Big Rip

The science times today offered an article on Dark Matter and a new theory called The Big Rip.
The idea is that instead of matter crunchin back together or just constantly expanding, the dark matter is in fact strong enough to rip the universe apart. in theory, all the atoms would be ripped, then the proton, neutrons, etc down to jsut elementary particles, and time would end.
also touched upon in the article was the idea that the current calculations of dark matter are too strong, and dark matter shold have torn the universe apart right after it was formed.

nytimes.com...

aye what i dont get is that hte universe is expaninding into nothing but are we even sure that it has physical boundaries to rip??? i mean a vacuume is just the sam as a void right? apart from any light radiation moving through it. so what is there to 'rip' apart? its like if you could freeze time you couldnt rip apart the explosion of a bomb?

i think ur missing it. first off, we arent expanding into nothing, we are. there isnt any other existence to expand into, we are jsut growing.
second, by rip, it is meant that all the particles are torn apart from each other, ceasing any sort of anything. as to how that equivocates the stopping of time, im a little stumped. hoping someone cud tell me. maybe theres no mass, space is all flat, time is unified?

i dont think you could rip apart quarks unless there made of somthing smaller. forget about the time tingy. but you could rip apart all the particles if you could halt all the weak and strong forces somehow i guess??

i dont get why people say you cant expand into nothing?
why not? there would be no laws OUTSIDE the universe to prohibit it would there? if there is then we arent expanding into nothing and we arent just all there is because there are other laws of physics in play outside.

Amorymeltzer, i read in a magazine a while ago (i can't remember what it was, sorry) but in an article it was suggested that the universe and everything in it is really 2d and that the 3rd dimension is just a concept created by the human brain.

Originally posted by quiksilver
i dont get why people say you cant expand into nothing?
why not? there would be no laws OUTSIDE the universe to prohibit it would there? if there is then we arent expanding into nothing and we arent just all there is because there are other laws of physics in play outside.

its not that were expanding into nothing, its that there is no nothing. nothing needs a place to exist, and it doesnt have that extra-universally.

Thanks for the story link! Nice find!