"There Was No Big Bang" - We Live in a Universe that Endlessly Expands and Contracts (VIDEO)

Hmm. I've don't think I've ever heard of someone who has it out for the physicists quite like you seem to.

Originally posted by mnemeth1
Space does not expand since space is nothing.

Nothing can not expand.

To anyone with more than 2 functioning brain cells this should be obvious.

Well, that's not quite right. Spacetime exists. It provides the best explanation for how light bends around massive bodies. Light has no mass, yet its path is effected by gravity. The best explanation is that it is travelling in a striaght line through a curved medium; the medium being spacetime, curved by gravity.

Certainly you aren't really confusing space with nothing. When two objects are separated by a distance, they are not separated by no distance. They are separated by space. Their separation is not an illusion, there is something in between them. The space in between them is a real thing and it's called space. Not nothing. If the separation between two things were truely nothing, they would be touching.

Something can be 1 meter away or 3 meters away, there is a clear difference between these two states. The difference is the amount of space, and it's easily measurable. You can't have a measurable amount of nothing. Also, when you locate an object, you locate it in space and time. Without spacial coordinates and a temporal coordinate you won't be able to find it. These coordinates only make sense if they are coordinates on something that exists.

Further evidence proving the existence of spacetime can be derived from the following simple thought experiment. We know that motion has to be defined relative to some frame of reference. I'm sitting still at my computer relative to the floor, but relative to the core of the earth I'm rotating very quickly, and relative to the sun I'm revolving at a high rate of speed. All of these motions are different, and they are all correct, because motion must be defined relatively. So imagine that a bucket of water is the only thing in the entire universe. Imagine that the bucket is spinning. When we have nothing to define this spinning motion relative to, we cannot actually tell that it is spinning. Except in our experiment, we can tell that it is spinning because the water inside it is pressed up against the sides of the bucket, forming a depression in the middle. This depression is the result of the centrifugal force cause by the bucket's spinning. How does the water know that it is spinning? How is the centrifugal force defined, if we have no way to define the spinning motion because we have no frame of reference? The answer is that the bucket is spinning relative to the space around it. This is where the centrifugal force comes from. Spacetime must exist in order for the centrifugal force to act, because the spinning has to be relative to something.

Finally, none of these nefarious physicists you speak of will ever tell you that spacetime is empty. It's not nothing. Perfect vacuums don't exist. Even the most empty parts of space contain background radiation, and most places contain more than that. You know how you can see the stars? That's because light is travelling through space. This proves even to the naive that space has something in it; the visible light which you can tell for a fact is travelling through it. Besides, it doesn't make sense to even speak of emptiness when we refuse to acknowledge that the container exists.

As far as how obvious this idea is as a function of number of brain cells. . . Einstein disagreed with you. You're not going to impress many people around here when your argument is that "it is self evidence that space does not exist" when it isn't self evident to people who we know are really smart. The concept of spacetime is used in physics equations which make correct predictions. Isn't that pretty powerful evidence that it exists?

Engineers view black holes as the laughing stock of physics - untestable, unprovable, and in violation of every known provable law of physics.

Similarly with the "Big Bang" or the big crunch or the big whatever.

No they don't. Engineers aren't out there rejecting the big bang. Even if they were, why would we get our information about the begining of the universe from airplane designers? When the mainstream opinion among experts in the field is something that you don't like, you recruit non-experts from a tangentially related field with absolutely no relevance to the problem in question and tell everyone that "at least these guys agree with me?" Who cares what the engineers think about black holes? It's like asking a politician what they think about global warming.

Don't get too caught up on preserving your "proven" laws(aren't those the same laws that the evil physicists came up with?). The only way to explain the rate of rotation of stars and gas around the center of a galaxy is to propose that something exists at the center of the galaxy with the mass of a black hole. You don't have to call it a black hole, but the amount of gravity and mass can only exist as a singularity. Physics breaks down at this point. This can be frustrating if you hold the laws of physics in high regard, but observations are impossible to ignore.

Mainstream theoretical physicists are a bunch of lying gurus that spew endless agitation propaganda to justify their continued existence and hording of tax payer dollars.

They provide us nothing. They provide no answers. They provide no insight. All of their predictions have been wrong. Their theories have no basis in reality. They are thieving jokers that loot the public and spin fantasy behind a curtain of obscure math and tell us we are simply too dumb to understand their genius.

Yikes. All their predictions have not been wrong. They explain their observation and adhere to mathematics in order to do it. They aren't gurus, they are as serious as scientists get. It's just that the only physics that gets talked about in the mainstream is the goofy stuff, because that's what entertains lay people. A lot of that stuff is not well established before it is printed, and you hear these theories super-over-simplified from third hand sources. Really it's all based on explaining real observations. They're open to competing theories, it's just that no better ones have been presented. Technology is a product of physics.

reply to post by OnceReturned

Dark energy might not be energy and it might not be dark; the term dark energy is completely interchangeable with the cosmological constant in cosmology. Other than being the constant which defines the rate of universal expansion, nothing at all is known about it. Yet, we are able to describe interactions and physical behavior at many scales very, very well without appealing to anything "dark." The dark stuff is so far only useful for explaining wierd behaviors of huge bodies over cosmic space and time scales.

Reasonable.

But if it is a strong enough force to expand our universe it seems logical that it may be operating also at the subatomic level as well. But then why invent theories that lack proof or necessity?

Thanks for your input, its been a great thread!

reply to post by plumranch


I agree, I am enjoying this conversation.

I don't think good theories are invented that lack proof or necessity. Good theories are invented in order to explain observations. We observe that the universe is expanding at any increasing rate; it is accelerating. In order to account for this observation we inlcude the cosmological constant in our equations, and we use the concept of "dark energy" to describe whatever actual physical phenomenon is responsible for the acceleration that we observe.

Dark energy is just a name for the contents of a black box. We know that something in the box (this is a metaphore of course) is causing the universe to expand at an increasing rate. We know that whatever that thing is, it is a real physical phenomenon. We can quantify its effects, and we have. We call this quantification the cosmological constant. We call the genuine physical phenomenon which we haven't been able to describe "dark energy." The theory of dark energy really amounts to nothing more than the claim that "there is something - which we have yet to identify - that is responsible for the effects which we observe." They'll come up with a far more boring name for it once they figure out what it is.

As for the question of why we only observe these effects on cosmic scales, and how these effects might be relevant to quantum mechanics, it's hard to say. Ultimately one could easily make the case that dark energy must be present at quantum scales, because cosmic stuff is made of quantum stuff, just a real lot of it. If the effect is present on the large scale, it ought to present in smaller quantities on the scale of all of the constituent parts of whatever large system you are looking at. This makes intuitive sense; physics is reductive. We should be able to explain the behavior of any large scale system by explaining the behavior of all of its smaller parts. No new effect should arise spontaneously when we collect a lot of small things which don't exhibit that effect on their own.

It's not clear how far to take this argument though. We can explain the behavior of a weather system reductively; if we explain the behavior of all of the molecules that make up that system, then there is no reason that we shouldn't be able to describe what's going at the level of the entire system. But, there are such things as emergent properties. In our weather system example, we know that rain drops are wet. Wetness is an emergent property. Molecules of water aren't themselves wet, wetness has to do with the viscosity of a collection of water molecules. We may know everything there is to know about all of the individual molecules of the weather system, and still not be able to predict that rain drops will be wet.

That is somewhat of a sidebar, but perhaps dark energy at the cosmic scale is somehow analogous. The crux of the matter is that we don't observe the effects of dark energy at small scales. So, even if we wanted to include a term for dark energy in our quantum mechanics equations, where would we put it? It doesn't seem to be having any effect, so how can we include it in our equations without making them incorrect? If we have equations which describe and predict something, it's hard to add new terms to those equations without altering the result. We don't want to alter the results, because the results we are getting now seem to be right. And, if we have good equations without the dark energy term, what would be the point of introducing such a term? We could appeal to this argument of principal described above, where we say we have to include it because we know that whether we like it or not it gets included along the way somewhere because it effects cosmic bodies. But that's not very satisfying. Without observing any effects of dark energy on the quantum scale, it's hard - both in practice and in philosophical justification - to include dark energy in our quantum theory.

I that the most likely explanation for dark energy will be that there is some as of yet unidentified "wierd thing out there" similar to dark matter which is acting across vast distances in space. Beyond that, I really have no idea. There is one particularily interesting issue about the specific value of the cosmological constant which is this: it seems exactly right for life. If it were slightly stronger then it would probably prevent galaxies and solar systems and maybe even stars and planet from forming because they would all be accelerated away from eachother too quickly to develope stable orbits. Likewise, if it were slightly weaker then gravity would overwhelm galaxies and everything would crush in on itself. We seem to have gotten very lucky in that it is just the right strength.

There is a notion in quantum mechanics which tries in include and account for dark energy called vacuum energy density, but so far any equations which work for the quantum scale are way, way off in their predictions for the cosmic scale, and the equations which work for the cosmic scale are equally incongruent with quantum observations. The idea is being entertained, but its incompatability with our observations makes it quite unappealing. See:
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

This is all part of the work to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics.

Big problem with this old theory (aside from the improbability of uniform collapse) ....at the precipice of collapse, some material and energy is bound to escape. Over the course of an incredible number of "crunch and bangs" so much mass would be lost to where a collapse would no longer yield a bang.

Of course there is another big question. How did the cycle begin?

Originally posted by mnemeth1

Its not supposed to.

If the physicists actually did their job and weren't lying to us, they would have had the fundamentals of matter and the existence of the universe figured out decades ago.

Hence, they would have put themselves out of jobs.

Its not very profitable to be a theoretical physicists that actually finds the solution to everything.

Nothing makes sense unless you really understand the concept you are talking about. And I am not talking about thinking you know. There is a reason why people have to go to school and have research behind their theories.

Scientists just don't belt out anything as then they would be philosophers.

Physicists are not lying to us, I hate to tell you but the universe is complex and takes a bit of understanding to fully grasp the concept. People have studied their lifetimes and still do not even come close to grasping the concept. They spend their lifetimes and other people make judgements about what they think.

Also, your argument about they would have nothing to do if they solved everything, well that really doesn't work. There will always be scientific research to be done, and it will take us so many years to master any of the fully understand any fields of science.

I really dislike when people think that science should be solved because people did it before...and the Einstein and the quantum theory came along. We have a lot more to do, think about and experiment with until we even know parts of the sciences.

I do not mean to sound rude at all, and I do not want you to take it like that.

Pred...

reply to post by OnceReturned


Thanks for the references! The Energy Density seems to describe what I was considering.

Particularly, the Casimir Effect which is a measurable force on plates close together in a vacuum.

It seems reasonable that if such a force is active on plates close together, if may operate at the quantum level also and operate in such a way to maintain structure or structural relations.

Apparently we cannot measure this force so we give it nice names, but if we could measure it perhaps we could more easily find ways to use it?

reply to post by plumranch


People sure are trying. Legitimate universities have looked into exploiting the Casimir effect, and have at least thought about trying to extract vacuum energy. This latter effort - the one to extract energy from quantum effects in a vacuum - is called zero point energy. There's even a conspiracy theory that says people have figured it out and that the government is in possession of the technology.

The fundamental problem though is this: In order to extract energy, you have have an energy differential. Energy moves from places of higher energy density to places of lower energy density. Energy can only be extracted by something of low energy density, from something of high energy density. It's very much like heat in this respect, hot things only transmit heat to things that are cooler than they are. Heat and energy both flow "down" the gradient, from high to low. But, the definition of a vacuum is that it has the lowest possible energy density. Which means that it should be impossible in principal to extract energy from the vacuum, because you will never be able to find something will less energy density than a vacuum. There's no way for the energy to flow "down" if it starts at the lowest possible point. Even though the energy of a vacuum may be non-zero, it seems - right now at least - that this energy is inaccessible, and there's no clear solution to the problem.

reply to post by OnceReturned


Casimir Effect

Because the strength of the force falls off rapidly with distance, it is only measurable when the distance between the objects is extremely small. On a submicrometre scale, this force becomes so strong that it becomes the dominant force between uncharged conductors. In fact, at separations of 10 nm—about 100 times the typical size of an atom—the Casimir effect produces the equivalent of 1 atmosphere of pressure (101.3 kPa), the precise value depending on surface geometry and other factors.[7] In modern theoretical physics, the Casimir effect plays an important role in the chiral bag model of the nucleon; and in applied physics, it is significant in some aspects of emerging microtechnologies and nanotechnologies.[8]

Sounds like CE is a significant force! 1 ATM at 10 nm.

Care to speculate what technology is most likely to be successful in extracting this energy? Some sort of nanotechnology using narrow tubes or closely spaced plates? Or an electrical apparatus, something like the Stoern technology?

reply to post by plumranch


My understanding of the effect is this: In an ideal vacuum, fundamental(quantum) particles pop in and out of existance constantly, everywhere. Where they are coming from is irrelevant to the effect. The fact is that they are there, albeit briefly. They can't be extracted, each one only exists there for an infinitesimal instant, and the space is constantly occupied by these things popping in and out. Since "empty" space is actually occupied by these particles, it has a non-zero energy density, but this energy density is the lowest that it can possibly be for such a space; we can't remove any energy. Since energy density is equal to pressure times temperature, a non-zero energy density guarantees non-zero values for both pressure and temperature. This is clear because if either pressure of temperature were 0, then pressure times temperature would also be zero. But, we know that it is not zero, because energy density = pressure X temperature and the existance of the "popping" particles means that energy density cannot be zero because the particles themselves have energy(this is necessarily true because everything "has" or "is" energy by e=mc^2).

So the point of the story so far is that empty space actually has some non-zero, positive pressure caused by these fundamental particles popping in and out of existance( the pressure has to be positive because there is no such thing as negative energy density, and we know that energy density=pressureXtemperature, so if either pressure or temperature were negative we would get a negative energy density which is impossible and intuitively meaningless). The Casimir effect comes into play when two objects in a vacuum are brought so close together that the distance between them actually prohibits certain relatively large particles from "popping in" to the gap. If there's no room for them to pop in because the space between the objects is too small, they don't show up. This means that the pressure exerted by the particles popping in is less in the gap than in the unoccupied vacuum, because it is equal to the normal vacuum pressure minus the pressure caused by whatever particles are too big to fit into the small space. However, the vacuum surrounding the two objects(not counting the space between them; the vacuum on the "outside" of the two objects) is still at full pressure because the particles popping into that space are unrestricted by the small gap. The pressure of the vacuum surrounding the two objects is therefore greater than the pressure of the vacuum in the gap between the objects. The pressure differential results in a net force pushing the two objects together.

There. Got that out of the way. I'm sorry if you already read a similar description somewhere else. Anyway that's how the effect works. I'm not sure that it is possible in principal to take advantage of this effect. I've heard of - but don't recall where - someone claiming to have worked out how to use this effect to create frictionless bearings, although I remember that at the time I read the claim it was heavily contested by physicists who claimed that the person didn't really know what they were talking about.

Nothing really comes to mind when I think of how to take advantage of it. The problem is that it is essentially like have the two objects be magnetically attracted to eachother. Essentially like that in the sense of the result. We can't really get energy out of those types of attractive forces. Usefull energy is undoubtedly exerted when the objects are pressed together, but we would have to apply the exact same amount of force to separate them again. It's just like gravity or magnetism: it works in one direction, but to reset the system you have to put back in the same amount of energy you could have gotten out. Since no mechanical system can be one hundred percent efficient, this is folly. Even if it were one hundred percent efficient, the best we could do is break even.

I haven't really thought much about this problem because it stikes me as insurmountable in principal, but I'll spend a minute on it and get back to you. Do you have any ideas? It would be a very valuable contribution if someone could make use of this effect. It's possible that a nanomachine could use it, and maybe some already do, I'll look into it.

reply to post by OnceReturned



Ames Lab Researchers predict a Repulsive Casimir Effect Using Exotic Chiral Metamaterials

For that reason, the group turned its attention to chiral metamaterials, so named because they do not exist in nature and must instead be made in the lab. The fact that they are artificial gives them a unique advantage, commented Koschny. “With natural materials you have to take what nature gives you; with metamaterials, you can create a material to exactly meet your requirements,” he said. The chiral metamaterials the researchers focused on have a unique geometric structure that enabled them to change the nature of energy waves, such as those located in the gap between the two closely positioned plates, causing those waves to exert a repulsive Casimir force.

Scientists to Conquer Casimir Effect, Enable NEMS

"Casimir's original experiment used two metallic parallel plates to localize photons between them," Lopez said. "Suppose we do nanopatterning on one of them. Now you have a uniform plate, but the other has an array of 50 nm thick lines that work somewhat like a diffraction grating, which may balance off the photons' attractive effect, considerably reducing the Casimir forcer. However, if the nanowires are thick enough to support some sort of plasmonic excitation, repulsion may result. We're trying to balance and control the number of photons between the plates, relative to the plasmons that can be induced by creating a surface pattern, to determine whether our repulsion calculations are correct and patterning can control the Casimir Effect."
A repulsive Casimir force is attractive because there is no way today to actuate NEMS devices in a controllable way; below 1 µm, matters get complicated because there are many fringe fields, heating effects and other complicated excitations that cannot be controlled. Some researchers think that this research might lead to levitation. "If you have a nanoscale repulsive force, you can levitate objects, separated by gaps of 100 nm or so. Friction could be reduced to almost zero," Lopez said, adding that so far this is speculation. "However, if friction is eliminated, the result is a very efficient device and energy savings."

A decade ago, the Casimir Effect was an academic curiosity. Today, it is a technological problem, because if NEMS devices are to be used for thousands of applications, it becomes necessary to control the quantum forces that come into play at those scales.
Quantum mechanics is quickly becoming quantum engineering

These 2 examples look interesting.

nothing really new here, this is basically the same thing as fred hoyle's "steady state" theory introduced in the early 40's. He was one of the first opponents of the big bang theory and went on television (bbc) in 1949 to debate george gamow about the big bang theory, and ultimately disproved his own steady state theory. Fred Hoyle actually coined the term "big Bang Theory" as an attack on it.

reply to post by eightonefive


Hoyle was a smart man, well ahead of his time.

He didn't have the correct answers but he knew that the standard theory is a load of nonsense based on the evidence.

Electrical engineers have solved the problem of cosmology for us a long time ago.

The universe is fairly simple from this perspective.

reply to post by OnceReturned


Getting back on topic a bit, Zero Point Energy and Zero Point Field, discusses several of the factors we've mentioned including the Casimir Effects and ways of harnessing, including Robert Forwards Casimir Battery (1984). This article isn't dated but it quotes a 2006-2007 article so apparently is relatively recent.

An attempt is made to relate and equate ZPE and dark energy, including how ZPE and dark energy could be expansive in effect rather than contractile as is predicted by relativity theory.

According to relativity theory, energy is equivalent to mass as a source of gravity, thus zero-point energy should gravitate, which according to general relativity means producing a positive curvature in space-time. At first glance one might assume that if there is an enormous amount of zero-point energy underlying the universe, its effect would be to dramatically curve the universe to a minute size. Indeed, if the spectrum of zero-point energy extends to the Planck scale, its energy density would be the mass equivalent of about 1093 grams per cubic centimeter which would reduce the universe to a size smaller than an atomic nucleus.

But ZPE behaves differently:

Zero-point energy behaves differently. For ordinary radiation, the ratio of pressure to energy density is w=1/3c2, which is customarily expressed in units whereby c=1, and thus the ratio is expressed as w=+1/3. But for zero-point energy the ratio is w=-1. This is owing to the circumstance that the zero-point energy density is assumed to be constant: no matter how much the universe expands it does not become diluted, but instead more zero-point energy is assumed to be created out of nothing.

Is ZPE dark energy?

A further peculiarity is that a ratio of w=-1 implies that the zero-point energy exerts a negative pressure which, counter-intuitively, leads to an expansion of space-time.
Thus zero-point energy would appear to be identical with the mysterious dark energy, but unfortunately if the energy spectrum does continue up to the Planck frequency, there may be 120 orders of magnitude more energy per cubic centimeter than the observations of cosmic acceleration permit. Indeed, this amount of zero-point energy, interpreted this way, would have accelerated the universe into oblivion in microseconds.

How can ZPE cause expansion of the universe?

Recent work by Christian Beck at the University of London and Michael Mackey at McGill University may have resolved the 120 order of magnitude problem. In that case dark energy is nothing other than zero-point energy. In Measureability of vacuum fluctuations and dark energy and Electromagnetic dark energy they propose that a phase transition occurs so that zero-point photons below a frequency of about 1.7 THz are gravitationally active whereas above that they are not. If this is the case, then the dark energy problem is solved: dark energy is the low frequency gravitationally active component of zero-point energy.
Zero-point photons continue to exist above the 1.7 THz phase transition, consistent with measurable QED effects such as the Casimir effect, the Lamb shift, etc. The proposed phase transition should be testable in the near future when the Koch et al. experiment is extended from 0.6 Tz to the proposed cutoff.

So ZPE may be Dark Energy, cause expansion of the universe, add mass to the universe and contribute to the Casimir effect.

Laboratory Experiments on Dark Energy by Christian Beck

Here is Robert Forward's Casimir Battery: Extracting electrical energy from the vacuum by cohesion of charged foliated conductors

[edit on 28/3/10 by plumranch]

Didn't Stephen Hawking propose this idea a while ago?
When he first proposed it his theory would have only worked in a closed universe but once he got a few others working with him they realized it could happen in an open universe?
I might be wrong but I remember something like that.

Also Julian Barbour has been talking about this for quite some time. I believe he has or is in the process of writing a book about this.

reply to post by seangkt


Closed vs open Universe Wiki

Closed universe If Ω > 1, then the geometry of space is closed like the surface of a sphere. The sum of the angles of a triangle exceeds 180 degrees and there are no parallel lines; all lines eventually meet. The geometry of the universe is, at least on a very large scale, elliptic. In a closed universe lacking the repulsive effect of dark energy, gravity eventually stops the expansion of the universe, after which it starts to contract until all matter in the universe collapses to a point, a final singularity termed the "Big Crunch," by analogy with Big Bang. However, if the universe has a large amount of dark energy (as suggested by recent findings),[citation needed] then the expansion of the universe can continue forever – even if Ω > 1. [edit]
Open universe

If Ω

Gee, lets see.
Before the Big Bang.
If I can remember correctly.
Was the proto planet theory.
One big thing just popped out little things.
I didn't think much of it being young and uncaring.
Then the Big Ban Theory can out and by then the Proto Planet theory
was not even a vague memory.
But I suppose one describes the universe and one just the planetary system.
The infinite universe might work with an all infinite ether that condensed
and started proto galaxies.
That might work.
Until recently I wondered how the proto theory evolved.
Now I know how.
By human observation.

In catastrophic conditions, with two celestial bodies approaching one another closely, the electromagnetic interactions may become most pronounced - the cometary protoplanet Venus produced a display of discharges between its head and its trailing part when the orbital movement of the protoplanet was disrupted by the close approach to the Earth; in the latter, eddy currents were generated with the effects due to such phenomenon

www.varchive.org...
Jupiter’s Radio Noises

Seven ages of Earth, each ending in calamity, taught us how things worked.
From a reader of ancients yet the theory was present in the mind of
man way before these new theories were presented.

I do wonder if we [& science?] is terminality obsessed.

Maybe they 'see' the big bang because as you look further & further away there is less data so it looks microtized [contracted] as a result?

If we can't see it, it certainly can't exist, right?

Certainly there is no between the betweens, & nothing beyond the beyonds.

We just love to be presumptive, it makes us feel so big.

Something solid & grabable that makes us feel certain & secure in the ocean of transitory chaos we seem to live in.

I guess it works as long as it works.
I won't be betting the whole farm on it though.

Nice to see fresh perspectives not being herded or caged by collectively shared opinions, especially when that runs counter to it.

We seek 'explanations' because it calms our minds, & is that really such a 'good' thing? In the process we create dismissal of contravening experience.

We tend to want to find coherence, which is a bias.
Openness to incoherence could lead to magic, afterall.

I am deeply bothered by so-called science that doesn't seem capable & is even antagonistic to self-honesty.

non-humble science is oxymoronically religious.
as a counter to baseless religious devotion & presumption i understand the reflex on a defensive basis.
I don't know if there is a cure for that unless the addiction to religious certainty devotion can be vastly societally reduced.

Maybe there is just something wrong with us.