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Cycling cosmos obeys thermodynamics without ripping itself apart.
It has to be the closest ever shave. Two physicists have proposed that, a fraction of a second before a cataclysm that would destroy space-time itself, the Universe may escape by abruptly collapsing to a virtually empty state that 'resets' it for a fresh cycle of cosmic expansion.
Read more here.
Posted by Nicola Jones on February 23, 2007
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Isn't enough we have to go through time-space once? Now we're supposed to split into eternal infinity? Sounds suspiciously like religion to me. I agree with Louis Jordan: you only live but once, and when you're dead, you're done.
Sincerely,
The Andrews Sisters
Posted by: John Leone | February 26, 2007 04:55 PM
Now THATs good news !!
Posted by: Dave Richter | February 27, 2007 01:49 AM
And there are those who say that Christians rely on blind faith! A hypothetical energy powering a theoretical rescue of a potential energy a thousand-trillion-trillionth of a second before space-time is irrevocably destroyed?
Has anybody seen a white rabbit carrying a watch?
Posted by: Mike Swanton | February 27, 2007 02:06 AM
each atom expanding to the size of the universe?
thats alot of universes
Posted by: peter | February 27, 2007 03:54 AM
There is a far better reason that the Universe is a 'bounce' Universe. About 100 years ago, both Max Planck and Ludwig Boltzmann made comments about the Laws of Thermodynamics, especially the 2nd, which if studied carefully can expain why this IS a 'bounce' Universe. I will be publishing a new theory concerning this subject within this year, hopefully. It will explain the interaction of matter and energy which controls the functioning of the Universe and will be called "Comprehensive Relativity". Einstein's E = Mc^2 forsaw this, but the understanding of matter he needed to explain what he mentioned in sections 30 to 32 of his Gen. theory was in its infancy at that time.
Posted by: Raymond A. Pohl | February 27, 2007 05:10 AM
Cosmology should equal parsimony: the simplest model for the observed facts. What seems to be missing frfom most models currently on display - excepting loop quantum gravity - is a full incorporation of space time, and specifically of time itself.
Thermodynamics is, for an example, an odd concept in a 4D manifold, but understandable when everything is "falling" through one of those dimensions.
Dear Albert E. tells us that all matter has a vector which sums to light speed in 4D, and partitions between space and time when the entity is measured from an accelerating frame.
Principle of equivalence (and measurement) shows us that tiem flow is slower in intense gravitational fields. Ergo, at absolute density, no time, so no singularity, no "before". At 1/infinite density at the big rip, time flow shoudl be infinite, ergo no action is possible. No after.
One can also interpret the phenomena which we call 'gravity' as the slowing of time flow near mass - for reasons which Dear A set out in special relativity - rather than gravity as, in effect, the vector by which time flows slower near mass.
The conventional view of the overall energy balance of the expanding universe is that the negative energy gravity field balances the positive energy everything else, and so summing to zero. If one buys the conceptual inversion in the preceding paragraph, then interesting things follow.
Specifically, the universal clock would be expected to change as the universe expanded, mass density fell. The clock would run faster. Photons released early in the universe's life would be red shifted. And so on. Changing lumpiness in space would lead to inhomogenous change in this clock, giving the appearance that the void parts were expanding faster than the occupied bits. Dot, dot dot...
Posted by: Oliver Sparrow | February 28, 2007 08:11 AM
I am not a whiz at physics , so can someone throw light on this : If entropy is ever increasing, then will not the creation of a new set of universes actually increase entropy? So the part where it says that "This states that the entropy of the Universe — a kind of measure of its disorder — must increase. How can you reverse cosmic expansion without reversing this? " - could this be wrong ?
Posted by: Deepa R | February 28, 2007 05:55 PM
I love science and all that that implies, but when will everyone accept that God created the universe . . . and that it cannot be explained away scientifically? The answer to all the questions is in Genesis Chapter One.
Posted by: Susan Evans | March 1, 2007 07:51 PM