Skeptic Friends Network

Username:
Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?
Home | Forums | Active Topics | Active Polls | Register | FAQ | Contact Us  
  Connect: Chat | SFN Messenger | Buddy List | Members
Personalize: Profile | My Page | Forum Bookmarks  
 All Forums
 Our Skeptic Forums
 Astronomy
 Dark Flow - Out there Beyond the Horizon
 New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly Bookmark this Topic BookMark Topic
Previous Page | Next Page
Author Previous Topic Topic Next Topic
Page: of 4

Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 10/01/2008 :  22:04:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by bngbuck

Why does Beradilli say, "the universe underwent a brief period that defied current physical laws."

1. What current physical laws were defied?
You should ask Beradilli, because I'm not aware of any. The inflationary period would appear to violate the law that matter can't move at or faster than c, but the matter wasn't actually moving, spacetime itself was expanding at a much-larger rate than we observe now.
2. Is it possible to explain how space expands and what it expands into? Can you put it into words?
The ant-and-balloon analogy is used a lot because it's a very good analogy. If you accept it, then what spacetime is expanding into is neither the ant (something within the universe) nor the balloon (spacetime itself), and we may never know what is "outside" the universe ("outside" in quotes because the universe is spacetime and everything in it, and prepositions without a proper referent often don't have any meaning, sort of like "I found my keys under yesterday").

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
Go to Top of Page

BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  04:51:33   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Check out Phillip K Dick's 'The Indefagatable Frog', much more interesting than the Ant and the ballon. Both are somewhat based on Zeno's paradoxs, Achilles and the Tortoise and the Dichotomy Paradox.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
Go to Top of Page

chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  04:57:11   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Dave W.

Depends on how much FTL the drive can go.

If I remember the old Star Trek Technical Manual, Warp 9 was equal to 729 c. Anything more than 10.2 trillion lightyears away would remain unreachable at that speed.
I'm thinking worm holes. Space must be so convoluted in all those extra dimensions that a shortcut could be punched through to the invisble side of the universe and probably would only take a few minutes to traverse.

-Chaloobi

Go to Top of Page

Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  06:43:24   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
First (to get these constants out of the way), a parsec is 3.26156 light-years. A light-year is 9,460,730,472,580.8 km. The Hubble Constant, in km/s/Mpc, is 70.1 (or thereabouts), so in Mpc/s/Mpc, H is 2.272×10-18. The speed of light is 299,792.458 km/s, so SoL is 9.716×10-15 Mpc/s.
Originally posted by Ricky

b(t): distance of the "beam" of light to Earth, with time t in seconds, expressed in mega parsecs.

...

b(t) = SoL*H + (D - SoL*H)e^(Ht)
Okay, in chat last night I pointed out that if the units don't match up (and they don't in the D-SoL*H term), then something is wrong. That something is this:

b(0) is SoL*H + (D - SoL*H), or D, as it should be.
b(1) is always larger than b(0), because eH×1 is 1.000000000000000002272, and it only goes up from there.

In reality, b(1) should definitely be smaller than D when D is less than SoL/H (4,276.64 Mpc), because the two objects will be receeding at less than SoL. In fact, if D is 1 Mpc, then the speed of light is 4,276.64 times larger than the speed of expansion (after one second, a photon will have gone 299,792.458 km, but space will only have expanded by 70 km). But the b(t) equation has light always getting farther and farther from Earth, never closer.

(Note that SoL*H is 2.207×10-32, and Windows' calculator craps out on doing 1-SoL*H, or I'd present more numbers here.)

(D*H) is the instanateous rate of expansion at t=0, so (D*H)/SoL relates the speed of light to the rate of expansion. (1-((D*H)/SoL) is then how much of a photon's travel during the first second gets "applied" to its travel towards Earth, so SoL(1-((D*H)/SoL), or SoL-D*H... no, that won't work, either. It assumes that all of the expansion is "behind" the photon, but that distance is actually proportional to D...

Crap.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
Go to Top of Page

Simon
SFN Regular

USA
1992 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  08:52:29   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Simon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
[The ant-and-balloon analogy is used a lot



You mean I am not the genius vulgarizer I thought I was?

Aaaaaw...

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996
Go to Top of Page

chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  09:08:06   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Simon

[The ant-and-balloon analogy is used a lot



You mean I am not the genius vulgarizer I thought I was?

Aaaaaw...
There really isn't anything new anymore. Most everything's been thought of and expressed by somebody at some point.

-Chaloobi

Go to Top of Page

Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  09:48:33   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Oh for fuck's sake. I couldn't take a god damn simple integral... even though I did it 5 times.

New equation:

b(t) = SoL/H + (D - SoL/H)e^(Ht)

I'm going to go wallow in self pity for a while...

Edit: And notice that the derivative is indeed negative only when D < SoL/H, as expected.

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
Edited by - Ricky on 10/02/2008 10:10:37
Go to Top of Page

Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  12:10:55   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Ricky

Oh for fuck's sake. I couldn't take a god damn simple integral... even though I did it 5 times.

New equation:

b(t) = SoL/H + (D - SoL/H)e^(Ht)
So what you're saying is that the distance between the photon and Earth is equal to...
The distance between A and B
minus
The radius of the observable universe
multiplied by
The expansion factor for the universe at time t
plus
The radius of the observable universe
And b(t) also equals o(t) + (SoL/H)(1-eHt) if I did the algebra correctly.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
Go to Top of Page

Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  14:41:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message  Reply with Quote
And b(t) also equals o(t) + (SoL/H)(1-eHt) if I did the algebra correctly.


That is true, but I don't see how you get the top part. What are A and B?

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
Edited by - Ricky on 10/02/2008 14:41:46
Go to Top of Page

Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  15:33:17   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Here, Ricky:
Originally posted by Ricky

New equation:

b(t) = SoL/H + (D - SoL/H)e^(Ht)
So what you're saying is that the distance between the photon and Earth is equal to...
The distance between A and B (D)
minus
The radius of the observable universe (SoL/H)
multiplied by
The expansion factor for the universe at time t (eHt)
plus
The radius of the observable universe (SoL/H)
Rather than earth and some other object, I've been thinking of D as the distance between points A and B (at t=0).

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
Go to Top of Page

bngbuck
SFN Addict

USA
2437 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  16:33:23   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send bngbuck a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Dave.....

In your answer to my question, you state,
....but the matter wasn't actually moving, spacetime itself was expanding at a much-larger rate than we observe now.
Beradilli says,
.....during this time, called inflation, space itself expanded at a rate much, much faster than the speed of light. As a result, some of the matter formed with the big bang was pulled more than 13.7 billion light-years away.....
I will fully admit beforehand to both ignorance and stupidity, so comments on those unfortunate truths won't be necessary; but why does his statement sound like - matter was moved at a speed greater than the speed of light - a situation we all know is an impossibility?

I'm sure the answer is there right in front of my admittedly feeble eyes, but I need someone to point it out to me, hopefully gently!

If it is, in fact, merely another misstaken and incorrect statement by Beradilli, do you feel he has grossly misquoted the
cosmologists
he refers to, and the whole article may be in some question because of this particular journalist's misstatements?
Go to Top of Page

Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26022 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  17:47:19   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Phil Berardelli may be an excellent science writer, but he's writing for a largely lay audience, he's probably got a word limit, and probably an editor. But most importantly, he's going to use shorthand and metaphors because it is not his intent to write a precisely worded cosmology textbook into every article.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
Go to Top of Page

bngbuck
SFN Addict

USA
2437 Posts

Posted - 10/02/2008 :  21:36:10   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send bngbuck a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Dave.....

I got you! In other words, take the article metaphorically!
Go to Top of Page

BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 10/03/2008 :  04:34:52   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Matter is like surfers paddling as fast as they can, their speed is limited unless they ride the wave so to speak.


Or better, matter is like test driving cars on either side of the Atlantic, when judging speed you don't even notice that the continents are being pushed apart. In space the continents are being pushed apart at blazing speeds.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
Go to Top of Page

bngbuck
SFN Addict

USA
2437 Posts

Posted - 10/03/2008 :  06:02:29   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send bngbuck a Private Message  Reply with Quote
BPS and great dane 80 (if you're "lurking").....

Wiki defines space thus...
Space is the extent within which matter is physically extended and objects and events have positions relative to one another[1]. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the universe although disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework.
What is your understanding of the meaning of the word "space", as used in the context of particle physics, and/or astrophysics?
Go to Top of Page
Page: of 4 Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  
Previous Page | Next Page
 New Topic  Reply to Topic
 Printer Friendly Bookmark this Topic BookMark Topic
Jump To:

The mission of the Skeptic Friends Network is to promote skepticism, critical thinking, science and logic as the best methods for evaluating all claims of fact, and we invite active participation by our members to create a skeptical community with a wide variety of viewpoints and expertise.


Home | Skeptic Forums | Skeptic Summary | The Kil Report | Creation/Evolution | Rationally Speaking | Skeptillaneous | About Skepticism | Fan Mail | Claims List | Calendar & Events | Skeptic Links | Book Reviews | Gift Shop | SFN on Facebook | Staff | Contact Us

Skeptic Friends Network
© 2008 Skeptic Friends Network Go To Top Of Page
This page was generated in 0.11 seconds.
Powered by @tomic Studio
Snitz Forums 2000