Does the universe repeat itself every trillion years? A new cosmological model appears to demonstrate that the universe can endlessly expand and contract, providing a rival to Big Bang theories and solving a thorny modern physics problem, according to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physicists. A new view that requires for a new take on our concept of time – one that has more in common with the “cyclic” views of time held by ancient thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci, than the Christian Calender and Bible-influenced belief in “linear” time now so deeply imbedded in modern western thinking.
String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul
Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the
Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the
cosmos we live in was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year
collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional
branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking
of gravity out of one of the universes.
In their view of the universe the complexities of an
inflating universe after a Big Bang are replaced by a universe that was
already large. flat, and uniform with dark energy as the effect of the
other universe constantly leaking gravity into our own and driving its
acceleration.
According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time
but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of
evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the
formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.
“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature.”
~ Leonidas Moustakas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The
Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical
alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the
other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by
the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly
behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string. The
foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away, the inner ring and
outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a
distance of 6 and approximately 11 billion light-years.
One
of the most fascinating discoveries of our new century may be imminent
if the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva produces nano-blackholes. According to the best current physics, such
nano blackholes could not be produced with the energy levels
the LHC can generate, but coud only come into being if a parallel
universe were providing extra gravitational input. Versions of
multiverse theory suggest that there is at least one other universe
very close to our own, perhaps only a millimeter away. This makes it
possible that some of the effects, especially gravity, "leak through,"
which could be responsible for the production of dark energy and dark
matter that make up 96% of the universe.
At a recent CalTech roundtable conference on the possible impact of the LHC on physics, Neal Weiner of
New York University, who is a proponent of the existence of forces as well
as particles on the dark side, said that until recently our theories about
dark matter were driven by ideas about particle theory rather than
data. “Ultimately we learn that perhaps it has very little to do with
us at all,” Dr. Weiner said. “Who knows what we will find in the dark
sector?”
One of the most fascinating discoveries of our new century may be
imminent if the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva produces
nano-blackholes when it goes live again. According to the best current
physics, such nano blackholes could not be produced with the
energy levels the LHC can generate, but could only come into being if a
parallel universe were providing extra gravitational input. Versions of
multiverse theory suggest that there is at least one other universe
very close to our own, perhaps only a millimeter away. This makes it
possible that some of the effects, especially gravity, "leak through,"
which could be responsible for the production of dark energy and dark
matter that make up 96% of the universe.
String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we see as the Big Bang was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes.
A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward? In January, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll will release his much-anticipated debut book, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. SciFi buffs will grok out on his thesis that our perception of time is informed by entropy — the level of disorder in a system. The basic laws of physics work equally well forward or backward in time, yet we perceive time to move in one direction only—toward the future and that the movement from low to high entropy as the universe expands establishes the direction in which time flows. To account for it, we have to delve into the prehistory of the universe, to a time before the big bang. Our universe may be part of a much larger multiverse, which as a whole is time-symmetric.
In 2004 astronomers found an enormous hole in the southern hemisphere of the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen "dark matter." This was a startling finding, since accepted models of the early
universe say that the big bang created an initially uniform cosmic
landscape, when viewed on large scales. While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this discovery dwarfed them all. This "nothing" is an enormous hole in the cosmos that defies
standard cosmology and might just be the imprint of another universe
bumping against our own while some astronomers suggested the spot could be a supervoid, a remnant of an early phase transition in the universe.
That might sound like what happens when a poet reads a physics
textbook, but it's an actual theory put forward by Stephen
Hawking-grade scientists. Stephen Hawking, in fact, and Professor
Thomas Hertog of CERN, who came up with a unique answer to how the
universe began: "In every way imaginable."
In what is becoming to be one of the worst misuses of science since electronics ended up in Sammy the Singing Sea Bass, defenders of "Intelligent Design" increasingly abuse both words and the anthropic principle to "prove" the existence of God.
Does the universe repeat itself every trillion years? A new cosmological model appears to demonstrate that the universe can endlessly expand and contract, providing a rival to Big Bang theories and solving a thorny modern physics problem, according to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physicists. A new view that requires for a new take on our concept of time – one that has more in common with the “cyclic” views of time held by ancient thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci, than the Christian Calender and Bible-influenced belief in “linear” time now so deeply imbedded in modern western thinking.
String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul
Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the
Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the
cosmos we live in was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year
collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional
branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking
of gravity out of one of the universes.
In their view of the universe the complexities of an
inflating universe after a Big Bang are replaced by a universe that was
already large. flat, and uniform with dark energy as the effect of the
other universe constantly leaking gravity into our own and driving its
acceleration.
According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time
but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of
evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the
formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.
“Such stunning cosmic coincidences reveal so much about nature.”
~ Leonidas Moustakas, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The
Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical
alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the
other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by
the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly
behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string. The
foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away, the inner ring and
outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a
distance of 6 and approximately 11 billion light-years.
One
of the most fascinating discoveries of our new century may be imminent
if the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva produces nano-blackholes. According to the best current physics, such
nano blackholes could not be produced with the energy levels
the LHC can generate, but coud only come into being if a parallel
universe were providing extra gravitational input. Versions of
multiverse theory suggest that there is at least one other universe
very close to our own, perhaps only a millimeter away. This makes it
possible that some of the effects, especially gravity, "leak through,"
which could be responsible for the production of dark energy and dark
matter that make up 96% of the universe.
At a recent CalTech roundtable conference on the possible impact of the LHC on physics, Neal Weiner of
New York University, who is a proponent of the existence of forces as well
as particles on the dark side, said that until recently our theories about
dark matter were driven by ideas about particle theory rather than
data. “Ultimately we learn that perhaps it has very little to do with
us at all,” Dr. Weiner said. “Who knows what we will find in the dark
sector?”
One of the most fascinating discoveries of our new century may be
imminent if the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva produces
nano-blackholes when it goes live again. According to the best current
physics, such nano blackholes could not be produced with the
energy levels the LHC can generate, but could only come into being if a
parallel universe were providing extra gravitational input. Versions of
multiverse theory suggest that there is at least one other universe
very close to our own, perhaps only a millimeter away. This makes it
possible that some of the effects, especially gravity, "leak through,"
which could be responsible for the production of dark energy and dark
matter that make up 96% of the universe.
String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we see as the Big Bang was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes.
A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward? In January, Caltech physicist Sean Carroll will release his much-anticipated debut book, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. SciFi buffs will grok out on his thesis that our perception of time is informed by entropy — the level of disorder in a system. The basic laws of physics work equally well forward or backward in time, yet we perceive time to move in one direction only—toward the future and that the movement from low to high entropy as the universe expands establishes the direction in which time flows. To account for it, we have to delve into the prehistory of the universe, to a time before the big bang. Our universe may be part of a much larger multiverse, which as a whole is time-symmetric.
In 2004 astronomers found an enormous hole in the southern hemisphere of the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen "dark matter." This was a startling finding, since accepted models of the early
universe say that the big bang created an initially uniform cosmic
landscape, when viewed on large scales. While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this discovery dwarfed them all. This "nothing" is an enormous hole in the cosmos that defies
standard cosmology and might just be the imprint of another universe
bumping against our own while some astronomers suggested the spot could be a supervoid, a remnant of an early phase transition in the universe.
That might sound like what happens when a poet reads a physics
textbook, but it's an actual theory put forward by Stephen
Hawking-grade scientists. Stephen Hawking, in fact, and Professor
Thomas Hertog of CERN, who came up with a unique answer to how the
universe began: "In every way imaginable."
In what is becoming to be one of the worst misuses of science since electronics ended up in Sammy the Singing Sea Bass, defenders of "Intelligent Design" increasingly abuse both words and the anthropic principle to "prove" the existence of God.
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