The Universe is about to flip from having three dimensions of space and one of time to having four dimensions of space. That's the conclusion of a group of Spanish astrophysicists who have calculated that observers inside such a Universe would see it expanding and accelerating away from them just before the flip
When I first heard that the rate of the universe's expansion was actually accelerating, I came up with a weird hypothesis after a few days...
Time in our frame of reference is slowing down.
The only way that seemed possible was if we were traveling at speeds close to c, but that didn't sound feasible since we were observing objects that were moving away from us, in all directions. Then another weird thought occurred to me...
Our observed universe is self-contained within the event horizon of a giant black hole.
We're closer to the singularity, and accelerating towards it faster than objects closer to the edge of the event horizon. Time will move slower for us, and far away objects will appear to speed up. An outside observer (if such a thing could possibly exist) would perceive our universe as shrinking, but in our current frame of reference, we still think of it as expanding.
One other observation that lends to this possibility is the fact that we have not seen evidence of other "Big Bangs" or other "Universes". If the Big Bang happened once, shouldn't it be a repeatable occurrence in the limitless void of space?
Okay, that's my rant. You can slap the straitjacket on me now and ship me off to the funny farm.
Maybe it's time to switch the the Cartoon Network when you do that stuff *cough, cough*. It's never safe to watch the Science Channel on that big of a hit.
Smoke and Mirrors, and a large ball of rubberbands. Yup. That's it.
anniemcu
--- "You are what you do, not what you claim to believe." -Gene A. Statler
--- "Olé to you, none-the-less!" - Elizabeth Gilbert
--- http://www.sassafrassgrove.com
Charlene wrote:So if I stop at Milliways for supper, can I watch this? Or have I already?
A valid question, methinks.
If the nature of reality undergoes a fundamental change, and we are part of and not separate from that reality, would we even know an event had occured? When all frames of reference are in that same reality, by what frame of reference could such a change be detected?
When it passes the original limiting condition there will be another meta-universe. It will look just the same. No-one will be able to tell. It may have already happened.
Tell us something.: "Tell us something" hits me a bit like someone asking me to tell a joke. I can always think of a hundred of them until someone asks me for one. You know how it is. Right now, I can't think of "something" to tell you. But I have to use at least 100 characters to inform you of that.
I like this comment someone posted about the article:
the intersection of mathematics and cosmology
where the theories and calculations of the brightest brains in the room become indistinguishable from the random brainfarts of two stoners sitting on a smelly couch in a dorm room at 4:20 AM
Giles: "We few, we happy few."
Spike: "We band of buggered."
