd numbers, and you can tell that without counting very high.
- dhughes 13y agoLife sure but sentient creatures like us using technology, maybe we're the only planet to have survived comets, meteorites, gamma ray bursts, black holes, galaxy collisions, novae to make it this far.
- zw123456 13y agoI don't think the article explains how the rainbow theory explains the existence of Cosmic Background Radiation.
- thenerdfiles 13y agoDidn't Christiaan Huygens author a system of mechanics of light in rainbows[0]? — he developed an angle prediction system in algebra, if I recall. [0]: http://ww2.odu.edu/~jadam/docs/jadam_geometric_optics_and_rainbows.pdf http://ww2.odu.edu/~jadam/docs/jadam_geometric_optics_and_ra..., http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- trekky1700 13y agoI think this is the best title on HN today. Especially the "According to Rainbow Gravity" missing the theory bit.
- tedunangst 13y agoWhat about according to Gravity's Rainbow?
- terabytest 13y agoThe article doesn't even explain how they come to the conclusion that the universe has been there forever from the "rainbow gravity" concept.
- lkrubner 13y agoRewind the tape to 1900. Everyone who is non-religious assumes the universe has been around since forever: it is eternal. Then people like Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaître notice that distant galaxies are red-shifted, and they calculate the amount. From this they conclude that the universe is expanding. From this they conclude that the universe must have at one point been compressed to a single point, and then exploded: a Big Bang. But if there is no red shift, then there is no Big Bang, and the Universe is not expanding. Therefore we go back to where we were in 1900, when everyone assumes that the universe is eternal.
- ExpiredLink 13y agoGreat! Just one detail is missing to complete the picture: explain eternity.
- Myrth 13y agoI know it is hard to accept that there might be things humans might not be able to explain.
- millstone 13y agoProponents of a static universe have a lot of explaining to do. For example, older galaxies tend to look lumpy and amorphous, because they interacted and collided with other galaxies more often in our early, dense universe. Symmetric elliptical galaxies and our structured Milky Way tend to be younger. Also, you can have a static universe with a beginning, or an expanding universe with no beginning. Rainbow gravity falls into this latter category.
- trumbitta2 13y agoGlad you too noticed that. I was feeling extremely stupid and ignorant for not having understood the correlation between rainbow gravity and an eternal universe.
- AnthonyMouse 13y agoHow is this supposed to be reconciled with the second law of thermodynamics?
- csmuk 13y agoPerhaps the second law is only locally true.
- AnthonyMouse 13y agoWe know it isn't locally true. That's how the inside of your refrigerator gets colder after you supply it with electricity.
- yohanatan 13y agoMaybe he's speaking of a much bigger 'local' like 'our corner of the universe' or 'the distance over which our deep space probes have so far traveled'.
- csmuk 13y agoExactly. The universe is a pretty big place. Time dilation is another one. It's locally insignificant enough to be considered noise/error.
- easy_rider 13y agoThe fundamentals seems to be provable by data-mining on gamma Ray bursts. Funny coincidence, I just started "mining" some BOINC projects again since a week ago, including Einstein@home, because I couldn't stand all the CryptoCoin mining talk lately. https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Einstein@Home https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Einstein@Home http://www.aei.mpg.de/972495/einsteinathome_gammapsrs2013 http://www.aei.mpg.de/972495/einsteinathome_gammapsrs2013
- easy_rider 13y agoThe article doesn't seem to want to explain anything to me..
- Myrth 13y agoit's a nice reminder that big bang is one of theories and not an indisputable dogma
- anigbrowl 13y ago(somewhat) more informative Scientific American article on which this useless blog post is based: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity-universe-beginning&modsrc=most_popular http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gra...
- stephenwinter2 13y agoI didn't really discuss the Rainbow Gravity Theory. But I referred to the Scientific American article here<br> http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-bang-cosmology.html#scientific-american<br> http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-bang-... My statement is: The difference between singularity and the world is differentiation. Differentiation is a kind of 'stretching'. The methods of stretching are called time and dimensions in space.<br> It's nothing else than a crutch for thinking. 'All at once' is for thinking equal to nothing (singularity).
- millstone 13y agoHere's the (much better) SciAm article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity-universe-beginning http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gra...