New Theory Nixes "Dark Energy": Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe

Remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? Well what if the time part of the equation was literally running out? New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. This radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years.

Scientists previously have measured the light from distant exploding stars to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. They assumed that these supernovae are spreading apart faster as the universe ages. Physicists also assumed that a kind of anti-gravitational force must be driving the galaxies apart, and started to call this unidentified force "dark energy".

However, to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it comes from. Professor Jose Senovilla, and his colleagues at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, have proposed a mind-bending alternative. They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we’re looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down. At an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be infinitesimally slow from a human perspective, but in terms of the vast perspective of cosmology, the study of ancient light from suns that shone billions of years ago, it could easily be measured

The team's proposal, which will be published in the journal Physical Review D, dismisses dark energy as fiction. Instead, Prof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery.

“We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion," he explains. "What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this expansion - that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, increasing its rate."

If time gradually slows "but we naively kept using our equations to derive the changes of the expansion with respect of 'a standard flow of time', then the simple models that we have constructed in our paper show that an "effective accelerated rate of the expansion" takes place."

Currently, astronomers are able to discern the expansion speed of the universe using the so-called "red shift" technique. This technique relies on the understanding that stars moving away appear redder in color than ones moving towards us. Scientists look for supernovae of certain types that provide a sort of benchmark. However, the accuracy of these measurements depends on time remaining invariable throughout the universe. If time is slowing down, according to this new theory, our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension. Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.

"Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," says Prof Senovilla. The theory bases it’s idea on one particular variant of superstring theory, in which our universe is confined to the surface of a membrane, or brane, floating in a higher-dimensional space, known as the "bulk". In billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether.

"Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," Senovilla told New Scientist magazine. "Our planet will be long gone by then."

Though radical and in many way unprecedented, these ideas are not without support. Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, say the concept has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect."

Posted by Rebecca Sato.

Related Galaxy posts:

Beyond Weird Science: General Relativity Expert Believes Humans Could Master Time Travel This Century
Weird Science: Can Time Move Backwards?
"Star Trek" Warp Speeds a Reality? Scientists Claim Quantum Tunneling Exceeds Speed of Light

Sources:
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jVw4s04zG-RxqVoKjwLps7coom8A
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19626354.000-is-time-slowing-down.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/18/scitime118.xml

Comments

[Geoff Wales]

Thanks for the post, Rebecca.

Time is the hardest of all concepts to deal with, as it seems to be tied up with out consciousness. We feel it 'flowing', but cannot explain what it actually is. Time, as we perceive it, may not exist at all. Photons seem to travel across the universe instantaneously, because they travel at the speed of light, at which speed time (or distance) shrinks to zero.

Cosmologists, like everybody else, speak as if time passing is an objective fact, but they would probably accept, when pressed, that it is a bit of a fudge, a convenience of usage, because removing temporal terms from cosmology leads to endless (oops) confusion.

[Kukainis]

I actually like any theory suggesting that time does not have a constant value properties and is subject to change over time (itself). This theory in particular seems simple and logical and it's hard to imagine no one has ever suggested this before. I've always thought dark energy was just something cosmologists made up to cover up holes in their theory on how things work in universe.

But I am also a big advocate of "novelty" concept, so I would argue that time is in fact speeding up. This can't be backed up with any mathematical data (to my knowledge) but the processes in our universe suggests it's the case. If you divide the evolution of the universe in multiple phases you'll see that every next step takes a smaller portion of time to occur then the one before it.

@ Geoff Wales
"Photons seem to travel across the universe instantaneously, because they travel at the speed of light, at which speed time (or distance) shrinks to zero."
are you saying that the speed of light is instant ?

[Keith]

Actually I THINK what he's saying is that as something moves through space it moves slower in the time dimension, so light, traveling at the maximum speed through space, does not move at all in the time dimension and is essentially "timeless" which is why we can see a galaxy 6 billion light years away exactly as it was when the light left it; because the light doesn't change with time. At least that's how I take it.
This "variable time" theory is one of my personal favorites out there. Of course that has zero to do with if it's true or not, but I just find it the most fascinating. Space and time are intertwined, so the more space expands the less time there is...robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak. Plus any theory that eliminates vague mathematical fixes like dark energy with "real" effects just appeals to me more. I know that doesn't make dark energy not real, and that doesn't mean that time is slowing down, or that light used to travel faster in the old days, etc, but it's nice to see some real attempts to explain what we see "out there" as opposed to saying "hmmmm, this simulation doesn't look right. Add a 7 in the equation so it works, but don't say what the seven is" methodology science seems to have adopted.

[Peter Fred]

A recent study has found that the universe started accelerating around ~z=0.6. The cosmic star formation rate started to decline at ~z=1. This is a fancy way of saying that at z=1 the universe started to dim. Could these two rare "global" events be merely coincident or could the dimming of the universe cause its acceleration. For them to be causally related you have to believe, as I do, that it is not mass that mediates the gravitational force rather it is "spreading infrared radiation" that mediates it. Then the dark sector problem will be solved with plausible "close to experience" physics instead of all this weird stuff that is getting weirder and weider. See my paper and experiments showing radiation is gravitationally attractive at

http://vixra.org/abs/0907.0018.

[pariah]

In the future, the era of dark energy and dark matter will be called The Dark Ages of Science.

[Ian O'Neill]

Great article. It's just a shame you guys feel the need to re-publish old posts and pass them off as "new". Here's the original from Jan. 2008: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/01/scientist-says.html

Do you really think your readers won't notice?

[papa tom]

time exists and behaves differently in a multitude of different scales and dimensions. I suspect it is nearly constant (yet rhythmic) only at a scale and dimension far beyond our comprehension. Beyond that, it's is entirely relative, and as such, fully capable of not only speeding up and slowing down, but also, as is theorized here, stopping. However, as it may stop in one dimension, it can continue to flow quite normally in another closely related dimension.

[Geoff Wales]

Thanks Ian - that is really inexcusable for any kind of journalism.

Sadly, this comes on top of my sense that the quality of writing on this site is slipping badly, as some writers try to be all hip and cool, man.

Please stick to the basics, guys - we just want the science, not the fake personalities.

[Narendra Nath]

The homegeneity of both space and time are equally significant. in my personal opinion, mass and energy got generated in our universe due to distortions of space and time, respectively. Thus, inhomogeneity may have existed specially in the early universe, till around 1 billion years after the birth! That is why some measurements on the speed of light from very distant galaxies show a higher value than currently measured. The universe was very violent in nature in the early part and has now assumed a steady state of sorts. Thus, it is important to make accurate and precise measurements on objects/ particles that constituted the early universe upto a billion year.

[Ivar Nielsen]

THE HUMAN TIME ILLUSION.

Something that never was, can not disappear . . .

http://www.steady-state-universe.net

[Ivar Nielsen]

THE HUMAN TIME ILLUSION.

Something that never was, cannot disappear . . .

[SusanGrisantiGuitarist]

The answer was hinted at in the Bible: 'a day in the Lord is as a thousand years & a thousand years as a day'...
The theory explains why the Bible says that Adam & Noah & several folks back then lived to be almost 1,000 years old, because time traveled faster back then. Makes perfect sense to this armchair layman.

[ShadowDS]

Personally I'm more inclined to believe the VSL theory.

And even more recently, I have been leaning on the belief that the universe is older than we think especially if the VSL teory is proven false.

It's highly likely that our orginal enimate as to the age of the universe is flat wrong and what we have been marking as the time stamp (the big bang) is really just an echo of what once was.

Truth is, until we develop a new understanding of physics we will not be able to explain this phenomenon (perhaps even then) until we could some day see the whole universe as it is at one particular time, and not relying on the falicy of light.

[dawn]

I wonder if time is slowing down because the universe is expanding. It's getting thinned out. Same amount of time over a larger area.

[Patrick Smith]

Then there is the Belief that all of these Galaxies are all the same one... And or maybe one or Two et cetera... In which we are Living in a Parallel Universe... As these other Galaxies we are Witnessing are in fact the same one over & over from different Vantage points... And or Stages of Development... In which we are viewing how the bang big occurred... Two Galaxies Collided with each other causing a Black Hole and or Pin Hole Crack in the Fabric of Space... Or Vise Versa... In which the Big Bang Occurred...

Pin Hole Crack appeared which caused a Vortex type Galaxy and or Black Hole that began Drawing all of the other Stars & Galaxies into it... At which point when they Collided the Big Bang Occurred...

Time is a Constant... Same Time here is the same Time there... Distance is Relative...

Check out my myspace photo album for the Big Bang...

Pat!!!

[Patrick Smith]

Sorry here was my URL...

http://www.myspace.com/peejaysmith4665

Pat!!!

[Mike]

This theory is really NOT NEW AT ALL ! Look at the work of Johan Masreliez

Expanding Space-Time Theory : 2004

http://www.estfound.org/

and Eric Julien

The Science of Extraterrestrials : 2002 (French), 2005 (French), 2006 (English)

http://ufo.whipnet.org/xdocs/extraterrestrial.science/index.html

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Extraterrestrials-UFOs-Explained-Last/dp/1601771010

http://books.google.com/books?id=OVE0OjG15TcC&dq=the+science+of+extraterrestrials&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=B2tQ-47HO0&sig=nMU0MsmBSogecYtYDJEy3soWOjc&hl=en&ei=miWxSppehYG3B57ykZcI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[Mike]

I just saw that the English version link to "the Science of Extraterrestrials" through "sendspace.com" is dead. Here is a new one to read this book FOR FREE :

http://www.sendspace.com/file/qdeu7f

[Harrrie]

If the universe expansion is accelerating, (which would make sense) it is due to our universe being surrounded by many other universes. These universes have gravitation too, and all these universes are all being pulled together. Eventually, the mass from our universe, in all directions, will merge with the mass of other universes. Then all this merged mass, some here and some there, will eventually contract, and there will be new big bangs going off all over the place (of course at different times). That our universe is one and only, and that it began at the beginning of time, and that our universe will end at the end of time is hogwash. You might think this is too simplistic, but it only makes sense. If you want to solve a problem you look for the simplist cause of the problem and the simplist solution. It is wonderful to think that space and time are infinite and all of this will go on forever, and even possibly our children's children's children will be able to time travel! We are so lucky to be a part of this! As far as time, there is no such thing. Someone said there is "change", and we sure are seeing a lot of it.

[Timothy]

"In billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether."

I'm unclear how time would ever advance to a time when time would cease, but anyway, how would anyone notice? It could have happened already a half dozen or more times since I started writing this comment. (That might explain some of the inexplicable typos I've had to fix)

[Wesley]

What if the concept of light, instead of time, were being looked at incorrectly? What if light simply slowed down ever so slightly over greater distances (of course, the higher frequencies slowing down more easily, hence the more red look from stars moving away)?

Consider this: If time slows down, anything dealing with time slows down as well, something which moves a certain distance over a certain amount of time, with time slower, the movement slows as well, as the article suggests. However, that would be dealing with everything, speed of light, movement of planets, movement of electrons in our brains, etc. making this article simply not work so well.

On the other hand, the speed of light being slightly different than what we accept as the speed of light... Perhaps changing over time, perhaps more affected by the gravity of its source than expected, or perhaps the higher frequencies of light more affected by outside forces in certain situations, causing a greater percentage of lower frequency light to reach us.

I have to say, I'm not buying the idea of time itself slowing down being the reason for an acceleration illusion. Could the acceleration be an illusion? Of course, just not because of time dying of old age.

[Trey Anastasio]

Time Turns Elastic

[misanthropope]

a "theory", is it? i had the impression that until you made falsifiable claims that were borne out in experiments, the best you could call your model was a "hypothesis".

call me old-fashioned, but i like the idea of a difference in kind between the theory of relativity, and the "theory" of intelligent design.

[Whizmd]

Time would slow down if it is related to expansion of space. That is possible as time does slow down where expansion of space is slow as around large masses. Slowing of time may be due to slower expansion of space and not due to gravity.