The origin of the universe

[Gruni]

The great turtle Minh sneezed after getting some cosmic dust in her nose. The resultant mucus like plasma spread in a spray that cooled and continued to coast in the vacuum of space and time to create the universe as we know it. So the Milky Way is really the thickest part and should be known as the Sneezy Way. We now sit on one of the boogers that was able to develop semi inteligent life in the form or humans and in Minh's own image are some of the herps who REALLY rule our lives and are far from our 'pets'. I hope this helps to clarify all these misconceived ignorant beliefs in the Big Shag theory which was thought up by some lonely nerd scientist who couldn't get laid and wished that there would be at least ONE bang in his life. 8)

Oh and for those that will try to be smart, the origins of the great Minh are well beyond the bounds of your human conception and only truely understandabe to the Woma and their kindred.

 

[Fantazmic]

I tried to read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I was going along really well till I got to about half way through.....

Some people are wayyyyy to intelligent for their own good.

 

[grannieannie]

The great turtle Minh sneezed after getting some cosmic dust in her nose. The resultant mucus like plasma spread in a spray that cooled and continued to coast in the vacuum of space and time to create the universe as we know it. So the Milky Way is really the thickest part and should be known as the Sneezy Way. We now sit on one of the boogers that was able to develop semi inteligent life in the form or humans and in Minh's own image are some of the herps who REALLY rule our lives and are far from our 'pets'. I hope this helps to clarify all these misconceived ignorant beliefs in the Big Shag theory which was thought up by some lonely nerd scientist who couldn't get laid and wished that there would be at least ONE bang in his life. 8)

Oh and for those that will try to be smart, the origins of the great Minh are well beyond the bounds of your human conception and only truely understandabe to the Woma and their kindred.

Well I know life can be **** sometimes, but I didn't know it could be snot too !! :lol:

 

[JasonL]

Towards Borneo?

Nah, thats just where I'm going..

 

[Tristan]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1203/scaleofuniverse_huang.swf - check this out very cool.

i don't think we will figure out the How everything started as i understand\believe the universe is constantly expanding so its my belief that the answers to the beginning are on the very outskirts of the universe constantly getting further and further away, and as you can see from that Nasa link what we "know" to be the furthest away will take us light years just to reach, but by the time we reach that point the target would have moved much much further away.

until we develop technology that allows for faster than light travel we will never catch up to the answer.

 

[Surroundx]

I tried to read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I was going along really well till I got to about half way through.....

Some people are wayyyyy to intelligent for their own good.

Hawking's A Brief History is more than 20 years now. Physics changes so much in a decade that you would be better off buying an up to date introduction to the subject if you are going to invest the time reading it.

until we develop technology that allows for faster than light travel we will never catch up to the answer.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Turns out those neutrinos hyped up 8-9 months ago do not travel at superluminal (i.e. faster than light) speeds. General Relativity is very adamant about that and we have no reason to doubt it.

 

[junglepython2]

Hawking's A Brief History is more than 20 years now. Physics changes so much in a decade that you would be better off buying an up to date introduction to the subject if you are going to invest the time reading it.


Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Turns out those neutrinos hyped up 8-9 months ago do not travel at superluminal (i.e. faster than light) speeds. General Relativity is very adamant about that and we have no reason to doubt it.

The starship Enterprise can travel faster then the speed of light.

 

[saximus]

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Turns out those neutrinos hyped up 8-9 months ago do not travel at superluminal (i.e. faster than light) speeds. General Relativity is very adamant about that and we have no reason to doubt it.

Is General Relativity the one that says mass increases with speed? I didn't think it said it was impossible, it's just undefined above that because it would mean mass would theoretically become infinite. However just as quantum mechanics goes against regular Newtonian physics they might find a way to travel faster than light with previously unexplained/unknown scientific rules

 

[shea92]

it was a singularity of infinite mass that exploded (or expanded rapidly, however you would like to say it), thus we get an infinite universe haha

 

[Tsubakai]

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Turns out those neutrinos hyped up 8-9 months ago do not travel at superluminal (i.e. faster than light) speeds. General Relativity is very adamant about that and we have no reason to doubt it.

I don't think you can be quite so concrete about that. Until there is a unified theory that combines/expands on the two current theories then I don't think anything should be taken for granted.

 

[slim6y]

How fast is gravity?

This is a question that I ask my senior physics class... So many of them say "That's easy, it's 10 metres per second per second sir...."

Ahhhh... But that's the speed we accelerate towards the centre of the Earth not the speed of gravity.

We know that the light from the sun takes around 8 minutes to get here (over 1 astronomical unit - which is around 150,000,000 km - yep, the sun is close to one hundred and fifty million km away from us...).

We orbit around the sun - it takes us around 365.25 days to do this. But we orbit because of gravity - the mystical force that keeps us falling towards the sun...

Now, if the sun suddenly vanished (I make a popping sound by using my small finger in my inflated mouth to give the visual effect of the sun just vanishing into thin air instantaneously)... Light would still reach us for 8 minutes (or so).

Then the light would stop...

But... Would we still be holding the same orbit for 8 minutes?

So how long after the sun mysteriously pops away does it take before Earth loses its gravitational pull from the sun?

How fast is gravity?

Gravity has a lot to answer for in the making of this universe.... One of the four fundamental forces - and possibly the most significant (and by far my favourite and yet one of the most neglected).

I think the closer we come to understanding gravity, magnetism etc the better understanding we'll have of our beloved universe that we bobble around in....

 

[moosenoose]

I always like to think we're a fungal infection on the back of something huge Like, another animal. And it lives in an entirely different world to what we know A bit zany, but that's how I'm rolling with this one

 

[junglepython2]

How fast is gravity?

But... Would we still be holding the same orbit for 8 minutes?

So how long after the sun mysteriously pops away does it take before Earth loses its gravitational pull from the sun?

How fast is gravity?

Is that a trick question Mr Slimy? You can't give a force a speed as it does not travel. It's force would be instantaneous so if you poofed the sun away we would instantly be slingshoted into space without any delay. Do I get a sticker or detention for that answer?

 

[Beard]

Hawking's Brief History

is as follows.


There once was a man named Hawkins.
He got lazy and then gave up walking.
Now he goes everywhere with the aid of a chair.
And a computer does all of his talking.

 

[thomasssss]

is as follows.


There once was a man named Hawkins.
He got lazy and then gave up walking.
Now he goes everywhere with the aid of a chair.
And a computer does all of his talking.

i think you've got a bit of a poet hidden inside beard

 

[slim6y]

Is that a trick question Mr Slimy? You can't give a force a speed as it does not travel. It's force would be instantaneous so if you poofed the sun away we would instantly be slingshoted into space without any delay. Do I get a sticker or detention for that answer?

Is it tho? Is the force really instantaneous?

For general relativity to work you'd have to assume that gravity does actually move - stretching out across the cosmos. Which means that somewhere out there, is the end of gravity... Or, gravity caused by the Earth or even the sun....

This is from the New Scientist The Speed of Gravity: Einstein Was Right! the article I usually make the students read (I am so mean).

"Sir Isaac Newton thought that the speed of gravity was instantaneous, and Einstein assumed it traveled at the speed of light. Although scientists believe that Einstein was right, for nearly a century no one had been able to directly measure gravity's speed. However, on September 8, 2002, an international team of scientists did just that, using an experiment conceived by Sergei Kopeikin, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Missouri-Columbia."

"They found that gravity does move at the same speed as light. Their actual figure was 1.06 times the speed of light, but there was an error of plus or minus 0.21. The results were then announced at the 2002 American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Seattle, Washington."

So - there you go... Gravity, although a force, actually takes time to 'register'.

Somewhere out there, in the vast nothingness of space, lies the edge of the gravity of our solar system. The Sun's light, as far as it reaches, the faint twinkle in the night's sky on some distant planet... Is also the force of gravity reaching out to the very same tip!

The thing though, the amount of gravity is jolly small! (I guess the same for the light really, if you look at our sun, 150,000,000 km away and our closest star, for arguments sake let's say 4 light years away - huge difference in brightness - so gravity is similar).

 

[saximus]

"They found that gravity does move at the same speed as light. Their actual figure was 1.06 times the speed of light, but there was an error of plus or minus 0.21. The results were then announced at the 2002 American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Seattle, Washington."



Somewhere out there, in the vast nothingness of space, lies the edge of the gravity of our solar system. The Sun's light, as far as it reaches, the faint twinkle in the night's sky on some distant planet... Is also the force of gravity reaching out to the very same tip!

Gee you'd have been an awesome science teacher to have at school Slim. I just have a couple of questions about these two points.
1. Is ±20% error on that measurement good for this type of experiment? That seems high to me but I'm an engineer so the things we calculate/measure are much bigger and easier to comprehend.
2. Do you think that the limited reach of light, gravity and presumably every other thing due to its finite speed is the reason for the universe having an "edge" and expanding or are these two concepts unrelated?

 

[slim6y]

I think there could be a relationship between the far reaches of gravity and light and the size (plus shape) of the universe - but that also means the universe is 'wobbly' - not everything got created at the centre of the universe so planets and stars closer to the edge of the universe would be pushing like the cytoplasm on the edges of amoeba.

OMG - maybe we're an amoeba!!! The Earth could just be some motochondria floating around in a cytoplasmic jelly.... Eeeeep...

Off the track... (how did you do the +/- sign?) - In physics, we say 25% is close enough

They had a fair whack of data go astray, plus their best sources of data didn't work (apparently) and I'm sure they made up some other figures to fit empirically with any ol' formula... But on the whole, a jolly good effort I'd say!

Plus, it's the best paper I can find for free on this subject

Somewhere, on this planet, right now, someone knows the answers and they're keeping it all from us... I'm not paranoid, I know this for a fact, the little person following me told me so.

I asked my students this very question (the speed of gravity) this morning when we took a quick peak at Newton's Gravitation. It's a real interesting concept that does answer far more about the universe than we give it credit for. We're constantly trying to find quarks and leptons and bosons and the weak force... blah blah... But gravity has so many more answers... So so many!

 

[GeckPhotographer]

I don't like the multiple Universe theory, I don't think multiple universes can exist when we define the Universe as everything in existance.

 

[saximus]

Off the track... (how did you do the +/- sign?) - In physics, we say 25% is close enough

lol thanks for the reply. Very insightful.

As for the symbol, it's an Alt code. This website shows all of them. The ones I use most often are alt+0176 (°) and alt+0177(±)