| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Dr. Jai Maharaj" |
| Date: |
15 Sep 2005 05:06:05 PM |
| Object: |
THE END OF THE MATTER |
The end of the matter
The Age
September 10, 2005
Think your life is spinning out of control? It's a
universal problem, writes Peter Spinks.
IMAGINE a science fiction account of the world's last
supper. Diners in Douglas Adams' amusing book The
Restaurant at the End of the Universe sup for the final
time on a sumptuous selection of steaks, salads, fine
wines and liqueurs while watching, through the darkened
restaurant's transparent dome, the lightshow of a
lifetime.
With half an hour to go before oblivion, the brooding,
dark sky gradually fades to black as great galaxies of
failing, swollen stars flicker and go out.
"This," the lanky, flamboyant host at the Milliways
restaurant, Max Quordlepleen, informs anticipative
diners, "really is the absolute end, the final chilling
desolation, in which the whole majestic sweep of creation
becomes extinct. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the
proverbial 'it'." The consummate showman lowers his voice
another notch: "After this, there is nothing. Void.
Emptiness? "Could that really happen? Might our
universe, with its 100 billion or so galaxies, each
containing about 100 billion stars, come to a sticky end
one unhappy day? "No" may have been the favoured answer
in 1948 when Herman Bondi, Thomas Gold and Fred Hoyle
proposed the steady-state theory.
Put simply, it said the universe had neither beginning
nor end but had always existed and would continue to do
so forever. Moreover, matter was allegedly created
continuously, essentially out of nothing.
Unfortunately, astronomical observations did not support
the steady-state model, which is now discredited by
cosmologists, whose job it is to ponder over such
imponderables.
Nowadays, cosmologists, who it must be said are often in
error but seldom in doubt, are in little doubt that the
universe was created about 13.7 billion years ago in the
big bang -- a primordial, super-dense, super-hot inferno,
with temperatures of about 10,000 trillion trillion
degrees shortly after creation.
Having a beginning, or alpha, and quite possibly an end,
or omega, the big bang model is broadly in accord with
the creation myths of Christians, Jews, Hindus and
Muslims, as well as those of the ancient Egyptians,
Chinese and Aztecs.
Compelling though the theory is, the model fails to
explain why the density of galaxies across the cosmos
seems the same in all directions -- something,
ironically, that the defunct steadystate theory at least
seemed to resolve. To account for this, cosmologists
believe that the universe inflated exponentially from 10
trillion-trilliontrillionths of a second to 10 billion-
trilliontrillionths of a second after the big bang.
During this extraordinarily short but far-reaching epoch
of inflation, the cosmos doubled in size every 100
trillion-trillion-trillionths of a second, expanding from
less than the size of an atom to a region bigger than the
biggest galaxy. At least, this is what the simplest
version of the theory claims happened.
After inflating, the universe settled down to expand at a
more or less leisurely pace. The expansion continues
today, with space between distant clusters of galaxies
increasing all the time.
The further away galaxies are from us, the faster they
recede. Gravity's tug counteracts the initial outward
force of the big bang, and the subsequent period of
inflation, and acts as a kind of cosmic brake on galaxies
as they hurtle away from one another.
THE universe's ultimate fate hangs largely on how much
matter the cosmos contains and of what it consists. The
latest satellite measurements suggest that 4 per cent of
the universe comprises ordinary matter (the stuff of
which you, I and our belongings are made), 23 per cent
dark matter (which cannot be seen but whose gravitational
effects are measurable) and 73 per cent dark energy.
(Given the preponderance of dark entities, it's no wonder
that astronomers are literally in the dark when it comes
to cosmic crystal gazing.)
Dark energy, in particular, seems to hold the key to the
far future. Although still little understood, it's
believed to be a type of anti-gravity force that, unlike
gravity, repels instead of attracts objects at great
distances, and in fact gets stronger with distance.
Such a repulsive phenomenon -- which literally defies the
law of gravity -- may explain why gravity keeps together
relatively close stars, and even whole galaxies within
clusters, while widely separated galaxy clusters fly
apart.
Four options exist for the mysterious dark energy: it may
stay constant, it could get stronger or weaker or it may
slowly fade to zero and then go negative, thus switching
from being a repulsive force to an increasingly
attractive one that eventually becomes much stronger than
gravity.
Each option would dramatically affect the cosmic end
game.
Depending on the nature of dark energy, at least four
possibilities loom ahead.
First, endowed with a fixed amount of dark energy, the
universe would not collapse but could continue expanding
indefinitely as clusters of galaxies get further apart.
Under this bleak, desolate model, the universe never ends
as such, but just fades out as black holes slowly
evaporate, particles decay, and the remaining detritus of
elementary particles -- such as a few stray photons of
light and truly tiny, barely detectable neutrinos, which
have no electrical charge -- drift further away from each
other.
This fixed dark-energy scenario is described by something
known as the cosmological constant, introduced by Albert
Einstein to prevent his equations from predicting what,
at that time, was unthinkable -- namely that the universe
was not static.
Later, when American astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated
that the cosmos was expanding, Einstein described his
controversial constant as the biggest blunder of his
life. A wealth of astronomical evidence now suggests that
the cosmological constant may have been yet another
triumph for Einstein.
The second possibility is that dark energy gathers in
strength. Under this scenario, the universe's expansion
speeds up, as acclaimed physicist and science author Paul
Davies discovered in the late 1980s and published, as he
says, "embedded in a longer paper, and without a sexy
name".
In 2003, Robert Caldwell, Marc Kamionkowski and Nevin
Weinberg dubbed this phantom phenomenon the "big rip" in
an article, "Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday", in
Physical Review Letters.
The big rip is aptly named because it ruthlessly tears
apart every galaxy, including our own picturesque Milky
Way, our solar system, including Earth, and ultimately
all the molecules, atoms, nuclei and even subnuclear
protons and neutrons.
It's not a happy thought, but would be a spectacular
ending to observe, as Milliways diners could attest.
Slightly cheerier, although not a lot, is the third
prospect of dark energy decreasing with time. This
scenario, called quintessence, offers the faint chance of
life continuing in some feeble fashion.
Although galaxies and stars would come unstuck and go
their own merry ways, particles and molecules wouldn't
get shredded and so might at least survive the onslaught
for long enough to keep interacting in ways perhaps
capable of sustaining life, though not necessarily as we
know it.
The fourth possibility is that dark energy does a cosmic
U-turn and, instead of repelling, begins attracting
matter, eventually with a force far exceeding that of
gravity.
Here you might picture the universe expanding until a
certain point, and then starting to collapse in a matter-
crushing big crunch, with hordes of galaxies rushing
together and colliding with colossal force. The
contraction would gather momentum until all matter, along
with space and time, were crushed into a dimensionless
point of infinite density.
That point, a singularity, is a kind of non-place where
the known laws of physics break down.
The crunch would be like witnessing the big bang in
reverse and, if this happened, the universe would end
more or less as it began -- except that the crunch phase
would be characterised by gigantic black holes, from
whose immense gravitational grip neither matter nor
radiation could escape.
DESPITE its unmitigated violence, a big crunch may not be
quite as offputting as a big rip because it at least
offers the dream, however speculative, of bouncing back
on the rebound, as it were. In this sense, although one
universe ends, another begins. Whether the next one is
hospitable to life, however, is anyone's guess.
So which is the likeliest finale? The jury is still out
on this, but the verdict will require some light being
shed on dark energy. This might come from at least two
sources: studies of the abundance of galaxy clusters and
of the rate of expansion of space at various stages of
the universe's evolution.
The first mission will be aided by the Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope, due to start work in January 2012. The
second involves calculating the rate of expansion of
relatively nearby and distant regions of space by
scrutinising supernovas, or exploding stars, which stand
out like great light bulbs against the blackness of the
night sky.
Several supernova studies, including one led by Brian
Schmidt of Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra and
another by Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory in the US, have concluded that the
universe is expanding at an ever-hastening pace. More
recently, NASA satellite images of the cosmic microwave
background radiation left behind after the big bang have
corroborated the teams' findings. So, it seems, we really
do live in a runaway world.
None of the four dark-matter scenarios for the universe's
grand finale is slated to happen for a very long time,
and so the end is not nigh. Or is it?
The last word in cosmological conjecture, and perhaps yet
another possibility for cosmic apocalypse, is the
unwelcome prospect -- proposed in 1980 by physicists
Sidney Coleman and Frank de Luccia -- that the vacuum of
deep space, although void of air, might not actually have
the lowest possible energy level. If so, this socalled
false vacuum might suddenly fail or decay, hurling the
universe into the lower energy state of a true vacuum. A
bubble of true vacuum would then flash through the
universe at the speed of light, instantly obliterating
everything in its path.
Of this, we'd have not a split-second's warning.
For all we know, such a vacuum bubble might be heading
our way at this moment. Even more disconcerting is the
possibility, first raised by Piet Hut and Martin Rees in
their article "How Stable Is Our Vacuum?", published in
1983 in the British journal Nature, that we might
inadvertently create a vacuum bubble in one of our giant
particle accelerators.
One such device, the 27-kilometre-long Large Hadron
Collider at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics,
which straddles the Swiss-French border near Geneva, is
due to start colliding protons in 2007 at near the
velocity of light, Nature's ultimate speed limit.
The collisions will release energy at levels never before
witnessed on Earth and on a par with those reached
shortly after the big bang. This, writes US physicist
Paul Halpern in The Great Beyond (Wiley, 2004), would be
"the equivalent of billions of batteries concentrated
within a point trillions of times smaller than a flea".
An event such as this might risk creating a vacuum bubble
for just a tiny fraction of a second. But that would be
all it takes to set off the vacuum decay spelling the end
of the universe.
Fortunately, there's a brighter side to the dreaded
spectre of a vacuum decay, as expounded in Davies'
masterful work, The Last Three Minutes (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1994). Just as we might accidentally create a
true vacuum surrounded by false vacuum, so we could,
perhaps deliberately, create the converse -- namely, a
bubble of false vacuum surrounded by true vacuum.
This would not threaten the universe's existence, Davies
believes. "Although the experiment may trigger a big
bang, the explosion would be completely confined inside a
tiny black hole, which soon evaporates," he writes. "The
new universe would create its own space, not eat up any
of ours."
In this way, scientists in the dim distant future may --
and this really is a big may -- be able to provide
inhabitants of a universe condemned to a big rip or big
crunch with an escape route in the form of a baby
universe created in the lab. Exactly how we'd jump
universes, so to speak, and what the new, embryonic world
would be like, is far from clear. But cosmologists would
at least have time on their side to prepare a plan B
blueprint.
Ever the optimist, Davies speaks of the prospect of "a
family of universes multiplying adinfinitum, each giving
birth to new generations of universes". So a particular
universe, such as ours, may end, but the collection as a
whole might stagger on forever. This may be construed as
a radically new take on the old steady-state theory.
As to whether or not we're around to marvel at these
futuristic scenarios will depend on whether humankind
survives its self-inflicted forms of social, political,
economic and environmental mayhem.
Theatrical examples of the latter are presented in such
films as Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow (2004),
in which global warming devastates cities with tornadoes,
snow and hail storms, floods and a tsunami before a new
ice age sets in, and Val Guest's less credible The Day
the Earth Caught Fire (1961), when heat takes its toll as
the Earth is tilted on its axis and sent sunwards.
Still more improbable is the prospect of the kind of
alien invasion depicted in War of the Worlds (2005),
Steven Spielberg's adaptation of H. G. Wells' 1898 novel.
Yet other, rather more likely hazards, such as a
monumental earthquake or a volcano to end all volcanoes,
are discussed in British vulcanologist Bill McGuire's
scary compendium, A Guide to the End of the World (Oxford
University Press, 2003).
IN ORDER to savour the universe's last moments, our
species will also have had to survive the fates of the
sun and Milky Way.
Migration to another solar system, perhaps in a nearby
galaxy, will have become necessary within a few billion
years or so because the sun, which shines by converting
hydrogen to helium in its core, will have started running
low on fuel. The solar core will have begun to shrink and
heat up, causing outer layers to balloon out. The bloated
red giant, as our failing sun will have become, will
devour the inner planets, Mercury and Venus. The searing
heat from the red giant's expanding surface will vaporise
our atmosphere, boil away the oceans and render the Earth
intolerably hot and uninhabitable, before perhaps
engulfing our poor old planet in about 7 billion years'
time -- or less.
We would either have perished long before this happened
or have had to pack our bags to find another solar system
in which to live. The onceglorious sun, meanwhile, will
have puffed off its outer layers, leaving behind a
cooling, rather inconspicuous, white dwarf star about the
size of Earth.
Roughly 3 billion years from now, about the time the
solar shenanigans begin, the Milky Way will collide with
its neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, which is presently
about 2 million light years away, and closing, and just
discernible on a clear night as a fuzzy patch of
starlight. The inevitable merger into one huge,
elliptical galaxy need not mean the end for stars in
either galaxy because interstellar distances are so great
that individual stars will seldom, if ever, crash into
one another. A short computer-animated movie of the mega-
merger can be viewed at
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/merger/bigmerger.html
Finally, a scientifically unorthodox possibility remains.
Buddhists, and others of their persuasion, contend that
life, the universe and everything, to use an Adams
phrase, is no more than an illusion. If this is so, then
there's little sense in speculating about the ultimate
fate of something that doesn't exist in the first place.
Peter Spinks is the author of Wizards of Oz, on
Australian scientific breakthroughs.
pspinks@theage.fairfax.com.au
BOOKENDS
The Sun: A Biography By David Whitehouse, John Wiley &
Sons, Chichester (2005)
Moon biographer, space scientist, astronomer and BBC
science correspondent David Whitehouse turns his watchful
gaze to the sun to chart a sexy solar story. It's a
shining example of the way in which main-sequence stars
such as ours begin, spend and end their sunny days.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe By Douglas
Adams, Pan Macmillan, London (1980)
The part I like most is when restaurant host Max
ridicules a party of 20 devout believers from the Church
of the Second Coming of the Great Prophet Zarquon."
He said he'd come again, and he's kept you waiting a long
time," mocks Max, "so let's hope he's hurrying, fellas,
because he's only got eight minutes left!" The last
moments tick by, the skies boil and suddenly, with 20
seconds to go, the long-awaited Zarquon miraculously
shows up in the restaurant. "Er, how are we for time?" he
inquires."Have I just got a min-," And the universe ends.
On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the
Universe By Joseph Silk, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge (2005)
It's not dedicated to apocalyptic cosmology but is a
handy reference providing technical details of what makes
our universe tick.
Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the 21st
Century? By Martin Rees, Random House, London (2003)
The answer to the title's question is possibly "no",
which is shocking because Britain's Astronomer Royal is
not given to making reckless pronouncements. Read it,
carefully -- but preferably not before bedtime.
More at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/the-end-of-the-matter/2005/09/08/1125772645173.html?oneclick=true
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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| User: "Chris" |
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| Title: Re: THE END OF THE MATTER |
15 Sep 2005 05:42:54 PM |
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I love this post, it puts us all in our place, just tiny shards of
carbon....
The Universe seems to be a 4-sphere with the galaxies, the stars and us,
embeded in the 3-surface.
Looking in any direction we see a smaller universe at an earlier time
because the light takes time to travel.
Observation makes it appear that the Universe was much smaller once and was
once just a fireball of energy.
It expanded just because of this energy and matter condensed out of
radiation.
It will "soon" run out of energy and gravity will draw it back into a
fireball and perhaps it will bounce back into a new universe. The laws will
be the same just the details different and nothing will be transferred.
Only a fleet of high energy starships orbiting the final fireball could
survive, but that state lasts billions of years, something to do with
gravity.
Jesus said something like that when he described how all matter will be
destroyed and then a new heaven born. (Heaven= stars, sky).
If you travel a distance through space it looks in a general way the same as
here and you can circumnavigate the Universe by travelling in a straight
line in any direction and come back to your starting position billions of
years hence.
It is a wierd place the Universe. Remember the faster you go, the sooner
you get there and you cannot get their before you leave.
Chris. Mad as ever.
"Dr. Jai Maharaj" <usenet@mantra.com> wrote in message
news:MAUXi7002uPSPi@XroEn...
The end of the matter
The Age
September 10, 2005
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