Theories - Time Travel, Parallel Dimensions, Etc.

[Blobbenstein]

Dark matter is actually made up of unimaginably huge numbers of teapots.

I did read an interesting idea that the dark matter was really a huge number of Dyson spheres. Probably not true, but a clever idea.


Has anyone here read Orbitsville?

 

[K-II]

Wouldn't a Dyson sphere that blocked all light coming from its star just 'look' like a black hole to us?

 

[Blobbenstein]

well, it wouldn't warp space as much as a black hole. It might just look like empty space.

 

[FortyTwo]

I don't think that really counts as transportation. More like making marks on a balloon and then inflating it. They're still in the same place on the balloon (or universe).

Is it even possible to cease to exist (as in, entirely, rather than being unobservable or changing to another form)?

In the case of the first, no, it wouldn't count as transportation, but you'd still be smooshed to a size where you wouldn't be capable of conscious thought, much less possessing organs, much less possessing organelles or cells or molecules or even atoms. You'd just be a fleck of energy and then you'd be gone.

As for the second, I was thinking that the Universe would snuff you out because it would be physically impossible to exist, but you bring up a valid point.

 

[K-II]

Maybe universes are like a cluster of soap bubbles, and they're just constantly bursting, then the parts fly out, meet other bits and condense until the pressure becomes too great and BOOM! But you can never escape yours because you can't move through it faster than it expands, so you never catch the edge. And even if you did, there's nothing between them, you'd just end up at the outer edge of another one.

There, now I have a theory. That we are all, in fact, soap.

 

[FortyTwo]

Maybe universes are like a cluster of soap bubbles, and they're just constantly bursting, then the parts fly out, meet other bits and condense until the pressure becomes too great and BOOM! But you can never escape yours because you can't move through it faster than it expands, so you never catch the edge. And even if you did, there's nothing between them, you'd just end up at the outer edge of another one.

That's actually a pretty widely-believed hypothesis.

 

[K-II]

Oh. I always thought there was supposed to have been two that collided or something, or that one of them just expands & contracts forever. But then my knowledge of physics comes from films.

 

[FortyTwo]

Oh. I always thought there was supposed to have been two that collided or something, or that one of them just expands & contracts forever. But then my knowledge of physics comes from films.

Whenever someone implies that time travel would work like it does in Doctor Who or Back to the Future I cringe and cry a little inside.

Both great things but not at all accurate.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I wonder if it is just our part of the Universe which is expanding. Maybe other parts are contracting.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I wonder if the universe is just trying to evenly distribute itself, so that parts that are too close to each other, move away from each other, and the parts that are too far apart, move towards each other, or at least, don't move away from each other quite so fast.

Maybe the expansion of the Universe could be just an entropy change.

 

[FortyTwo]

I wonder if the universe is just trying to evenly distribute itself, so that parts that are too close to each other, move away from each other, and the parts that are too far apart, move towards each other, or at least, don't move away from each other quite so fast.

Maybe the expansion of the Universe could be just an entropy change.

But it seems like we'd be observing at least a teeny bit of blue shift if this were the case.

 

[Blobbenstein]

depends how big the universe is. Maybe the blue-shift would be a long way away, or maybe it isn't blue-shift, but less of a red-shift.

 

[Blobbenstein]

maybe the universe is inclined to be a 3-sphere(like a rubber ball 'wants' to be a sphere) but it is more potato shaped, so that some parts will expand, and some parts collapse.

 

[FortyTwo]

Maybe the Universe is a giant duck.

 

[Blobbenstein]

yea, God threw the book at us, and we ducked.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I think the shape and curvature of the universe, and the existence of matter are linked.

matter curves space, and curved space makes matter

so if the universe is a 3-sphere(or wants to be, but is more potato shaped) then maybe some parts have less curvature per matter(in the local area) and so the curvature changes and hence the matter moves, or redistributes as well.

If warpage/curvature is where the matter is, or creates matter, then watch how the warpage changes to even out, and become more spread out....perhaps the matter would appear to move apart.

Anyway, my hypothesis is that: curvature creates, or is equal to matter, and that the system is topologically a 3-sphere(or some such closed system) that is a bit uneven(potato like) and that the universe wants to be even.

There.

 

[nog]

Aren't dark matter/energy just named that because we can't directly see them?

Loosely, but it gets complicated pretty quick. Not only do we not see dark matter, it doesn't interact with other matter in similar ways to what we are used to so it's assumed that it has to be non-baryonic (at least some of it).

It's inferred using mass calculations on galaxy rotations, gravitational lensing and what not. It's also useful to band-aid the Big Bang Model. It's useful because it's not clear what it is, so we can make assumptions with vague notions and fudge factors and make calculations come out to be similar to what we observe today.

Dark energy is more complicated to me, mostly because I'm not as versed with that subject.

 

[nog]

We only really call it a Bang because it expanded outward. That's proven fact, even if the exact origin of the Universe is still disputed.

What? Some one was mocking the concept and labeled it as a 'Big Bang.' That's how it got it's name. However it's not really accurate to say that anything is expanding "outward." Space is simply expanding (although you'd have the same effect if time was contracting, but I don't hear many people talk about that).

If you had such a time machine, by the way, you'd have to determine the exact spot that the Big Bang took place and travel there, because if you go anywhere else you'd simply cease to exist because nothing would exist outside of the area that the Universe was.

That's a common misconception about the Big Bang. It happened everywhere (according to the model). The entire universe was a single point. It didn't expand outward into anything. This explains why the CMB radiation can be viewed from any direction in the sky.

Again, I don't really agree with the interpretation of the Big Bang model. I think there are other explanations that I don't think are satisfactorily answered.

 

[FortyTwo]

What? Some one was mocking the concept and labeled it as a 'Big Bang.' That's how it got it's name. However it's not really accurate to say that anything is expanding "outward." Space is simply expanding (although you'd have the same effect if time was contracting, but I don't hear many people talk about that).

Hm, just looked it up and you're right about the origin of the name. I've never heard that before. Nice bit of trivia there. Good to know.

Yeah, "outward" is a misnomer in this case, because there wasn't really an outward. Everything in existence is everything in existence no matter how you look at it.

It's a firm belief of mine that "time" as we know it doesn't exist. There's just a bunch of matter and a bunch of other stuff and it goes about its business continuously. That's a grossly unscientific sentence right there, but why complicate it?

If backward time travel was proven to be in the realm of possibility then I'd reconsider. That's where the self-consistency principle comes in. If time travel (aside from the already-discussed time dilation) can't happen, then there's no reason to worry about a temporally consistent Universe because it would just exist in one state and change only as "time" progressed.

That's a common misconception about the Big Bang. It happened everywhere (according to the model). The entire universe was a single point. It didn't expand outward into anything. This explains why the CMB radiation can be viewed from any direction in the sky.

See above. We only think of it as "outward" because we can't fathom the idea that there could simply be nothing outside of it.

Again, I don't really agree with the interpretation of the Big Bang model. I think there are other explanations that I don't think are satisfactorily answered.

I'm not sure what you mean by the bolded part. It seems you were trying to say that the explanation you were previously referring to (the traditional interpretation of the Big Bang model) doesn't satisfactorily answer certain questions about the Universe. Either that, or that there are other explanations which make more sense? For some reason I had difficulty interpreting that sentence, sorry.

As for the first, do you mean to say you don't believe that everything in existence once occupied a much, much, much smaller region than it does today (I mean this in the loosest terms because technically space is space and it's only going to occupy something that's actually in existence, i.e. the Universe), and that you don't believe that it began expanding (NOT outward ) at some point?

 

[Blobbenstein]