There Was A Big Bang - We Live In A Universe That Endlessly Expands And Never Contracts

The title of this article is tongue-in-cheek, please note.

I am posting in reference to predator0187's post yesterday titled, ""There Was No Big Bang" - We Live in a Universe that Endlessly Expands and Contracts (VIDEO)."

I am not trying to refute that post, nor am I qualified to do so. I just happened upon a different science article with a different take on similar issues. I was going to post this article anyhow and in searching whether it had already been posted, I found predator0187's post and found it interesting how they seem, to my little naive eye, to have opposing points of view. I'm not saying that the two conclusions are necessarily inconsistent, though they appear to have some problems with each other.

This is just to present a perhaps alternate point of view and to humbly suggest that our scientists are not always in accord.

The article I'm referencing appeared on a sci-fi blog, summarizing a paper soon to be published in the weekly journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, but currently available at arXiv.

Instead of contracting to a Big Crunch, the universe may actually keep on expanding forever at a faster and faster rate. Now astronomers believe they have confirmed that this universal expansion is accelerating.

An international team of researchers used the Hubble Telescope to chart almost half a million galaxies and map out the spread of dark matter over the history of the universe. Their results not only confirm Einstein's general relativity - which is always nice - but they also appear to prove the existence of dark energy.

So, rather than eventually reaching a maximum expansion followed by contraction, the British Columbian team is supposing a perpetual expansion. Though, it is interesting that the UNC team proposes a similar instance, but suggests the expansion becomes so enormous that matter breaks down, thereby causing the contraction.

The British Columbian team, though, seems to suggest that because the expansion is accelerating, it could go on perpetually. I don't know what their response is to the scenario of the UNC team ... when expansion is such that atoms disintegrate.

General relativity holds that the universe's structure is entirely determined by its matter, so if the universe is increasingly expanding there has to be something out there that's causing the acceleration. Current theories argue for the existence of three main constituents of the universe - normal matter, dark matter, and dark energy, the "unknown source of energy" to which Van Waerbeke refers. Although this is not the first study to demonstrate that dark energy really is more than a theory, this is by far the most compelling proof yet that the universe's expansion is actually accelerating.

Source: Hubble Telescope Confirms The Universe Is Getting Bigger, Faster

this is what i was going for:



sorry, easily amused.

Star and flag.

Just goes to show that the scientists haven't made up their mind. Cosmology and physics are still big unknowns in many respects.

reply to post by Hadrian


Thanks for sharing this and bringing both sides of an argument to the table.

I think it is good to have different theories about the same topic. I personally believe in no Big Bang per-say, not that I do not believe we are expanding. Expanding is a weird topic altogether as what is actually moving? Galaxies or space/time fabric? I have no idea and I am sure that no one seriously does, only theories at the point.

If we look at galaxies that are far away, the father we look the faster they are moving away from us, so there would be plenty of galaxies that have not broken our event horizon yet, and probably never will. So if this is the case and we can only see how long the event horizon allows us to see, then how can we possible know if the universe is expanding?

Maybe by chance, we repelled away from a part of the universe that had expelled us, or space/time away from it and that is why we perceive it as everything is expanding. There could be so much universe that we could possibly never see to know any better.

Weird concepts to think about...makes it all the more fun.

Pred...

Edit for spelling...

[edit on 26-3-2010 by predator0187]