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Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

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21–30 of 84 posts

Re: Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

#21

This kind of research is non-falsifiable and I think it's just a waste of these scientists' talents. You will hear never-ending theories of the Big Bang, black holes, and the end of the universe because all this research is non-falsifiable and just people playing with math and coming up with different ideas that humans find interesting, but will not affect your quality of life at all. Science has to be falsifiable or…

Why would the big bang and black holes be non-falsifiable? You can observe them.

Even "the end of the universe", just because something is in the future doesn't mean you can't make scientific predictions about it based in your understanding of physics.

Re: Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

#22

This kind of research is non-falsifiable and I think it's just a waste of these scientists' talents. You will hear never-ending theories of the Big Bang, black holes, and the end of the universe because all this research is non-falsifiable and just people playing with math and coming up with different ideas that humans find interesting, but will not affect your quality of life at all. Science has to be falsifiable or…

This kind of research is definitely falsifiable. If you read the article you'd see tons of graphs that are the result of actual direct measurement of phenomena. These measurements are used to rule out some of the theories, and conform to other theories. Astrophysicists make predictions and run experiments all the time. The same is true for black hole theories.

Re: Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

#25

This kind of research is non-falsifiable and I think it's just a waste of these scientists' talents. You will hear never-ending theories of the Big Bang, black holes, and the end of the universe because all this research is non-falsifiable and just people playing with math and coming up with different ideas that humans find interesting, but will not affect your quality of life at all. Science has to be falsifiable or…

With such general assertions, you really have to be careful not to end up looking like the one who is being taken in by faith. Science is not about quality of life, but about gaining knowledge. Not all scientific knowledge is based on falsifiability. Science does not float in an empty space but has a foundation that is not itself science.

Re: Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

#26
post #6

TL;DR: the Big Rip is likely not to be the fate of the Universe as dark energy term in lambda-CDM cosmology is not a constant but weakens as time moves forward. Seems like Heat Death or Big Crunch options are back on the menu!

Thanks. You'd think they'd end the article with a summary. Somewhere in that load of words they've managed to bury the new fate of the universe.

The article does end with a summary.

Re: Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

#29

Matter cools when universe expands. Where does that energy go to? I would expect that delta E = delta V (with some clear way to represent volume in Joules). Shouldn't dark energy density also fall?

> Matter cools when universe expands.

More precisely, the energy density of matter decreases as the universe expands.

> Where does that energy go to?

Stress-energy density is locally conserved; there is no energy being created or destroyed. In fact that local conservation of stress-energy density is what requires the energy density of matter (which in cosmology-speak means a perfect fluid with zero pressure) to decrease as the universe expands (as the cube of the scale factor).

> Shouldn't dark energy density also fall?

No, because dark energy, considered as a stress-energy density, includes negative pressure equal to minus the energy density, and the same local conservation of stress-energy density I referred to above requires that in this case, the energy density is constant in both space and time.

Note that the new findings described in the article amount to raising the possibility that what we thought was "dark energy", i.e., a cosmological constant with pressure exactly equal to minus the energy density (that is what w = -1, mentioned in the article, means), is in fact something else whose equation of state (relationship between pressure and energy density) can change over time, with pressure becoming less negative (w less negative than -1). If that is the case, the energy density would also be decreasing over time, though much more slowly than for ordinary matter.

Re: Physicists now question the fate of the Universe

#30
post #6

TL;DR: the Big Rip is likely not to be the fate of the Universe as dark energy term in lambda-CDM cosmology is not a constant but weakens as time moves forward. Seems like Heat Death or Big Crunch options are back on the menu!

I think your summary misses the mark. The Big Rip was not the most likely outcome before this new evidence. Heat Death has been the expectation/assumption.

TL;DR of TFA: New evidence shows that dark energy may be weakening over time instead of staying constant, which could lead to a Big Crunch. We're eagerly awaiting further evidence.

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