Hi all,

On a quiet day, I developed a theory of
infinity...

When you imagine the universe as an infintite
whole, and devide it by 2 by an imaginaring
screen, We have 2 infinite universes, which
have both the same size as the first one.
When we remove the screen, the whole wil be
more infinite than both universes seperated.

We get the infinity formula:

O/P=P*O

O= the universe
P= number of parts you devide it by.

Result: The Universe is growing, it's
infinite...

Example to simplify:

Think about amoebes. the part and grow to
the same size as they were before.

PJ

Atlantis,
Your theory is a nice idea, but the math doesn't work. It is undefined to multiply infinity by a number or to divide a number into infinity. Also, your remark about ameobas isn't quite the same thing. Ameobas grow after they divide because they feed and develop. Is the universe feeding or developing off of anything outside of itself?

Isn't the universe growing with the speed of time??

PJ

Originally posted by atlantis:
Hi all,

On a quiet day, I developed a theory of
infinity...

When you imagine the universe as an infintite
whole, and devide it by 2 by an imaginaring
screen, We have 2 infinite universes, which
have both the same size as the first one.
When we remove the screen, the whole wil be
more infinite than both universes seperated.

PJ


I'm no scientist but... there's no way you can quantify infinity, or give it a size as you have done. Infinity means no beginning and no end, which means it cannot be visualised or measured, therefore you cannot have two infinities, as the available (infinite) space would be completely taken up by the first!

I believe that the (multiple) universe is indeed expanding (with the addition of spontaneous generation where it already exists - like the new leaves and flowers which form late on the lower parts of branches), but is infinite only in the sense that it is so mind numbingly large and complex that we'll probably (definetely)never find its perimeters.
Ultimately though, I think (feel) that it is finite. Infinity must be illussion.
http://users.esc.net.au/~nitro/chef_tab.gif

Hi,
How can infinity grow, surely if something is infinite it cannot grow or shrink because it has no limits, just like energy cannot be created or destroyed?
Victoria

Prety very prety, but not the case.

Some that is infinite is static. Our univers is anything but static it progreses (goes through stages). To ware we do not know but we do now that it is not static. From this we can infer that the universe is not infinite.

------------------
All I know is what I understand. All I understand is what I know. :)

Infinite is only a term that states that something goes on forever. The only reason your equasion really seems to work to you is becasue the results are equal.
But, the only reason they equal each other is becasue you can not modify the size of something infinite.
Therefore any equasion you do with infinity is only going to work out to be infinite.

Infinite - infinite = 0

The only posible equasion.

Hi Krusher,

Even infinity - infinity does not equal zero, it is undefined because it can be *anything* (zero, -infinity, + infinity, and probably also any number).

To show this, you can use simple limit procedures (even though I doubt this is a mathematical proof ;). I'll use the limit for x -> infinity

Example one: infinity - infinity = -infinity

lim x - exp(x) = -infinity
x->oo

Example 2: infinity - infinity = 0

lim x - x = 0
x->oo

Example 3: infinity - infinity = infinity

lim exp(x) - x = +infinity
x->oo

With some thinking you can probably come up with some equation giving you a real number instead of zero or infinity.

Bye!

Crisp



------------------
"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

Originally posted by Miss Happy:
Hi,
How can infinity grow, surely if something is infinite it cannot grow or shrink because it has no limits, just like energy cannot be created or destroyed?
Victoria

Victoria,
You have the concepts down better than most of the other responders. Energy can be created by interactions between matter, but it can not be created from nothing. When energy "disappears, it modifies matter.

Steady State

Actually, infinities can indeed grow. For example, take the ordered set of all natural numbers -- it is infinitely large. Now, between every pair of adjacent numbers in that set, insert their average (e.g. insert 1.5 between 2 and 3, 19.5 between 19 and 20, etc.) So, you end up with another infinite set, but its size is nevertheless greater than the size of the original. You can grow the resulting set again, by repeaing the procedure on it. In fact, in this way you can keep doubling the size of an infinite set indefinitely.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

Also lets not forget that infinity can be contained within a finite perimiter. And this finite perimeter can grow. Just look at fractals.

------------------
work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

Hi Boris,

While indeed your remark is correct, I don't think it can be applied here.

Mathematically there's a difference between infinity and infinity. The collection of all natural numbers is infinite, but countable (the number of elements in N is Aleph0). By adding all averages you still get a "countable" collection of numbers. The problem is that all those collections are discrete, while space is continously divided.

That's why I think the "infinity" we should use is the "overcountable" one (eg. the number of elements in R, the collection of all real numbers, is not countable). You cannot enlarge R the way you described so infinity stays infinity. This interpretation of infinity is more related to the universe since it describes continously divided space.

Okay, this is just mathematical nagging but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Bye,

Crisp


------------------
"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

uh, isnt the universe expaning? If not, then why are all the planets and stars moving further away from eachother???

Actually it aren't the planets and the stars who are moving further away from each other but the galaxies or rather clusters of galaxies of which the stars and planets are part. The planets are bound in starsystems and the stars in galaxies.
Further more we are ASSUMING that galaxies are moving away from each other. The only observable fact that we have is a redshift of the light of those far away (and I mean tens or even honderds of millions of lightyears) galaxies.
Backed up by the equations of general relativity we explain this redshift as due to a velocity between us (the observers) and the far away galaxy.
The general relativity theorie is of course well backed up by other experiments and we can with reasonable certainty believe its predictions. But always remember it is a theory and therefore subject to criticism. We must always rely on observations and until we have an other way of verifying that the universe is expanding we are allowed to doubt.

------------------
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

Plato,

Good to see you around old chap!

Just one tidbit: if we are to assume that the expansion occurs on galactic scales, it is also true that it must occur on the smallest of orbital scales -- there is no fundamental difference between orbiting galaxies and orbiting dust particles. It's just that on small scales the expansion is so tiny that it's undetectable; on galactic scales the tiny local expansion gets summed up over vast stretches of space, to produce noticeable relative velocities (and the attendant redshift). An analogy might help: suppose you've got a thin short metal filing, and you heat it up. It will, of course, expand -- but not enough for you to notice. However, if you heat up a long slab of metal, like a rail for example, it will expand enough for you to see it; this more noticeable expansion is a sum total of smaller local expansions within sub-sections of the rail.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

Good to be back Boris, I notice I'm 500 posts behind now... :( It seems you had a lot of discussions the past couple of months ! Ever managed to convince Lori or Truestory ;) ?

Any way it is true of course that the expansion of spacetime happens at every single point (even within or own bodies so to speak) but as Boris said at small scales it is next to unnoticable and there are attractive forces like electromagnetism (between opposite charges) or gravity that keep everything together.

Plato,

Actually, I regret to inform you that Truestory is no longer with us :( (there's a thread about it under the Religion forum, in case you want to post an elegy or something).

As for Lori -- did you honestly think she could be changed? :rolleyes: Nah, we're still at the same spot. Though I should say that after all those posts, I have managed to significantly solidify my positions and back them up with much fact and/or reason. If anything, the one thing I've gotten out of these debates so far is a sharper mind and a sharper tongue to go with it.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 08, 2000).]

Think of it this way

Infinite equals the biggest number you could think of to the power of itself.

This crap about dividing infinte.
It can't be done.

Basically, you cannot do any math with an infinite value.
My old statement (infinite - infinite = 0)may hold up but I'm pretty sure it is also wrong.

Working with infinite is like trying to work out the values of x and y in the equation:

y = x - 5

Impossible

Krusher,

I don't want to sound stuck up but I get the feeling that you don't have a real good mathematical background...

First of all infinity is by definition bigger then any number we can think of even to the power of itself, even if you go on taking this result to the power of itself for as long as you live. The result will be a pretty big number but still finite.

About calculations holding infinities, they can be done there exists even a whole branch in mathematics called infinitesimal analyses that is completly dedicated to these kind of problems.

When you want to make operations with infinite quantities you are dabbeling with the very nature of the operations themself. So a problem like : "what is the result (R) of infinite - infinite = R?" tells us more about the addition/substraction operation then about the result.
Actually any finite number qualifies as a result here because infinite = infinite + R for every single (real and finite) R.

Unfortunatly the equation y = x - 5 is from a different order all together. What we have here are two variables (or dimensions) and one equation (or restriction). This means the problem is very much defined and its solution is a line that is parallel with the first bissectrice and is moved over five units down this axe.

------------------
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

okay, folks, i don't know how much math theory you are up on, so i'll try to keep this simple.

infinity is not a real number. more specifically it is a number that does not exist within the real world. it is an imaginary byproduct of our imaginary way of defining things--math. for instance, if you were to divide anything by zero, you would get infinity. what does this mean? nothing. dividing by zero has no real world equivalent or application. if i were to have five dollars and tried to divide it between zero people, the result would not be infinite money (as dividing anything by zero yields infinity), but an inability to do so. you are arguing about the math, but that only serves to demonstrate how little that can help in this area. you are all looking at this in the wrong way.


what does it mean to "divide the universe?" our conventional minds would tend to imagine slicing it in half physically, as atlantis's amoeba analogy implies. but this action only applies to matter, which we can indeed say there is a finite amount of that, and we would certainly notice if half of that were to dissappear.

dividing it to another plane of existence is an altogether different concept. SO many questions that we will never be able to answer pop up that it is pointless to try to understand something like that. would this other universe have different laws of physics? would the dividing of our universe change ours? would the two be identical in every way? if this is so, how would we even know that this had happened? why would it matter, seeing as how if they could effect nothing outside of themselves? wouldn't that just be exactly the same as being still one universe? if they were different, what would dictate which universe was what?

as you can see, we can gain nothing from this existentialist wet dream.

from what we have observed, nothing can leave or enter our universe that isn't already here. if you could go billions of lightyears beyond any other part of our universe, you would still be in it, as your presence is part of what defines it. what we call the boundries of our universe are only that because no matter has advanced beyond that. if matter were to, it would simply redefine what we see as our boundries.

this was my stance on an arguement with a friend which we emailed to all the top professors from harvard and MIT and such. they all agreed with me. the analogy 11 of them gave was being on the surface of an expanding balloon (obviously, those two dimensions are the dimensions which you are restricted to). it isn't that the surface is "infinite," but that the balloon will expand faster than you could possibly travel around it. from your point of view, it has no boundries.

samus

Hi Samus,


if you could go billions of lightyears beyond any other part of our universe, you would still be in it, as your presence is part of what defines it. what we call the boundries of our universe are only that because no matter has advanced beyond that. if matter were to, it would simply redefine what we see as our boundries

I would be very cautious when saying "matter hasn't advanced to that point yet", since this might give the idea that matter is simply spreading away to all directions, taking in more volume in space already present for it to speed into.

Current theories are more likely to say that it is space spreading away in all directions and letting the matter take up more volume :).

Bye!

Crisp


------------------
"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

Look, I know i'm not a maths expert. hell, I'm only 14.

Ok, here is a better discription of infinite.

The end of a mobius strip.
Mobius strips are cool.

What I was trying to say was that infinite is uncomprehendable to our brains.

Acctually, I just came across a new theory.
If space and time are infinite, and space and time are bent, wouldn't it be logical that space and time are a spherical shape.

There for trully infinite, and bent.

makes sence to me.

This would also explain why the universe is expanding.

What do you think?

Hi Krusher,


If space and time are infinite, and space and time are bent, wouldn't it be logical that space and time are a spherical shape.

Exactly. This is what astronomers are trying to figure out at the moment: whether space and time are bent back together (if there is enough mass in the universe to curve space back into itself) or if it is truelly stretched out to infinity (and let me add that the later is not a popular hypothesis).

I don't know if there have been any recent advances in this research, perhaps someone else can fill in the blank ?

Bye!

Crisp


------------------
"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

if that theory is true, imagine what will happen when the galaxies etc.. meet again on the other side

Infinty is so hard to comprehend that even the number 8 fainted when it tried to think about it. :)


-- I read that on another board when infinity was mentioned :)

------------------
work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

Krusher,

be careful you are making a mistake again ! You see the galaxies aren't moving in the sphere, it is the sphere (read the universe) itself that is blowing up thereby creating the effect from observers within the sphere that they are moving apart. It would be as if the earth's radius was growing every day, Europe and Amerika would seem to be moving apart while in fact there are lying still (excluding the continental drift of course).

------------------
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

Hi Plato,

Yes, that's a though mind-nut to crack :).

Are there any decent books on this subject (the curvature of spacetime & its mathematical description & derivation) or does this follow almost immediatelly from GR ?

Bye!

Crisp


------------------
"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

Can I say anything without making a mistake.

Its all theory anyway.

I think i need a new processor for my brain.

the 486 is getting a little rusty

first of all, this all assumes the singular big bang theory, which is to say that all the matter we see is all the matter which exists. our reasoning for this is as solid as our reasoning for the earth being flat. we haven't seen any other matter, so it must not be there. the alternate theory is the multiple big bangs theory where there is a static universe where big bangs are a localized event brought on by black holes reaching a singularity. this carries a lot of weight considering many current estimates on the mass of what we know as the universe is roughly the mass required to cause a singularity.

the singular big bang theory has many problems. most importantly, matter MUST have traveled faster than the speed of light for at least a short while in the beginning. if it didn't , it would have very quickly collapsed into a huge black hole. to explain this, the only theory we have currently is that there was different laws of physics for a while in the beginning, and then for no reason they all changed.

this can be explained in a far better way with a new theory on light and relativity that i am coming up with that i will post on this message board. it has to do with light being a particle at relative speeds, traveling in relative mediums.

but, to go on assuming a singular big bang, we can say that at the instant of the big bang, light shot out at the speed of light and has been going outward in all directions ever since. we, of course, will never catch this light as we cannot exceed that speed, c. in a singular big bang, that light will never hit anything, nor will it ever slow down for any reason. what is beyond that light is irrelevant, as we will never be able to interact with that environment, seeing as how we could never pass that light.

in essence, you could describe that light as the edge of our universe. not that it won't allow us to pass it, only that we can never reach it. to extend the balloon analogy, remember that we are objects on the surface of the balloon. imagine drawing a circle on that surface, and then blowing it up. we can never reach that circle because the balloon is explanding too fast, which is the first major reason why we cannot go one direction for a long time and reach the "other side."

the second is that yes, space is curved, but not 3 dimensionally. the balloon analogy only works so far. the existence of mass causes a curve in the fourth and fifth dimension, the fourth being time and the fifth being another physical dimension. calling this curvature a sphere is much like saying that you could curve a two dimensional object in the third dimension and get a circle. what you would get would be a far more complicated object which is beyond the comprehension of a two dimensional being. our space is curved in BOTH the fourth AND fifth dimension, and the result can't really be described as a sphere, only as something our three dimensional minds cannot comprehend. trying to apply characteristics of our three dimensional curvatures is useless.

crisp's answer here is mostly right, but a little misinterpreted. what we are currently debating is whether or not our universe contains enough mass/density to pull itself back together in what is called the big crunch. the density required is about seven hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, and the matter we can see is far from that. some scientists estimate that there is enough dark matter to bring the density high enough to cause the big crunch, some estimate that there isn't. the problem is that if we could in any way detect it, it wouldn't be "dark" matter.

samus

Samus,

I would like to point out that as far as we are concerned ANYTHING could be outside our eventhorizon (being the furthest that we can observe). There might be purple elephants, we will never now and it doesn't consern us because it doesn't have any effect on us. Therefor saying there there are multiple big bangs has as much value as saying there is only one. I would even argue with Occam at my side that the single big bang theory has preference over the multiple one in order not to over complicate our model.
Also something else, I have the feeling you look upon the big bang as some kind of a huge explosion. Actualy it has nothing to do with an explosion as it is also a fourth dimensional event, it was spacetime itself that was created out of a single point.
Matter as you say didn't need to go faster then light because there was none to begin with. It took a relatively long time before the early universe cooled down enough for matter to form out of the radiation sea that was first dominant this was already after the so called inflation age where the expansion of spacetime was many times that of the speed of light. No laws of nature were violated, the laws at that time were no different as today in fact from the first instant of the big bang the fundamental constants like the speed of light en the planck constant were fixed. The different force constants were fixed later on as they split of from the one GUT force of which they all came.

Crisp,

Curvature of spacetime is indeed what GR is all about. Talking about special relativety is like talking about a universe devoid of any matter, there is no such thing. Is special relativity then invalid ? No it means it is only applicable in local portions of spacetime with inertial frames as a reference. If you know the metric of SR : ds^2 = c^2dt^2 - dx^2 - dy^2 - dz^2 then the generalised form is :
ds^2 = g_00c^2dt^2 - g_11dx^2 - g_22dy^2 - g_33dz^2 with [g]xy being the tensor of the local spacetime metric.
If this is a bit dense then I stronly recommend a book on topology before you even start with general relativity, a lot of the tools are explained there.
Any way as I remember you are now in the second year of physics ? Normally you should have a course of general relativity in your third year so it will all become clear in time... ;)

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"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

Hi Plato,


Curvature of spacetime is indeed what GR is all about. Talking about special relativety is like talking about a universe devoid of any matter, there is no such thing.

Yes, I found it quite wierd that nobody ever mentions gravity in SR :).


If this is a bit dense then I stronly recommend a book on topology before you even start with general relativity, a lot of the tools are explained there.

Thanks, this might come in handy next year :)

Bye!

Crisp

Off-topic, Dutch chit-chat
Effe terzijde - hebben wij elkaar ooit ergens eens tegen het lijf gelopen dat ge weet da ik in 2e kan zit of heb ik da hier (met mijn vergeetachtige kop) ooit gezegd ?

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"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

plato,

i get the distinct impression that you are out to disprove me for some reason. i feel i answer many of your arguements in my original post, but i will try to answer them further. yes, if there were purple elephants beyond the circle on the balloon we would never know, but it is important to understand. if multiple big bangs is true, then the big bang was not the creation of the universe, only a part of that cycle. if singular big bang is true, then we look at the universe in a whole other way.

unfortunately, occam's razor doesn't really apply here. it requires all things being equal, and there simply is no evidense against multiple big bangs, and much to support it. as you said, it doesn't change our discussion either way. we can continue discussing the singular big bang theory the same no matter what the truth is, so we can adopt your strategy of ignoring it.

the model of the universe i gave is the one used by most of the top professors. i know because i asked most of the top professors via email a question relating to this and this is the model all of them gave me. i don't really care whether you believe it or not.

i am, however, curious as to the plato model of the big bang. you describe it as a fourth dimensional even that creates space/time, and i am curious as to whether this means time or the fourth physical dimension. time is nearly meaningless as of course it was an event that happened in time. i can then only infer that you meant physical dimension. string theory describes it as a nine or eleven dimensional event. is this what you are refering to?

next you refer to matter. i think what you mean to say here is that matter had not yet formed into atoms. this is because in the very beginning of our universe matter was even more dense than could allow for the formation of atoms. it was during this time that that matter, or radiation sea, or whatever you want to call it, must have exceeded the speed of light. no one really argues with this, because as i said before had it not the universe would have quickly collapsed into a huge black hole. but it didn't, and is continuing to expand.

i don't know how well versed you are on special relativity, but it has nothing to do with the form that matter is in. you describe it as talking about a universe devoid of matter that only applies to localized events. it's sort of like that, only it's talking about all the matter in the universe on a universal scale. (can ya feel the sarcasm?) SR doesn't work on small scales, as it contradicts quantum physics. string theory is an attempt to bring the two theories together.

according to SR, nothing (and the rock means nothing, jabroni!) can exceed the speed of light. this has to do with the fact that speed and motion is only relative to time. what makes 60 mph faster than 30 mph can either be because twice the distance is traveled or half the time is taken to travel the same distance. at lower speeds, the two are nearly indistiguishable. but as you approach the speed of light, this has less to do with any actual increase in velocity and more to do with a change in that object's perception of time, called time dilation.

the speed of light cannot be exceeded because at a certain point, what you perceive as acceleration is almost completely a change in time. the greater the acceleration, the less the actual change in motion, thus light cannot be surpassed (or reached).

on a side note, SR originated with the concept that light travels at the same speed to all observers. all other things in SR are what logically must follow. GR is the explanation for why black holes can exist exist when light should be traveling at the same speed no matter what.

samus

Originally posted by samus:
unfortunately, occam's razor doesn't really apply here. it requires all things being equal, and there simply is no evidense against multiple big bangs, and much to support it.


This is very funny because I don't see any evidence to support it. Call me stupid but could you be a bit more elaborate on this ?



the model of the universe i gave is the one used by most of the top professors. i know because i asked most of the top professors via email a question relating to this and this is the model all of them gave me. i don't really care whether you believe it or not.


Hmm, this reminds me a bit on the discussions often seen on the religious debate of this forum were there are always people trying to support their case by referring to authorities.



i am, however, curious as to the plato model of the big bang. you describe it as a fourth dimensional even that creates space/time, and i am curious as to whether this means time or the fourth physical dimension.


Ok, I rather not call it the plato model though because I'm merly giving a crude picture of the current state of kosmology. When I said the big bang was a four dimensional event I ment it created spacetime (spacetime as you know has four dimensions).
Stringtheory even claims there were even more dimensions to begin with (up to 12 according to Dp-membrane theorie where p is a natural number) but this theory still needs to be proven allthough it looks most promisfull. That is why I choose to ignore it and simply state that the universe has only four dimensions and those were created at the instant of the big bang although this is a lame way of putting this considering that time itself was created...
At this first instant there was only energy, matter itself could not exist because of the extreme conditions.
I hope you know that energy can be converted into matter according to the famous E = mc^2. You could see this as condensation of the energy into matter from the moment that the temperature went down enough.
The temperature went down because of the rapid (exponential) expansion of the universe from something the size of an atom to something the size of a rubber ball.
I would like to refer to this link : http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_history.html
It will show you that the actual formation of particles (the Quark - hadron age) was only after 10^{-6} seconds afther the big bang. You can also see that because of inflation the temperature dropped from a sizzling 10^15 GeV (using the classical Bolzmann equation this comes down to 10^28 K, compare that with the mere 10^7 K in the centre of our sun) to a 'cool' 1000 GeV ( ~ 10^16 K) in trillionth of a second !




i don't know how well versed you are on a
special relativity, but it has nothing to do with the form that matter is in. you describe it as talking about a universe devoid of matter that only applies to localized events.


Please read my post a bit more careful, I said special relativity described a universe devoid of matter, meaning a flat universe, not bending of spacetime.
Then I stated that general relativity assumed that locally one can consider the universe to be flat, just like on earth (because of the size) we can assume that its flat.



according to SR, nothing (and the rock means nothing, jabroni!) can exceed the speed of light. this has to do with the fact that speed and motion is only relative to time.


This fact is not only stated by SR but is certainly true in GR. And I believe the formula you are looking for is : v = delta x /delta t (can ya feel the sarcasm?) ;)



this has less to do with any actual increase in velocity and more to do with a change in that object's perception of time, called time dilation.


You leave out a crucial concept here : the relativity of perceptions of two different observers ! It is only relative to an other observer that the clock of the first one is ticking differently. For the first observer itself nothing has changed.



on a side note, SR originated with the concept that light travels at the same speed to all observers. all other things in SR are what logically must follow. GR is the explanation for why black holes can exist exist when light should be traveling at the same speed no matter what.


I would even like to contest this last assumption (am I viscious or what :) ) Einstein himself stated once that SR originated from the reconciliation of the Maxwell theorie of electromagnetism with Newtonian mechanics. GR was a (as the name stated) generalisation of the SR theorie in so far that SR poses the existence of a global inertial frame, all of whose coordinate points are always at rest relative to the origin and all of whose clocks run at the same rate relative to the origin's clock. GR generalises this to a local frame thereby allowing for gravity to exist.

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"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

plato,

please refrain from using incomplete quotes from my posts. attacking individual sentences and incomplete thoughts only serves to veer off from the subject and pointlessly complicate things. if you understand the concepts and have a valid opinion, then you can begin to demonstrate that.

the evidense for multiple big bangs includes most importantly that we have found many objects in our universe which are older than our estimates of when the big bang took place. there is also what i mentioned before, that the estimates for the amount of matter required to cause a singularity is very similar to many current estimates of the mass of what we call our universe. one of the theories behind multiple big bangs is that black holes throughout the static universe eventually reach a singularity and explode, similar to how a collapsing star goes supernova, only at a different level.

the question of the hour, however, is what evidense proves there cannot be multiple big bangs, and that there could only have been one? i have yet to hear it, but i am willing to listen if you have it.

as for my version of the universe, i only meant to show that i did in fact show you what the top professors currently think. like i said, i don't care if you believe it or not. in fact, you should have guessed from my stance on multiple big bangs that even i don't agree with it fully.

moving on, it's "cosmology" with a "c." it gives it in the website link you gave me. you do know that that website assumes string theory, right? and a quark is not a hadron. it also says that "the universe started with a gigantic explosion," which was your entire point to deny.

let me refer you to another few websites:

http://www.wiredweb.com/~nutting/
http://members.tripod.com/~ssscott/BigBang.html

please note that both refer to particles exceeding the speed of light, and the first even names other laws of physics which are violated.

at any rate, none of this portion of the discussion really matters. it doesn't matter what it was, it can't have exceeded or even reached the speed of light. and yet it had to have, by a great deal, in order for it to escape simply collapsing into a black hole.

okay, from here your understanding of relativity seems to be getting worse. special relativity described a universe without the curvature of space/time, but only because it was before GR. it stated that light travels at the same speed to all observers. to account for this, it described all passage of time to be a relative concept for all things (all matter for all the universe). this was an exceptionally radical concept, and einstein drew a lot of criticism for the existence of black holes. because SR described light as a wave with no mass, it should not have been effected by what was then looked on as a force which only effected things with mass. what's more, light should travel at the same speed to all observers, regardless of the source, therefore should have come to us from the black hole at the speed of light.

to explain this discrepancy, ten years later einstein came out with GR, which described gravity as curvature in space/time. light was unable to escape black holes because through bent space/time, it WAS still going the speed of light. the analogy i use is a runner who always runs at 10 mph who steps on an 11 mph treadmill. the man does not slow down, but still cannot move forward.

after this, what else can i say but read hawking, green, or anyone else who spends a few minutes explaining relativity. i've read dozens of books on the subject and never come across anything like your versions of SR and GR.

samus

[This message has been edited by samus (edited March 24, 2000).]

Please Samus, the only books you have read are popularisations of the theories in stead of the true mathematical constructs behind them. Have you ever calculated the propagation function of a photon when it interacts with an electron or the so called Compton effect ? I don't think so...
By the way the so called hadrons are all composed of quarks, the word was invented before one was aware of this underlying structure so if I say that quarks are hadrons it just shows the extend of your knowledge on this field to call it wrong !

Look at the following url by the way : http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11461.html it dismisses the idea that some stars are older then the universe itself.

Besides have you ever read in your popular books about Christoffel symbols ? Do you know what the Riemann Tensor is ? These are concepts that touch the heart of General Relativity where you seem to know so much about...

So stop acting like you know so much about these theories and be a bit more careful in the future when you post silly theories of your own !



[This message has been edited by Plato (edited March 24, 2000).]

plato,

you have got to be joking. you have screwed up every concept in all of cosmology. you didn't even spell it with a "c." i am not impressed by your constant barrage of the bits and pieces of information you pick up by scouring obscure portions of the internet. i think it's pretty clear you haven't read any of the basic works concerning cosmology, which is why you dismiss them as "popular books." no source you have provided has half the credentials of stephen hawking.

you assume for some reason that i don't know any of these concepts, probably because they were the ones hardest for you to find on the internet. with your horrible understanding of cosmology, i seriously question that you really know any of these well enough to apply them to a discussion (we just had one, and of course, you didn't). rather, i'm thinking that you just throw out the most complicated things that you don't understand to try and bully me. please note that you have ensured that this is no longer a discussion of ideas. you have degraded to name calling and hiding behind high level terms and equations. it's pretty clear that your only motive on this forum system is to fool people into thinking you are intelligent.

the compton effect. i can't believe you quoted the compton effect! THIS IS A THEORY DISPROVING THE BIG BANG!!!!!! not only that, it requires that light be made up of particles, further discrediting relativity. it has been disproven many times, why would i calculate the specifics of an incorrect theory!? what possible good would it do me to know the propagation of infrared light passing through carbon!?

YES hadrons are composed of quarks, obviously i ALREADY KNEW THAT. i did in the 6th grade, as most people DO, and the fact that you seem to be proud of your knowledge concerning this only serves to discredit your claims of knowledge elsewhere. but that STILL makes your statistic of when they were formed INCORRECT according to the website YOU provided. look at your own quote and check the numbers.

moving on...wow...you found one sentence in the entire internet that you think disproves me. LOOK AT THE SENTENCE AGAIN. it says "within about 10 percent," meaning STILL not after the big bang. this is a far cry from "dismiss." you might also note that this was listed under the question "what facts disprove the big bang?" you have got to be a college debater. your evidense never comes close to proving your claims.

i don't know why you assume that i don't know anything about christoffel symbols or the riemann curvature tensor, but obviously i have a great deal of understanding of the space/time concepts in GR.

sigh...

how does this at all relate to our discussion? you can't possibly even try to pretend you at all understand the riemann tensor. maybe the ricci tensor, but either one only proves me right! this is the math that einstein used to prove the curvature of space! this is what i have been talking about this entire time! if you wanted to try to make this discussion as boring as possible, why didn't you bring up the derivation of the schwartzchild solution?

look, if you can make a valid point by using these equations, then i'm willing to discuss it. otherwise, i find them exceptionally boring, as does everyone else who has a life outside of science and this forum system.

samus

Hi Samus,


you have got to be joking. you have screwed up every concept in all of cosmology. you didn't even spell it with a "c." i am not impressed by your constant barrage of the bits and pieces of information you pick up by scouring obscure portions of the internet. i think it's pretty clear you haven't read any of the basic works concerning cosmology, which is why you dismiss them as "popular books." no source you have provided has half the credentials of stephen hawking.

I can assure you that Plato has some more reliable sources than the sometimes more than obscure internetsites around the globe. The fact that he spells cosmology with a "k" has to do with the dutch word "kosmologie" as we call it here.

Anyway, even though I respect Hawking and all of his work, you shouldn't praise him as the keeper of all truth. As a human, he (and all of us) make mistakes, even in his more popular books (eg. "The Universe"). Don't accept everything you read there as the truth as things are often expressed way too simple. I am pretty sure you all spotted these errors ;).


the compton effect. i can't believe you quoted the compton effect! THIS IS A THEORY DISPROVING THE BIG BANG!!!!!! not only that, it requires that light be made up of particles, further discrediting relativity. it has been disproven many times, why would i calculate the specifics of an incorrect theory!? what possible good would it do me to know the propagation of infrared light passing through carbon!?

I'll not go deeper into whether or not the Compton effect disproves the big bang theory. What the Compton effect explains is incoherent scattering of photons (it describes the frequency/wavelength difference of an incoming electromagnetic wave & the scattered wave when interacting with electrons). This effect does NOT require light to behave as a particle, but it is theoretically described with photons (which are not particles either but quantummechanical entities that have BOTH wave & particle characteristics, but it's neither one!). Furthermore, this "theory" of the compton effect simply CANNOT be disproven because its predictions are highly consistent with experimental measurements.

Besides, if you believe everything the "great" physicists once claimed, then I am afraid I have a small disappointement for you: the "light-as-particle" concept (which IMHO should be more accurately expressed as the "photon" concept) was introduced by Einstein himself. Now I am not sure I can remember who formulated General Relativity, but I am pretty sure that they both knew what they were doing when they introduced photons in SR/GR .... (yes, yes... I know sarcasm is the refuge of the weak mind).


if you wanted to try to make this discussion as boring as possible, why didn't you bring up the derivation of the schwartzchild solution?

I don't wanna be the total nerd in here, but this would have actually made the discussion a lot more interesting than all this namecalling (and please don't start using the "he started first" argument here since this would simply be totally embarrassing to all of us).

Bye!

Crisp


------------------
"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

[This message has been edited by Crisp (edited March 25, 2000).]

kosmology:

fine. it's news to me, but whatever. i think you will agree that it isn't an important portion of our discussion.


hawking:

okay, the discussion was about our current views cosmology. yes, there are certainly other experts i would refer to in other areas, but on this one i think you have to conceid that there simply is no better source. and no, i would not depend on his sole opinion. in fact, i disagree with most of his opinions which aren't shared by the rest of the scientific community, such as his assumption that all black holes must be singularities and that naked singularities are possible. but the man has an estimated IQ of 240. i think listening to him might be worth the time of someone studying cosmology.


the compton effect:

okay, you can't find a website out there that tries to disprove the big bang without quoting the compton effect. it is used to explain the red shift instead of the doppler effect (which is indeed insufficient, but for other reasons).

i have no idea what measurements agree with the compton effect, but perhaps you can be more specific. the only observation i can think of is the red shift of our sun. but i highly doubt you can give me any examples of applications for this theory. at any rate, i think we can still debate the theory at hand.

the compton effect states that photons are absorbed by atoms causing an electron to be bumped up to the next energy level. a nanosecond later, the electron moves back to its original energy level and another photon is emitted. this is what accounts for the slowing down of light as it passes through mediums.

1. quantum physics implies through tunneling (which has many applications, such as the computer you are on right now) that some of the photons would pass through the medium without hitting any atoms, and would proceed just as it would through a vacuum. this would mean that we should measure c for light every time through every medium. but instead we see that all of the light slows down uniformly.

2. the structure of the atoms should be unimportant, as the photons would bounce from atom to atom unconcerned for their orientation. rather, we see that the structure of atoms IS what is important, as seen in the case of carbon atoms. while light cannot pass through coal, it can easily pass through diamond. the compton effect predicts that carbon atoms should either be conducive to light passing through them, or not.

3. the compton effect cannot account for why images can pass through mediums without blurring. each time an atom releases a new photon, there is no reason to assume that it should be inclined to even go off in the same direction at all, much less maintain exactly the same path. in fact, mediums such as glass are used to REDUCE blurring.

4. the compton effect cannot account for the entire concept of refraction. according to the compton effect, there should be nothing differentiating the surface from any other portion of a medium. and yet, that is the portion which makes the biggest difference, as can be seen simply by looking through water.


light as a particle:

your humble opinion is right, he introduced the "photon." don't tell me you truly think that no one thought of the idea that light could be a particle before 1905. rather, it was already the current belief throughout most of the scientific community at the time that light was a particle. einstein came up with the concept of a photon to explain why light acts as a particle, but cannot be one in his theory (because no particle can reach the speed of light).

and who is "they both?" did einstein have a silent partner?


namecalling:

i think you can look through this post and see that i began in a very professional manner. from the very beginning, plato treated not only me, but everyone else he responded to as if they were stupid (or at least far less intelligent than him). he values not only his opinion of himself as far as intelligence, but others as well. he goes out of his way to demonstrate that intelligence without concern for whether the person he is addressing actually understands what he is saying. as demonstrated here, a discussion with him concerning physics is not about physics, but is a struggle for power. when he encounters someone such as myself who not only could be more intelligent than him, but even worse could convince others that they are more intelligent, he feels threatened and acts accordingly. he is unwilling to admit when he is wrong and responds with anger when someone calls him on it, especially if they have valid reasons behind them. as shown by his last post, he is even willing to pretend he understands complicated concepts in hopes that no one else will, as he feels giving the impression of being intelligent is more important than actually being intelligent. yes, he is intelligent, but i'm just glad this is an area which i exceed him in so that in situations like this i can put him in his place.

can ya tell that i dabble a little in psychology too?

samus

[This message has been edited by samus (edited March 27, 2000).]

Hello Samos,

getting a little exited are we ?
I like the way you discribe how debating with me is actually a powerstruggle, are you sure you are not projecting your own feelings on me ?

Any way lets take this again to the basic level. No problem by me.

Let's just drop this talk about the Compton effect because it has nothing to do with the original discussion.

You are saying that because light sometimes acts like a particle this would disprove the big bang ? How do you figure ?
According to quantummechanics light and everything else for that matter is nor a particle nor a wave but both what has this got to do with the big bang ?
Since you seem such a big authority on the subject would you be so kind to enlighten all of us ?

By the way Crisp, thanks for your little intervention on my part :) , I'm on vakantion now so I won't have a lot of opportunity to join this discussion in the coming weeks. I hope however it stays civil... ;)

------------------
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

____________________________________________
You are saying that because light sometimes acts like a particle this would disprove the big bang ? How do you figure ?
____________________________________________

okay, it's important to understand that i don't believe any of this. in fact, as you can see by my last post, the compton effect has a lot of problems. however, i will explain what critics of the big bang are saying.

the main reason that we developed the big bang theory was to explain the red shift. earlier this century, it was observed that objects futher away from us had a shift toward the red end of the spectrum. to explain this, they used the doppler effect, saying that further away objects were moving away from us. right now, i won't get into why the doppler effect is inadequate for describing the red shift. at any rate, this fits with our views on gravity, being that it knows no bounds. if the universe is not expanding, it must be collapsing. and if it had not been expanding rapidly at one point, it would have already done so. therefore, there must have been a big bang.

critics of the big bang use the compton effect to explain the red shift, saying that further away objects are not moving away from us, only that light traveling that far loses energy through the compton effect.

here are a few websites that go into more detail:

http://www.angelfire.com/az/BIGBANGisWRONG/index.html
http://nowscape.com/big-ban2.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/9335/compton.html


like i said before, i personally do believe in the big bang, i just don't think we should assume that it was the only one ever.


_____________________________________________
According to quantummechanics light and everything else for that matter is nor a particle nor a wave but both what has this got to do with the big bang ?
_____________________________________________

i think you mean acts as both a particle and a wave (wave-particle duality), but at any rate, i think i answer that above.

samus

atlantis, as I am sure that "Steady State" and some others have realized, you have succesfully "invented" the Steady-State model of the universe previously invented by British astrophysicists Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold. This theory was taken by astrophysycist Sir Fred Hyle and quantified into an equation, explaining by how much the universe was "continuing to create itself". The equation looked something like this:

creation rate, dC/dt=4X10 to the -44 gram/centimeters cubed/sec.

A simpler way of desribing the steady state model is that, the universe, though expanding indefinitly, takes on an unchanging and eternal quality since the voids that result from expansion are flled by the continual spontaneous generation of new matter. Hence creation of matter need not be the product of a singular happening in a finite past, but simply an ongoing law of nature.
Incidentally however, we do find many gaps, many "wide open spaces" in the universe. Also, since in the steady state model, matter is continuously created, the ages of observed portions of matter should be very sparce, some as old as 14 billion years, some older by even humndreds of billions of years, some as new as yesterday. This applies especially to stars and galaxies. If the universe were eternal in age, and if it were expanding by any means, including the spontaneous generation of matter, we would observe a mixed variety of youg, old, and extinct stars and galaxies. What do we observe? We observe a host of "youthful" stars and galaxies, with ages rangeing not much further back than 14 or so billion years. This can be considered "youthful" because the average life expectancy for a star is quite longer than that. In fact, most of the stars in the universe have the capability to burn for more than 80 billion years.
Another way to refute the steady state theory is by using a theorme that I have become quite fond of, the "singularity theorem", which provides that "a universe that is expanding, filled with matter and energy, and obeying any physically acceptable equation of state, must have been singular in the past, regardless of any lack of symmetry today." This is scientific law, not just theory. The universe, contrary to your theory that the universe is eternal yet expanding, and the steady state theorem which gives the universe infinite capabilities of expansion, must have at one time been a singularity, which is defined as "an infinitly shrunken space representing the boundary at which space ceases to exist or at which space comes into existance". There had to have been, at one time, no universe. Now there is a universe. The singularity theorem, as well such celebrated rules of the universe like the Space/time theorem of general relativity by Hawking and Penrose, general and special relativity by einstein, and countless other fundamental physical laws refute the idea of an infinite universe.

samus has it right. The big bang is no longer the subject of serious debate in the scientific community based on about a dozen or so different laws of physics Indeed there are many principles in physics that dictate a universe with an expressed beginning. Some include the singularity theorem, Hwaking and Penrose's space/time theorem of general relativity, Einstein's general relativity and special relativity, and a myriad others. Others, while not directly supporting the big bang, make the success of an infininte universe impossible. Thermodynamics do this rather well in fact. If systems tend toward entropy as time goes by, then an infinite universe would have no order whatsoever (an infinite amount of time having already passed). Good boy samus

Hi Samus,
Quote:
the model of the universe i gave is the one used by most of the top professors. i know because i asked most of the top professors via email a question relating to this and this is the model all of them gave me. i don't really care whether you believe it or not.
Unquote.

Some time ago I did some internet searching trying to find some sites discussing "the Universe", specifically dealing with "creation" or lack thereof. I ran out of time before finding much. I sent out a number of e-mails to professors at educational facilities (colleges/universities) that showed up in my web searches and asked for info, and only one responded with "?". Then I found this Forum, and posted my "belief" here, which is that of multiple big bangs. Not that "our" local bang cycles, but that they occur in an infinite number of "locations" in the universe.
So, can you forward me some of the responses mentioned in the above quote? Any URLs for the professors?

Thanks,
SteadyState
aerowood@mcsi.net

The greeks didn't use 0, so nothing is infinitum.

Hi I knew and reading all this infinite time theories, concepts and stuff, I have concluded one thing...

YOU ARE ALL CRAZY!!!!

Of course I am still here to post what I think of infinity. I think that the known and current state of the Universe is at a finite size yet since the universe is expanding, the size will always change and thus can grow to larger size. This does not mean that the Universe is infinite but that we do not have the technology or capability of measuring the size of the Universe and because of it's vast size it is believed that there is no end. Maybe one day someone will solve this...

the world is flat

-adam

samus, so far, you really have not given any evidence for an infinitly-oscillating universe. In fact, you have done well to damage its credibility by making statements such as "we have found objects which are older than the universe." First of all, no we haven't. This is a crock for several reasons. The first is that there are very few ways and very few objects we can date with any accuracy without having physical samples we can touch and experiment on. All of this "older than the universe" stuff you speak of is non-interactive, we can only look at it. Now if it were a star (which we can date with a reasonably low probability of error) that were older than the universe, that would be something, but even a star must give way to the laws of common sense. In an infinitly oscillating universe, all matter collapses in on itself and then blows back apart. Do you really think that a star (or any object even right down to the size of a pin-head) would not be completely re-distributed in such a cataclismic event? There would be nothing recognizeably "older than this universe." To say that such objects exist is either a lie or a gross error.

Another thought on the matter is that during the collapsing process toward a hypothetical bounce, at least one region or volume (technically called a "domain") in the universe would utterly resist being crushed to the tiny volume necessary for the exotic effects of quantum gravity to take over.

In all interaction there is a distinct amount of entropy as a result. An interaction between all matter and all energy such as a "bounce" or initial explosion would produce entropy like has never before been known. When such an explosion occured, we were left without even the possibility of another ordered collapse and bounce, even if such bounces are hypothesized to occur in the quantum gravity era.

To change the direction of my post: One subject (on this I might be horribly wrong) that I recall on this string of posts is the general shape of the universe. It has been some years since my modern physics course wherein we discussed this topic, but here goes: this is what I remember. If the universe moves fast enough away from the epicenter of the big bang, the shape is a hyperboloid (saddle shaped), if it moves juuuuust right the shape is flat, and if it moves any slower the shape is a sphere. I really dont recall much about this, it might even hinge on some critical mass. Someone put all this straight for me okay, I would love to remember this stuff!

micah lee

Ok, Interesting but makes no sense.... Infinity is countless.... it is all that exists, a number never to be determined... Infinity is a constant factor which never stops changing... therefore any form of math does not work in this theory

I read an interesting article somewhere??? about a spinning universe Einstein developed which had the effect of time running backwards...awesome!!

I'd like to comment on one of the first replies to this topic:

Something that is infinite is static. Our universe is anything but static it progreses (goes through stages). To ware we do not know but we do now that it is not static. From this we can infer that the universe is not infinite.

I believe that the universe is actually static. An analogy would be when you are driving down a road, and the scenery around you changes. In reality though, the scenery is not changing at all. I propose that our time dimension is composed of an infinite progression of "frames", with each frame representing a seperate dimension of 3-D space. And- for example- each frame of yourself believes that it is in the process of experiencing moving through time, when in fact it is frozen in the "movie reel". In other words, each frame of your lifetime believes that it is the present time.

Originally posted by steadystate
Victoria,
You have the concepts down better than most of the other responders. Energy can be created by interactions between matter, but it can not be created from nothing. When energy "disappears, it modifies matter.

Steady State

Energy cannot be created or destroyed,it only transforms,that's why the example you gave above,show just the transformation of the energy,not its creation.