lol!
I guess the scary tag is appropriate.. just.. seem a bit far fetched :P

Obviously we'll need Heisenberg compensators, duh.

What? How?

Explanation from someone smarts plz?

I think the basic gist is, "Nobody knows what dark energy is. Ergo, we can make up whatever crap we want and the public will buy it." In actuality, the interview was probably under the guise of the reporter asking for ideas for his new sci fi novel.

Go Team Venture!

The problem with the theory of Universal expansion is that, at a point, the Universe will begin to contract again. The contraction will accelerate at a much greater rate, however, than the expansion did, and it will accelerate. Ultimately, the acceleration curve will cause a temporal curvature at the quantum level, causing it to begin regressing in time. When that happens, all life in the cosmos will eventually cease to have ever exis

Unless we have to hit planets with other planets to find out where they are, quantum physics doesn't apply. Forcefully smacking atoms with other atoms does not equal observation.

/at least that's my understanding.

Boritom: The problem with the theory of Universal expansion is that, at a point, the Universe will begin to contract again. The contraction will accelerate at a much greater rate, however, than the expansion did, and it will accelerate. Ultimately, the acceleration curve will cause a temporal curvature at the quantum level, causing it to begin regressing in time. When that happens, all life in the cosmos will eventually cease to have ever exis

Based on what evidence ?
The latest data shows the universal expansion to be accelerating.
\I say that after reading it off the internet somewhere so don't quote me.

Quit looking at the sky! You're resetting the stars!

No, the universe doesn't work that way. It would have been doomed long before humanity climbed down out of the trees then.

EVERYBODY PANIC!

I like the last line:
"The fact that we are still here means this can't have happened yet.''



/O'rly?

Ok not to sound like a nutcase, but wouldn't it also be logical to assume that there's millions of other intelligent races out there also observing the same bullshiat we are observing, so billions or trillions or some other uncomprehensible number of observations had already been made before we even stepped out of the jungle.

right?

Where are the quantum lolcats?

Mr Krauss and colleague James Dent Arthur Dent pointed to measurements of light from supernovae in 1998 that provided the first evidence of dark energy.

Sounds like something you would read out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

Hazard91AWD: Ok not to sound like a nutcase, but wouldn't it also be logical to assume that there's millions of other intelligent races out there also observing the same bullshiat we are observing, so billions or trillions or some other uncomprehensible number of observations had already been made before we even stepped out of the jungle.

right?

Right. But even if there isn't other intelligent life elsewhere there was still working eyeballs here.

These scientists are a lot like this pot:

FTFA: The good news is: the longer the universe survives, the better the chance that it will mature into a stable state. We are just beyond the crucial switching point, Mr Krauss believed.

How could they know that? Oh he doesn't. He's conjecturing.

The bad news is: the quantum effect, a truly weird aspect of physics that says whenever we observe or measure something, we reset its clock.

Uh ... I doubt this.

I'll file this under 'a scientist needed to publish something quickly and get his name out there'.

Roman Fyseek: The only physics joke I know.

Heisenberg gets pulled over.

The cop walks up and asks, "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg said, "No. But, I know *exactly* where I am."

OK I laughed...damn.

NewportBarGuy: Con someone break that down into the language of the stupid that I might understand?

The dark matter, she's a shy creature. Since the big bang she's been putting on some pounds. She was getting to an age where she was starting not to care because no one was bothering to look at her, but all of a sudden two nosy scientists saw her bulge and all her years of mental health went out the window. Now she's unstable and possibly gonna give herself a lethal diarrheal/enema/ipecac in order to quickly drop the pounds.

Oh! This is from New Scientist. Now I understand.

New Scientist is to science as astrology is to astronomy.

/ just sayin'

Handsome B. Wonderful: Hazard91AWD: Ok not to sound like a nutcase, but wouldn't it also be logical to assume that there's millions of other intelligent races out there also observing the same bullshiat we are observing, so billions or trillions or some other uncomprehensible number of observations had already been made before we even stepped out of the jungle.

right?

Right. But even if there isn't other intelligent life elsewhere there was still working eyeballs here.

Yeah, that's right. However, we are all missing one important point. Everything that we ever experence, that we ever see, is within the universe. So, by simply observing things around us, like your computer screen, we are "resetting the clock". So, scientists didn't doom the universe; the existance of life did.

/observing your computer screen is observing the universe
//Fark shows up on my computer screen
///Fark is dooming the universe!!!

Born2late: Unless we have to hit planets with other planets to find out where they are, quantum physics doesn't apply. Forcefully smacking atoms with other atoms does not equal observation.

/at least that's my understanding.

'Observation' was a poorly-chosen word back in the Copenhagen research days. Think 'interaction' instead. The only way to sense anything on the quantum level is to hit it with something else, be it a photon or a magnetic field or another particle.

If quadrillions of photons didn't already bounce off other planets for us to receive and observe, we would indeed need to bounce something off them to know they were there.

POPPYCOCK and BALDERDAshiathe universe does not care that we look at it.
But what is wierd is that you can apply this theory to britney and linsay, the more we look at them, the more they decay.

These guys are fear-mongering sensationalist dumbasses. That is all.

I just came in to say that I studied physics at Case Western and Lawrence Krauss is a total mediawhoring douchebag. Take nothing that he says seriously.

"The fact that we are still here means this can't have happened yet."

Checked my briefs...

/I feel better..

This is a total misapplication of the quantum effect but not remotely surprising in a media source.

Also, Krauss seems to be confusing the quantum level (mind-bogglingly small) and the cosmic level (mind boggling big). Easy to confuse, I know. You can't just change between the two and think the physics that works in one context still works in the other.

Of course, this could just be some reporter idiotically misinterpreting something some other idiot said.

Don't look at me! I'm hideous1

Raptor Jesus: Yeah, that's right. However, we are all missing one important point. Everything that we ever experence, that we ever see, is within the universe.

You forgot to add "when we're sober" after "Everything that we ever experience, that we ever see".

Boobies!

Then stop looking at it!

I hope this is a case of the reporter not understanding what he's told. Or alternatively, a case of just wanting to make a news splash. If the scientist really believes that...

There just aren't words.

In fact, the poor old cosmos is in a rather delicate state, they say.

Yeah, you burn too much fossil fuels and Cosmos Warming will kill us all. Aliens too.

The question is, am I going to outlive the universe? No? I don't give a fark, then.

In other news, a quantum body only "changed characteristics" when observed, if you are throwing photons (or whatever) at it. If you are simply taking the photons it has already emmitted, and studying those, you're not going to invoke that little quantum physicsy effect thingy.

/failed physicist
//doh

Not only does measuring a phenomenon reset its clock, but also will change the results. I plan to stare into the night sky until I'm married to Jessica Alba.

My dad posed a question to me one time relating the universe, the Big Bang, and time progression.

It was basically something along the lines of the "The universe will eventually stop expanding, then start falling in on itself and the Big Bang will repeat. What if time starts going backwards when the universe starts to collapse? That means that we get to live twice, but the second time it will in reverse."

Of course, dad smoked a lotta weed then. But to a six year old with an active imagination, it was a perfectly plausible scenario.

Silly humans and their CONCEPT of "time" and "measurements". Merely non-tangible TOOLS used to complicate our lives.

Speaking of, from wiki:

International Atomic Time (TAI, from the French name Temps Atomique International) is a high-precision atomic time standard that tracks proper time on Earth's geoid. It is the principal realisation of Terrestrial Time, and the basis for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) which is used for civil timekeeping all over the Earth's surface. As of 2007 TAI is exactly 33 seconds ahead of UTC: 10 seconds' initial difference at the start of 1972, plus 23 leap seconds in UTC since 1972.

Time travel will never be possible and is a silly idea. What happens when you go back from Julian to Gregorian dates? Islamic calendars? Daylight Savings?

You know who else explains things away with great big unknowns that can't be proven or disproven?

FTA: Mr Krauss and colleague James Dent pointed to measurements of light from supernovae in 1998 that provided the first evidence of dark energy.

These measurements might have reset the decay clock of the "false vacuum'' back to zero, back before the switching point and to a time when the risk of catastrophic decay was greater than now, said Mr Dent and Mr Krauss.

I thought in quantum mechanics the act of observation wasn't just somebody doing an experiment but the quantum thing interacting with something else, so whether or not someone is watching is immaterial.

Was that from National Enquirer? because that was officially the stupidest pseudo-science I have read all year.

Aarontology: Awesome. That time around we all get to end as an orgasm!

George Carlin does a routine on this...funny stuff.

Nice... Now we've got 'scientific evidence' that we should go back to wishful thinking instead of examining the universe and working out the real structure. Did the fundamentalist Biblicanians come up with this? Or was it the Weeping Angels?

It shouldn't doom anything to look at the universe. If we have some kind of entropy overload we can always displace the excess entropy into a Charged Vacuum Emboitement. Can't we?

Or maybe we should just go on building telescopes but keep our eyes closed.

/I'm not certain I know quantum theory
//Mind the gap

Whoa, whoa. Let's leave Heisenberg out of this. They were just looking. Observers, like.

I'd also like to point out that this is a load of horse crap.

When we measure things here on earth, we watch how sensitive instruments are affected by the phenomena, then write it down the results. This is no different from how other celestial bodies are affected by the same phenomena; the junk in other galaxies simply doesn't have anything to write down the effects with.

In fact it just occured to me that the only way that cosmologists infer the existence of dark phenomena is through their effect on other celestial bodies. They look at energy reflecting off of other stuff in the universe, which travels for millions of years before hitting other stuff in observatories here on earth. Basically, the "measurements" took place long before the solar system was even formed, and looking at the reflected energy now doesn't have a damn thing to do with the chance of a potential vacuum state collapse or any other fearmongering bullshiat.

Looking at it resets it? Wish that'd been as true in high school as they say it is in quantum physics.

/Pack your towels, gentlemen.

This About That 2007-11-21 07:01:31 PM
What is scary is that apparently sober scientists are able to convince themselves that the universe gives a sh*t what people do.""

// They miss God...
anyhoo, can not blame Him for the doomsday Eh?

the Shortening

It's only a Gnab Gib.

Interesting. Observation has it's way of dooming things.



/not the first one to mention it
//just wanted to post the picture

The way I read it, we'll keep 'resetting the clock' every time we look, so if we keep looking at it we'll stay alive. So basically, the universe really is all about advertising. This explains a lot. Either that, or I'm tired and just a wee bit tipsy.

Grotesk ::"Nice... Now we've got 'scientific evidence' that we should go back to wishful thinking instead of examining the universe and working out the real structure. Did the fundamentalist Biblicanians come up with this? Or was it the Weeping Angels?"

// there are things that scientists are afrid to tell us...

Tempermental Angel/short fuze

BTW, time won't run backwards when the universe collapses. If the collapse is inevitable, it will already be happening. Like when you're running a blender and the force of the blades pushes the liquid out to the edge of the jar, where it rolls under and back towards the blades. If you think of time as being the force of the vortex pushing out and the result of that force meeting the expansion limit which is the edge of the universe is the return force on the other side, then time is already rushing back to the Big Crunch but it's on the other side so we don't notice it. ...But when the giant rubber spatula shows up to scrape down the edge of the universe, it'll all become terribly, horribly clear.

Say, I have an idea... A flash mob can gather when Krauss and Dent are presenting their theory somewhere... Hundreds of people, who'll just... stare at them.

/If you find yourself in a universe where time runs backward, hold off going to the bathroom until you're back home. Red Dwarf taught me that.

Seeing things like that...it just makes me die a bit inside...

/engineer...

Do you know that it's legal to grow poppies, as long as you don't know that opium is made from it? Ones you acquire the knowledge, it becomes illegal. It's true, at lest in US.
Just saying

Is the Asinine tag taking the holiday off?

Looking at the universe is hastening its demise?

Sorry, folks, but I'm:







Where'd these "scientists" get their degrees? Out of a Cracker Jack box?

How utterly asinine.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Too much cosmic up-skirt might be a bad idea?

Grendle's Skirts

L. Krauss, the crank in question via wikipedia: He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek.

I think he worked shmaybe a little too much on that book.

Sometimes even very smart scientists need a good whack upside the head to "reset their clock".

AS a strict Heisenbergist all I can say is,

DUH.

or not.

I've never been more confused than I am right now.

The energy shift from the decay would destroy everything in the universe, "wiping the slate clean", says Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

The guy's from Cleveland. How's he going to know the difference?

/CWRU grad, so I can tell these jokes.

Attack of the human God Complex.

We want so hard to believe we have a major affect on the earth, and now universe. You are specs of dirt, figuratively, and eventually literally. As soon as you accept this fact, everything seems so much more precious. AND you stop annoying the people around you with silly causes like "save the planet!" and "stop global warming!".

And yes, I want my decendants to live in a world like "Waterworld". It might toughen them up a bit.

FTA::The report says the claim is contested by other astrophysicists and adds reassuringly: "The fact that we are still here means this can't have happened yet.''

// its remarkable the depth of knowledge offered to the public..

I came to read the comments, but by observing them, I reset them. So I have no idea what you all said so far.

Mouser The guy's from Cleveland. How's he going to know the difference?

Because it will be clean.

Well, the reporter HOPEFULLY completely misunderstood what they were talking about ... but then again, Krauss is a 100% certified attention whore - do a search for him on amazon. He's big into sensationalizing science for the sake of selling books.

Also, a certifiable douchebag. Finding new ways to fark with him / piss him off is practically a tradition among Case Western physics students.

/PBF always has something relevant

"The fact that we are still here means this can't have happened yet.''

Useless. Article.

Miss Heisenberg will see you now.

No problem, we have more.

BorisSimon: Do you know that it's legal to grow poppies, as long as you don't know that opium is made from it? Ones you acquire the knowledge, it becomes illegal. It's true, at lest in US.
Just saying

well thanks a lot! There goes my crop of poppies I grow purely to supply World War II veterans with delicious delicious poppies

poppies, poppies...getting sleepy, flying monkeys...

Durendal: Oh, baloney. Observation causing problems happens on the quantum level, not by simply pointing a telescope at a supernova and catching light that would have simply bounced off the earth anyway. Either the article is trying to drum up readers or the so-called scientist is trying to drum up a name.

THIS!! Seriously, it's full of so many inconsistencies in the field of quantum physics that it's just not funny. The "scientist" seems to think that an entire universe is in a state of superposition and that's just not gonna happen.

Boritom The problem with the theory of Universal expansion is that, at a point, the Universe will begin to contract again. The contraction will accelerate at a much greater rate, however, than the expansion did, and it will accelerate. Ultimately, the acceleration curve will cause a temporal curvature at the quantum level, causing it to begin regressing in time. When that happens, all life in the cosmos will eventually cease to have ever exis

That's incorrect in a number of ways. First off, the shape of the universe is what determines how it will end. There are 3 potential shapes, a sphere, a flat universe, or a hyperbole.

If the universe is a sphere, then yes, it eventually reaches a point where it no longer continue expanding and begins to contract. However, this doesn't cause the universe to regress in time, I've never heard of that and I can't find any sources to support it. It simply collapses the universe down to one singularity, as in the Big Bang, and that's that.

If the universe is flat or a hyperbole, it continues to expand until the universe freezes over due to entropy and eventually is torn apart it's continued expansion.

There are also other hypothesis, including the one in the article, although changing it by measuring seems to be that guy's misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

And of course, the generic wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

This is stupid.

FTFA
The novel idea is being aired by two US physicists

I rest my case.

For one thing, cosmologists cosmetologists have discovered that the Universe is their customers' fat asses are still expanding.

TheCommunistCow: There are 3 potential shapes, a sphere, a flat universe, or a hyperbole.


Out of the mouths of physists! Comedy GOLD!
//I think you mean Hyperbola

ehrichweiss: Durendal: Oh, baloney. Observation causing problems happens on the quantum level, not by simply pointing a telescope at a supernova and catching light that would have simply bounced off the earth anyway. Either the article is trying to drum up readers or the so-called scientist is trying to drum up a name.

THIS!! Seriously, it's full of so many inconsistencies in the field of quantum physics that it's just not funny. The "scientist" seems to think that an entire universe is in a state of superposition and that's just not gonna happen.

This is what quantum theory says. before observation all things simple exist as a wave of possibilities. You can't just discount this theory, nearly all of modern physics relies on it. Whether or not it is right, it is damn near the best we got.

/stfu until you think of something better

TheCommunistCow: There are 3 potential shapes, a sphere, a flat universe, or a hyperbole""

//WIN

Your prize

Shawn Spencer: /Pack your towels, gentlemen.

Got mine...



/Picture pretty much says it all...

What?
No Professor Farnsworth references?

**************

So, if I built a quantum-effect based Clapper^tm I could turn lights on and off by looking at them?

The scientists went on to add "Man, this is some killer shiat. We need to score more of this."

Smokalotapotamus: I rest my case.

apparently you're not aware of the standing of American physicists.

Ed Grubermann: ham-tomato: This is what quantum theory says. before observation all things simple exist as a wave of possibilities. You can't just discount this theory, nearly all of modern physics relies on it. Whether or not it is right, it is damn near the best we got.

That's nice and all, but it's bullshiat. Things exist or do not exist regardless of whether or not we observe them. Galaxies do not just collapse from probability waves into real objects just because we happen to look in that direction of the sky. The only thing that changes (at the larger than quantum level) when we observe something is our knowledge of that thing.

The so-called probability wave is our ignorance of the state of whatever we have not yet observed.

I am inclined to agree, but your conjecture is unverifiable. There is no way to know what unobserved objects look like. Maybe the universe is like my nephew, making silly faces at me whenever I look away.

Ed Grubermann: Things exist or do not exist regardless of whether or not we observe them

What they exist as can not be stated. Just do the twin slit experiment with electrons and an electron counter on one of the slits and see what happens.

I worked in the CWRU department for a few years and Krauss was always a bit of a media hound. I think this is more of a publicity stunt - especially since they didn't cite an actual peer-reviewed paper that Krauss and (Mr. not Dr.) Dent wrote.

On the other hand, I applaud Krauss for his constant efforts to keep Physics in the popular media, etc...

Krauss always claimed to be one of the first people to come up with the idea of dark energy, but as far as I can tell it was Michael Turner's idea a year or two before him...

/has a PhD
//didn't follow the article 'cause it was probably written by a reporter who didn't understand for the New Scientist article
///Krauss is really smart (he's collaborated with Stephen Hawking), and is smarter than me
////still don't think he's right
//is baking pies...mmmm

About "The universe has no beginning and no end and no center and is endless." thing I kept hearing in school -I've always wondered, if you cannot possibly measure the universe, how do you we know it is endless, etc,?

Are we just guessing?

If you're reading this right now, you have just shortened the lifespan of the universe. Congratulations.

Physics is a Visionary Skill

BoulderFarker: On the other hand, I applaud Krauss for his constant efforts to keep Physics in the popular media, etc...

And for his good books, not heavy duty physics, but damn The Physics of Star Trek is a fun read.

By request...


and of course

I bet if people looked in the mirror more often....

Reader's Digest version: We're all farked...

Physics Majoris

toraque: I'm up for bubble fever!

Damn It! I was going to pull out that Greg Egan book too. Great read.

The universe would be gone if it wasn't for al gore and his timely creation of observational offsets.

About "The universe has no beginning and no end and no center and is endless." thing I kept hearing in school -I've always wondered, if you cannot possibly measure the universe, how do you we know it is endless, etc,?

Are we just guessing?""

// actually Plato & contemps answered that question quite handily, and the description is still good science

and we keep him rollin...

Quick! Shoot yor eyez out before you destroy zee yuniverse!!
Ya, I know, it iz nice to look at .. BUT SCHTOP LOOKING AT IT!!

JSTACAT: I bet if people looked in the mirror more often....

I'll need that cupcake's phone number (unless, of course, its like a lady-dude or somethi-You know what? Screw it. I'm already committed to the project.) I'll need that strumpet's phone number.

Big whoop.

How does dark matter (etc) know we are looking at it ?

This sounds a lot like magic.

if the universe could be measured, it wouldn't be 'The Universe'
therefore it is infinite, if u can not measure it.
as the old philosophers reasoned, it is the Finite which is the illusion.

By reading my comment you change what I have written.

that's not how quantum mechanics works.

ham-tomato

He's not saying QM is wrong, what he's saying is that the photons don't care whether they're hitting a rock or the telescope's mirror.

From a QM point of view, they don't. Their wave function collapses either way.

So.... What if this "Dark Matter" scientist speak of are like the air of the universe and cause resistance of things to move. If the universe was to keep expanding wouldn't it be probable that these particles have more room to move and since they would be less dense it would cause less resistance allowing expansion to excelerate.

Maybe everything will turn to a gas state since there is less pressure holding things together.

jayessell:
So, if I built a quantum-effect based Clappertm I could turn lights on and off by looking at them?

Unfortunately, no. You could not observe the lights when they were off, and thus would have no way to turn them back on at night.

NoobieDoobieDo 2007-11-21 10:48:53 PM
Big whoop.

How does dark matter (etc) know we are looking at it ?

This sounds a lot like magic.""

// because it only exists when you are looking for it


\\just wait till we find out that we created black holes by describing them, looking for, and seeing

// thats the part scientists don't like talking about...

JSTACAT: if the universe could be measured, it wouldn't be 'The Universe'
therefore it is infinite, if u can not measure it.
as the old philosophers reasoned, it is the Finite which is the illusion.

So the universe is endless due to the fact that we are too simple to measure it, and we are too simple to measure it because it endless?

Sounds more like philosophy to me than any kind of hard science.

bestsportnascar :: 2007-11-21 10:55:15 PM
So.... What if this "Dark Matter" scientist speak of are like the air of the universe and cause resistance of things to move. If the universe was to keep expanding wouldn't it be probable that these particles have more room to move and since they would be less dense it would cause less resistance allowing expansion to excelerate.

Maybe everything will turn to a gas state since there is less pressure holding things together""

// interesting.. many years ago space was said to be full of 'Ether'
a type of magnetic fluid, i think they called it.
the description is matching up with new discoveries..
Dark Matter = Ether
we cant see it because its Everywhere, evenly

\\ according to my educated guess

JSTACAT: NoobieDoobieDo 2007-11-21 10:48:53 PM
Big whoop.

How does dark matter (etc) know we are looking at it ?

This sounds a lot like magic.""

// because it only exists when you are looking for it


\\just wait till we find out that we created black holes by describing them, looking for, and seeing

// thats the part scientists don't like talking about...



So we live in a fictional universe since we have to think of things and BOOM they are created. Anything anyone makes up becomes true. So this "God" the bible speaks of thought of something and it became. Then both "God" and the created object could both think of something and make it be. And expansion is excelerating to accommodate all the things every object keeps creating.

This theory doesn't rip the universe because the first object that started everything is still one thing, and everything in the universe at the same time.

JSTACAT: Physics is a Visionary Skill

Dude, you found my old bong! Excellent!

ust wait till we find out that we created black holes by describing them, looking for, and seeing

Right, the whole idea that the world was actually flat until somebody developed the capacity to think that it was round, and then it became round, I feel that. The non-deterministic branching universes cover this too.

Poo_Fight: So the universe is endless due to the fact that we are too simple to measure it, and we are too simple to measure it because it endless?

No, we are a part of the universe, and therefore can never know the full extent of it, according to Heisenberg.

Poo_Fight 2007-11-21 11:03:46 PM
JSTACAT: if the universe could be measured, it wouldn't be 'The Universe'
therefore it is infinite, if u can not measure it.
as the old philosophers reasoned, it is the Finite which is the illusion.

So the universe is endless due to the fact that we are too simple to measure it, and we are too simple to measure it because it endless?

Sounds more like philosophy to me than any kind of hard science""

// well, as soon as you find an'edge' then you coulkd understand there is some thing or 'nothing' beyond
which means you didn't find the edge of everyhing

// its that way because God is infinite...
meditatation, and the olde philosophes answered some interesting questions
like, individual atoms [their idea/word] are too small to have any color...

i enjoy fishing the science out of old stories, histories
amazing stuff matches up...yeah i love old histories

Space, The Final Frontier. Leave it to dem honkeys to blow it for the rest us all!

Ed Grubermann: Do the photons behave any differently if we don't look at them?

you can observe them as being particles, or as waves. Depending on how you set things up. But if you observe them as particles, you can't observe them as waves. So then, what can you definitively say about a stream of a electrons that if you turn on a detector what you can observe, not just what you do observe, changes?

JSTACAT: which means you didn't find the edge of everyhing

not having an edge doesn't mean infinite. Just means the shape is such that you go out in a straight line and come back to where you started. Kinda like the screen on old video games, you go off the screen on the right and come back on over on the left.

Someone had better tell them not to touch it too much either...

WhyteRaven74 ::

// cool, i see the waves!

umm how do you switch em back ?
i cant see the message

3_inch_thrill: Where are the quantum lolcats?

If I show you the pictures it would collapse their wave functions, ,some of them might come out dead, and that is just the wrong way to kill kittens.

Why can't Bill Gates redesign the universe so I can right click and go to properties? Help and about options could be fun too. People tired of life could click a red X or go to File > Exit.

I read the article.
The reporter seems to have gotten really, really mixed up.
Ignore the article. Go back to bed.

You know that there is scientific basis for flying carpets
// sound can do that
\\ military working on one, but its carbon

TheCommunistCow: If the universe is a sphere, then yes, it eventually reaches a point where it no longer continue expanding and begins to contract. However, this doesn't cause the universe to regress in time, I've never heard of that and I can't find any sources to support it.


This hypothesis is sometimes referred to as a "Gold universe", in reference to physicist Thomas Gold ('The Arrow of Time', American Journal of Physics 30, 403-10).

Barry Dainton does a pretty good job of demolishing the idea that time would run in reverse on the far side of a Gold universe just because of some content asymmetry (ie, based on entropic asymmetry, causal asymmetry, fork asymmetry...).
See Dainton's 'Time and Space', 0-7735-2306-5, 2001, chapter 4.


We now resume our usual idiotic Fark science thread, already in progress.

oh yeah, it has a lot to do with the carbon [element]

Salt, Carbon, and Water

Durendal: Oh, baloney. Observation causing problems happens on the quantum level, not by simply pointing a telescope at a supernova and catching light that would have simply bounced off the earth anyway. Either the article is trying to drum up readers or the so-called scientist is trying to drum up a name.

As soon as I read the headline, I intended to come in and say what you said, but you beat me to it by a long margin.

Are those astronomers just incredibly retarded, or are their egos just so huge that they actually considered their assertion as possibly viable even for a moment????

The report says the claim is contested by other astrophysicists and adds reassuringly: "The fact that we are still here means this can't have happ--

*Loud slurping noise as universe is wiped clean*

*BANG*

*Then 12 to 16 billion years later...*

"The report says the claim is contested by other astrophysicists and adds reassuringly: "The fact that we are still here means this can't have happ--"

None of this is in the Bible, so it can't be true.

Krona says hi!

This About That: What is scary is that apparently sober scientists are able to convince themselves that the universe gives a sh*t what people do.

BINGO!

Are those astronomers just incredibly retarded, or are their egos just so huge that they actually considered their assertion as possibly viable even for a moment????""
---------------------------
// i think what they meant was they had just finished hastening their decay, and wanted to publish it scientifically, hence the obtuse words

// Ha Ha!
Infinite is by definition... Eternal
\\ there could not have been a big bang without some state previous...and, banging out into what?
The Void...

Beginning and end are the inventions of the earthbound
that is, subject to the spacetime continuum of Earth, and earth, the sun... we can not get 'there' from 'here'

God that's awful. You cat people make me want to barf.

It took that long for a Krona reference? come on, comic book Farkers, I know you're out there!

I'm more worried about the LHC in May of 2008 than this crap.

I like this (new window) though I don't understand it . . . yet.

See this: Link (new window)
for a graphic depiction of what the article is all about.

level750geek 2007-11-21 11:55:15 PM
None of this is in the Bible, so it can't be true"

uhh actually all of this is in the Bible start with book 1 and focus not filter, just look at whole word picture for a while and things will become apparent, like the intended shapes appear in the Artworks..
you will be able to make some very interesting corelations,
in fact, you'd be shocked..

How stunningly arrogant.

I've always claimed that cosmology is just the art of inventing and getting acceptance of the most ridiculous sounding theory possible.

This just goes to prove my point.

I just came in to say that I took physics classes at Case Western and even though my professors were 1) a guy that neven buttoned the bottom of his shirt 2) an east german asswipe with poor english skills, and 3) a apathetic ex-nuclear scientist, and that I never had Lawrence Krauss as a professor, I still think he is a total mediawhoring douchebag. Take nothing that he says seriously.

// this is why scientists get confused
\\ one must be able to see without restrictions of previous theory

Valdes ::
wrong he might be, however if folk start their own personal inquiry, great good was done, Eh?

Sorry I'm late, all sorts of ghastly things cropping up at the last moment. How are we for time?

i came here to say, we don't matter nearly as much as we like to think we do. there's no way our observation of the universe had a detrimental effect, our observation merely changed our existence, not another's.

q:if you see someone, don't tell them or do anything to them, what has happened?

a:chezburger

The bad news is: the quantum effect, a truly weird aspect of physics that says whenever we observe or measure something, we reset its clock.

*facepalms*

Hmm... I think someone got it backwards, and even that is giving them far more credit than observed. Been watching too much anime on the Sci-Fi channel lately?

The whole issue with observing things on the quantum level is that by the time you're able to observe it, the state of the item observed will have already changed.

For example, imagine trying to determine the exact position of an electron in an atom, when at best, all we can see is a "cloud" surrounding the nucleus. The closest you'll ever get to determining the approximate position is through employing predictive algorithms based on changes to it's cloud.

Anyone care to take a more educated stab at this one?

qkwitit: i came here to say, we don't matter nearly as much as we like to think we do. there's no way our observation of the universe had a detrimental effect, our observation merely changed our existence, not another's.

q:if you see someone, don't tell them or do anything to them, what has happened?

a:chezburger


You make them feel like they are being watched thus affecting what they may do next. Light is scared, it tries to run away from everything. It knows you are trying to look at it here now so it retreats thus resetting time. At least that's what the scientist thinks

shipofthesun 2007-11-21 11:07:59 PM
JSTACAT: Physics is a Visionary Skill

Dude, you found my old bong! Excellent!

ust wait till we find out that we created black holes by describing them, looking for, and seeing

Right, the whole idea that the world was actually flat until somebody developed the capacity to think that it was round, and then it became round, I feel that. The non-deterministic branching universes cover this too.""

everyone is born thinking the world is flat
until have proven to self otherwise...
Thats called 'Point of View'

Quantum physics are a load of crap.

/all I care to say

12-21-2012?

*shrugs* I dunno maybe.

/don't really care

one baffling item about Heisenberg is the 'transmission of information' quandary
Eg: how can the wave kow in advance, even if nearly simultaneos, that it is being perceived one way or another?

is that influence evidence of a co-opreation in harmony with but outside of space/time?
// evidence of the eternal and infinite operating 'underneath'
the finite [space/time]
some of the vedic writings can assist with a good visualisation

JSTACAT: shipofthesun 2007-11-21 11:07:59 PM
JSTACAT: Physics is a Visionary Skill

Dude, you found my old bong! Excellent!

ust wait till we find out that we created black holes by describing them, looking for, and seeing

Right, the whole idea that the world was actually flat until somebody developed the capacity to think that it was round, and then it became round, I feel that. The non-deterministic branching universes cover this too.""

everyone is born thinking the world is flat
until have proven to self otherwise...
Thats called 'Point of View'

I'm didn't ever think the world was flat myself, I never gave it any thought from what I remember. It just was and that was accepted. I think it is more of learning what you didn't know to begin with. Why is peek-a-boo so interesting to children? The child doesn't know that the person they have made the bond with are still there behind the object. It's not known the person still exists, it is aquired knowledge. To say people are born thinking something I'm not sure I agree with based on that. I do agree that it is all through the point-of-view though. All you know when you are born is that you are there, I'm not even sure if that would be understood at that point. Since everything is obtained through learning to oneself a sense of self-importance is created. I believe this is why the "Earth" was the center of everything at first. As we keep expanding on knowledge we keep learning that everything is a smaller part of something else. How can we come to the conclusion that the whole universe isn't part of something else. Possibly, what we would know as a cell of a larger being. Cells grow like the universe.


^That is something I have believed for a long time. Say hello to all the little people living on planet electron in your body :-).

Mentioning HHGTTG without this quote:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

is so wrong.

The energy shift from the decay would destroy everything in the universe, "wiping the slate clean", says Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cool.

Finally I can get the IRS off my back.

The novel idea is being aired by two US physicists, who attack the notion that the universe...

You know what. I'm sick and farking tired of the word "attack" being used this way. It sounds like they went at it with a baseball bat and hammer.

bestsportnascar::

imagine that you could mount a 'virtual consciousness' in your mind
like a virtual OS.
Then imagine looking at a physics question whilst being in child state.
it has been said that children could solve some deep questions in physics, since a child mind would not be unduly influenced by preconceived ideas.

thats why people meditate [at least in past] so to be able to mount a virtual self into the mind and use it to explore, or 'See'

// i am listning to Sitar as i write.. way cool, my fave..

Boritom
The problem with the theory of Universal expansion is that, at a point, the Universe will begin to contract again. The contraction will accelerate at a much greater rate, however, than the expansion did, and it will accelerate. Ultimately, the acceleration curve will cause a temporal curvature at the quantum level, causing it to begin regressing in time. When that happens, all life in the cosmos will eventually cease to have ever exis

the problem with that particular statement is that you've left out one major part of the theory...on one side of the theory, you'd be correct but on the other side, you'd be dead wrong...

The universe is expanding. We do not know whether this cosmic growth will continue forever or if there will come a time when the expansion slows to a halt and then reverses itself, leading to a cosmic implosion. Astronomers and astrophysicists are trying to settle this question experimentally, since the answer turns on something that in principle can be measured: the average density of matter in the universe.

If the average matter density exceeds a so-called "critical density" of about a hundredth of a billionth of a billionth (10^-29) of a gram per cubic centimeter--about 5 hydrogen atoms for every cubic meter of the universe--then a large enough gravitational force will permeate the cosmos to halt and reverse the expansion. If the average matter density is less than the critical value, the gravitational attraction will be too weak to stop the expansion, which will continue forever. -Brian Greene The Elegant Universe

that's why scientists care about "dark matter" in the first place...the amount of matter currently visible in the universe isn't enough to reach "critical density" and hence, the universe would expand forever...the fact that the universal expansion is speeding up and not slowing down would lead me to believe that even with the discovery and measurement of "dark matter" we still won't reach "critical density"...and even if we did, it's not something that we as a race will ever need be concerned about...thru natural disaster or our own stupidity, humanity would be gone long before the Big Crunch...

Glad I wasn't stoned when I read this. I'm confused as it is.

toraque: I'm up for bubble fever!

Otori: Damn It! I was going to pull out that Greg Egan book too. Great read.

Damn. Two people would have beat me to it. Greg Egan is one of the best authors ever.

Wow, how stupid can people get?

The universe doesn't CARE whether something is witnessed by a human observer or not! Even on a quantum state! Particles have no concept of "observers".

This is all based on (purposely?) misleading language physicists sometimes use. When we say we "observe" quantum behavior and stuff changes properties because of that, it's because you can't measure things at that level without interaction. It's that interaction from which scientists infer the properties of quantum states.

Instead, quantum states can be "undefined". This doesn't only mean they're unknown, it also means the actual state is not defined. And since you can't observe some things directly by looking at them, you have to make the interact with something that serves as an indicator. And this indicator in turn often times changes the things it detects.

Things do not - I repeat - do not change at all simply because a human eye looks at them. Observation is by definition a passive event.

Stop humanizing the universe!

raubtier 2007-11-22 01:15:17 AM
JESUS WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN"""


// too late 'twas all done by HIM [before the beginning]
the bracketed part refers to our space time
actually, in the Eternals, it is all at once,
occurring completely outside of time, it did not 'occur' as we understand that word

Wow, .......
The universe doesn't CARE whether something is witnessed by a human observer or not! Even on a quantum state! Particles have no concept of "observers".


// but you the observer do care, at least enough to look
\\ therefore you have changed what -you- see by your interest
as soon as your mind proposes an alternate, it also exists

You have no way of knowing anything beyond what you know
so it is actually altered to exactly fit what you know.
its so logical, that a Caveman, or child could do it sooner than a college grad.
what Heisenberg said was so simple, its hard to understand without trained logics

"The Wise are Conquered by the Innocent"

isn't that assuming humans are the center of the universe and such can affect it? so every time someone looks at the stars it grows more unstable?? unless we are gods i don't think the universe cares if we look at it

Virulency 2007-11-22 01:38:45 AM
isn't that assuming humans are the center of the universe and such can affect it? so every time someone looks at the stars it grows more unstable?? unless we are gods i don't think the universe cares if we look at it""
----------------
// its all in our heads, what we think we see is a reflection of what we know, and no more. it may be cthulhu or a black hole, as far as we know, its a black hole [cthulhu doesn't approve!]
when we lose our head [die], we See
Teh Zen

Of interest::

// Jesus said "Ye are as gods" [little g]
theres a whole passle of science in those few words...
// and, yes, scientifically proven
[Heisenberg, Einstien et al]

Ummmm you guys? Existence is Infinite. The finite is an illusion. Truth is in the middle path.

/leap home

Chakat I swear at first glance, I thought you posted petunias...

/better not be obscure
//not here at least ;)

I think you're all forgetting about Flying Spaghetti Monsterism's effects on scientific data.

Dark Energy is nothing but the dark side of the "Force". Much you have to learn my young Padawans!

I've heard of the quantum theory of gravity and physicists attempts to tie it in with the standard model (as well as an extension to string theory). However, I have never heard quantum effects applicable to matter at macroscales ... unless the matter exists at such insanely high energy states that it replicates the state of the universe immediately after the big-bang - then, it might be a remote possibility.

First off, I wouldn't bank on anything from some shiat ass CC in Cleveland of all places. Second, this universe will be around for way longer than the human race so who gives a flying fark? We will take our proverbial shiat and get off the pot. Good luck Gray Aliens!!!

i once knew an um, aesthetically "challenged" girl who could stop a clock if she looked at it...does that count?

Highly energetic x-rays emitted from receding parts of the universe (mostly red-shifted, naturally) where nothing ought to be is one of the reasons for the existence of dark matter/energy to be put forth.

/They're as clueless as about to be clubbed baby seals.
//enjoy the carnage.
///slashies are tasty!

That article makes absolutely no sense. I still have no clue why observation of the universe would hasten its demise.

lotustuned: Boritom: The problem with the theory of Universal expansion is that, at a point, the Universe will begin to contract again. The contraction will accelerate at a much greater rate, however, than the expansion did, and it will accelerate. Ultimately, the acceleration curve will cause a temporal curvature at the quantum level, causing it to begin regressing in time. When that happens, all life in the cosmos will eventually cease to have ever exis

Based on what evidence ?
The latest data shows the universal expansion to be accelerating.
\I say that after reading it off the internet somewhere so don't quote me.

I hope you accept this idea and think it over some.

Everything is circular. The orbit of planets, the rotation of the galaxies, the cycle of life, etc., and it's even possible our own universe is spinning. Well, as things in a circular nature tend to do, they complete a revolution and start the cycle over again. Instead of life ceasing to have ever existed, the cycle instead starts again anew, and in a constant recycling fashion, will recreate itself given enough time.

Just my meager observation after 25 years of living on this dustball. Even history seems circular in nature.

Hypersapien: toraque: I'm up for bubble fever!

Otori: Damn It! I was going to pull out that Greg Egan book too. Great read.

Damn. Two people would have beat me to it. Greg Egan is one of the best authors ever.

Well, you were ahead of me, although I'm not here to worship at the shrine. I thought the novel kinda lost it by the end.

I can't believe we got this far into such a thread without the following:

Ral: That article makes absolutely no sense. I still have no clue why observation of the universe would hasten its demise.

It's because the reflected light from an observer's eyeballs dries out the stretchy stuff the universe is made of, and keeps it from expanding uniformly so it will tear and let the Weevils of Time through to eat us.

...Yeah, that one sort of got away from me. But it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff.

Yeah, file this one under: bullshiat, who gives a fark, etc.

hey, what if an alien race observed it and has been since before there was a human or even a earth? Wouldn't that mean it has reseted a number of times already? Leave it to humans to think we could make such a huge impact like destroying the universe by observation and to then not think of the possibility of another creature doing something similar and causing the same effect.

The scale of observation we're talking about is too massive. There is probably some sort of system of checks and balances that stops this from happening otherwise it statistically would have happened already. Unless you buy into the quantum suicide theory that our conscious is jumping between parallel universes, where it could have happened many times in universes you were present in. Your conscious would just switch to the next channel when the last went dead.

This is dumb logic. Just because some things can't be observed without changing them doesn't mean that observing something necessarily WILL change it. The implication rather is that by not changing it we have not observed it to utmost possible accuracy, which is...nothing to worry about.

Unless you are part of that segment that always needs a catastrophe to worry about.

I almost collapsed the universe because of a series of equations.

Fortunately I was thinking a couple of equations ahead and averted the formation of a black hole for black holes.

Not impressed.

Gamma Ray Bursters going off daily, and this guy thinks humans can harm or even affect the Universe by looking at it.

Talk about having an inflated sense of your position in the grand scheme of things.

Ed Grubermann:
It's not the act of observing them that "changes" their behavior. It is the test. Photons in a single slit test rig will behave a certain way even if we never record the results, and the same is true for the double slit test. The physics of the test rig determines the actions of the photons, not whether we bother to look at them.

Damn straight.

I'm constantly changing reality and hastening the end of the universe, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.

the quantum effect, a truly weird aspect of physics that says whenever we observe or measure something, we reset its clock.

Thanks, now my head hurts.

Grab your towels indeed...

I like how they act as though the fact that the universe is expanding is a recent discovery or something. Hubble discovered that way back in 1929! That entire article is retarded. An absolutely proposterous theory. These guys are to cosmology what Baptists are to the theory of evolution.

Where does time cube fit into all this?

This is a useless, useless article. The idea that all things are possible as a wave function is analogous, mainly used to describe theoretical particles. A possibility isn't decided by human observation, what a ridiculously egocentric view.

This is mind-bendingly stupid, and massively frustrating to hear.

JSTACAT:
Right, the whole idea that the world was actually flat until somebody developed the capacity to think that it was round, and then it became round, I feel that. The non-deterministic branching universes cover this too.""

everyone is born thinking the world is flat
until have proven to self otherwise...
Thats called 'Point of View'

Maybe the world continues to be round because most people believe it to be so. Or maybe only someone that truly believes it to be flat, but can escape the influences of the "round earth" crowd can actually find their way to world's end where the water flows off the edge in great cascades.

Truth be told, there are other worlds than this one, but you have to believe you can find them to actually find them. Most people can't be bothered to sustain that kind of belief. The ones that do so well (and who decide they're generally more comfortable living here) often go on to be some of the most brilliant writers/artists/creative people that we have on earth. But it's also why so many of those go insane - in their genius they lose their definition of what world they are a part of. Such is the cost of that seeing I suppose.

Further, by and large crazy people aren't really crazy so much as they're just living in another world. Their bodies are still tied to this one though. Sometimes when a person's body dies when they're away from it they'll come back looking but they can never really reconnect with it and we see them as ghosts. Even then though, you have to believe in ghosts to see them since they're mostly phased out anyway.

After reading the article, can there be people who still argue that modern science is NOT a religion?

This so called 'science' is the type of science spouted in stuff like what the bleep do we know? and quantum taoism. The quantum observation thing doesn't mean perceived by us. An 'observation' is basically when an interaction between particles on the quantum level happens. Our detectors work by creating an interaction and collapsing a probability to an instant in time and space. An observation isn't our conscious awareness of it, it's that interaction. So assuming that this dark energy has interacted with something, somewhere in the universe before it reached our detectors... well the point is pointless.

rico567: After reading the article, can there be people who still argue that modern science is NOT a religion?

Yes, because science is not a religion.

I am God. The universe will end when I bloody well say so.

Paging Doctor Emmet Brown. Paging Doctor Emmet Brown... Clarification needed in the lobby.