or maybe just we've misinterpreted reality more than we thought... Guess what, other models do not require expansion.
Thank you! It is mindblowing to see the scientific comunity fixating over theories that are more likely to be wrong than right.
The universe is expanding faster than expected
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Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is because information in your brain is constrained by physics. It takes tangible time for signals to travel between neurons. When you're young, you're small, and the distances are shorter. As you age, you grow in size, and the signal length grows also. Thus as you grow you literally think slower; though hopefully, more effectively (wisdom). Your perception of time changes accordingly.
What if the information in the universe is constrained by yet -unknown physics?
My favorite version of this is A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge.
Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#93Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#941.3 Billion stars? What percent of our galaxy is that? Does the coverage go to the other side?
This must be an incredible map.
Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#951.3 Billion stars? What percent of our galaxy is that? Does the coverage go to the other side? This must be an incredible map.
About 1%.
Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does it mean to not pass the great filter? Humanity or their successor stop existing?
There are multiple explanations for why the sky isnt lit up with radio and laser signals from advanced civilisation. The great filter is one explanation, that there are existential crises or threats that wipe out most civilisations or cause them to collapse to subsistence level. Nuclear war, biological weapons, ecological collapse, paper clip maximising AI, etc. I once ran a Traveller RPG exploration campaign where o…
For context, the examples you mentioned are cases of the great filter lying ahead of us. The more optimistic hope is that the great filter is behind us - things like abiogenesis or multicellular life being extremely unlikely to happen. "Great filter" is just the name for "a barrier that stops life from becoming a spacefaring civilization".
This explanation is also the reason why finding basic life (say, bacteria) in the Solar System would be a cause for worry - if life evolved independently twice in the same star system, it would imply abiogenesis isn't that unlikely - thus strongly suggesting the great filter is still ahead of us.
Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you here. A phrase that always echoes in my mind when discussing cosmology is "All models are wrong - some models are useful" The farther you venture from the verified useful section of a model (by which I mean - the farther you are from model predications that have been validated with observational evidence), the less you should trust it - ALL MODELS ARE WRONG! And for most sciences - this isn't a huge…
At what point does assumptions built upon assumptions approach being completely incorrect & useless?
The second you need to make a reliable predication based on it.
The good news (or bad depending on your take) is that we're nowhere close to being an advanced enough civilization to have any real stake in making predications about the future state of the universe other than "it will look basically the same as it does today", which we've conveniently used to position ourselves very accurately on the surface of the earth since the sextant and star charts.
Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#98A few years ago, a published article suggested an alternative to the universe expanding is increasing mass. Older objects increase their mass and therefore are red shifted. Why is this alternative plausible theory recieving such little attention? Edit: changed mass decay to increase in mass. I misremembered the theory.
I would love to hear someone talk about this actually as it has been my pet theory for the last 15 years since high school physics. My reasoning was p = mv. m drops (through various processes in a star emitting energi==mass) and since p is constant, v increases. Probably totally naive, but it is just a thought which has stuck around with me.
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Re: The universe is expanding faster than expected
#99I always get a feeling of existential dread when I read these kind of news.
Why? What exactly are you dreading? That our understanding of the universe and science involved might have some serious flaws? If so, won't we just adjust our understanding to something that matches the observations?