machapungo

Further notions regarding the mechanism of an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction of the universe: A point to keep in mind while considering this speculation is that matter itself from a volume perspective is mostly space and this means that space and matter have no problem intermingling at all scales of size. Let's consider the case where during expansion all matter gets consumed by black holes and the black holes evaporate to leave only a finite amount of space surrounded by the infinite void of nothing. Here, let's assert that electromagnetic energy cannot pass the space void boundary. Let's also assert that space's density of energy also has gravity. This gravity of space would provide a cohesiveness to allow all of finite space, to exist as a bubble surrounded by the void and to remain contiguous and not become somehow mixed and infinitely diluted by the void. However, before all of the more concentrated forms of energy ultimately transform into space their gravity and the gravity of space were mutually pulling on each other. But since the gravity of space is very weak, space becomes stretched to it's limit of minimal density. This affect of stretching would be maintained as long as any matter or black hole exists. However, once they themselves become space there is no force to stretch space to its point of minimal density and when this situation is reached the gravity of space begins to cause it to collapse upon itself and that collapse causes the gravity of space to continuously increase to provide a positive reinforcing feedback to the process. This process requires the attractive force of black hole gravity pulling on space gravity to be not only insufficient to somehow overcome the evaporation of a black hole into space BUT could actually be the cause of a black hole evaporating and becoming space. This could be viewed as a tug of war in which the limit of the minimal density of space actually sucks energy out of the black hole. A kind of cosmic jujitsu. As the process of collapse proceeds the temperature of space continues to increase. Eventually, is gets so hot that the sub atomic particles which at cooler temperatures seem to pop into and out of existence begin to fuse. I speculate that once this collapse achieves a certain critical magnitude of gravity further collapse builds to fantastic superluminal speeds and super temperatures causing all forms of matter to fuse and ever more powerful black holes to form and merge with phenomenal inward momentum and speed until a big bang occurs. Thereafter, everything once again expands and cools. Yes, this story is not backed up by evidence. It does, I think, contain a rather cohesive chain of events even though they are fetched from imagination. Regards r

Hello Strange, You say "space is not energy but it MAY contain energy". I do not think this point of view is supported by the legitimate physics community. You speak of space and time as "just being a measure of the distance between things". All measurements are a product of the mind. Measurements are not a physical thing. The universe, itself, can exist just fine without our measurements. Your reference to meeting some one at a specific time and place as if these were properties of the universe. They are not. They are concepts of the human mind. You are falling into the trap of mixing the attributes of the observer with the observed. You speak of geometry. Again, geometry is a product of the mind that is intended to help us understand the physical universe but should not be confused with the actual physical universe. All of our understandings are abstractions of physical reality. All of our input is a function of our five senses. All of our senses involve a transformation of the data via different means of transmission and their inherent delays. Consequently, all data that enters the mind is old and does not represent the EXACT state of the current (NOW) of the universe which is in the constant flux of the continuum of motion at many levels of existence. The data input to the mind suffers additional delays to reach our consciousness and make it's way through our analysis. What this means is that we have no conscious DIRECT CONTACT with the reality of the constantly changing universe. We have no direct mental contact with the NOW, In effect, all of our thoughts are based on a past state of the entire universe, or a portion thereof, that has changed, at least in some small way at the moment we finally perceive it. You did not address my assertion that time is not a physical reality. You quote an idea that gravity is mainly due to the curvature on the time dimension as if it were a physical thing. There is no apparatus or test that has ever shown that time is a physical reality. All we have are our brains and our clocks that are either natural in origin or of one human design or another. All they do is measure motion of something else relative to their own motion. Let's examine the experiment that takes two identical and synchronized atomic clocks and puts one on on an airplane and leaves the other on the surface of the planet. After the plane takes a trip they determine that the two clocks offer slightly different readings of the time that has passed since the beginning of the test. All this really shows, is that the motion of the entire clock affects the physics of the components of the clock and not the passage of some mythical non physical time. Likewise, with the affect of gravity on the clock based passage of time. The people that accept that these tests as showing something about time are chasing the myth that time is somehow physical. Motion is real and motion at one level can affect motion at another just as gravity, which is real, can also affect motion. They need to focus on motion itself, and yes their main tools in this endeavor is the clock and their brains. Regards.

How can matter warp time if time is not a physical part of the universe. Everything that exists is a form of energy, even space. Where is the evidence that time is energy? Time, IMO, is just a mental invention to measure and explain motion by using relative motion.

I'm very pleased to find a "speculations" category where my unfounded ideas can be expressed. Thank you scienceforums!! Regarding zero point energy and vacuum space being a zero point field. In other words, what that means is that it is the most diluted form of energy that can exist. Fine. Let us also accept that energy can be neither created or destroyed, it can only change forms. So, space is one of those forms. Therefore, one could assert that the expansion of our universe is nothing more than our observation of the conversion of some form of denser non space energy into space. Things that are referred to as "dark" are really "invisible" as is space and therefore why not simply assert that dark energy and space are one and the same? That assertion leaves us with the task of explaining how denser forms of energy could be transformed into space. I feel comfortable in speculating that everything in the universe is a form of energy and is the total sum of physical reality. Now, let's address the idea of whether the universe is finite or infinite. The notion that the universe is infinite requires that it is possible to have a never ending blob of energy in one form or another. If one asserts this notion then one is simultaneously asserting that there is nothing else other than energy and that volume of energy has no boundary. I find this idea difficult to swallow. The other possibility is that the universe is finite but tremendously large. If it is finite then it is natural to ask about what is beyond the bounds of the universe. Then, I think, it is logical to say that there is "nothing" beyond the universe where nothing means there is a total lack of energy. Let's call this the void. But then, if one asks what is beyond the void what could a reasonable answer be? I think the reasonable answer is nothing. In other words the void is infinite, A limitless amount of nothing strikes me as much more reasonable than a limitless amount of something. Furthermore, from a philosophical perspective it makes sense. Nothing and something define each other and definitions are a good thing from the point of view of understanding. So, here we have a universe that is currently expanding because of conversions of denser energy into space with "nothing" to impede it. We currently think that the current expansion of the universe has taken about 13.8 billion of our puny earth years, so far. It is natural for us to ask if the universe had changes before the beginning of this expansion (big bang). It is also natural for us to ask if there will be an end to this expansion. I have read speculations that eventually the black holes in the universe will consume all conventional matter and that they will eventually evaporate and leave a universe that consists of nothing but space. I find that idea to be a reasonable speculation. If we accept that notion then what, if anything, happens to the universe consisting of nothing but space? Does it make sense that the universe will then exist unchanged thereafter? If so, that means that somehow we were lucky enough to get a ticket on the one and only one way trip into the oblivion of a blob of space bounded by nothing. I find this to be a hard to swallow idea. My experience with the universe is that it has a tendency to change. Therefore, that naturally leads me to ask how can the universe get from a form where it is composed of all space to a form where it can, once again, explode with a big bang and begin a never ending cycle of expansion and contraction. This, I think, is a puzzle best left in the hands of physicists and astrophysicists. Regards

A few years ago I wrote a poem on this topic and I called it "Eternal Now" . Some may like it. ETERNAL NOW All energy is the Eternal Now The forms of energy move and mutate The motion continuum cannot stop The Eternal Now is always in flux The Eternal Now is reality There is no Time in the Eternal Now Humans are part of the Eternal Now Mind is the patterns that swirl in the brain Our senses and nerves submit to delay Knowing the Now, motion does not allow Minds always lag the Eternal Now Our minds only feed on what is past Delay in mind makes thought past, you see If your mind knows it, it's history Records are states of Now that persist Persistence is not permanent, though It is required for us to know Records tell stories of motions too Some are old, some are recently new The records in the Now define the past Records come via senses quite slow Records sometimes mutate as they flow Sense data is changed to memories Minds process only their memories We live the present most people insistBut based on a past that doesn't exist The future is not now, it isn't real So, where does that leave us? What is this deal? All of knowledge, what we think, and see Is abstraction of reality! How can we cope as part of abstraction? Understanding is the satisfaction! -------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2007 ETM

No, I don't think so! The past is represented in the present by records that have a degree of persistence. Nothing persists forever except the total energy of the universe. The record could be written words, a memory, a fossil, rings in a tree trunk. Even though these records exist in the present, they were initially created by events that are not happening in the current configuration ( the "now") of the universe. The energy of the universe is eternal but it's configuration is not. Past, present, and future are all about configuration but only the universal energy configuration of the now exists in reality. Reality is constantly changing. There is no way to pin it down as it is always different than it was and will become different than it is.. The universal "now" is the configuration of the total energy of the universe but it cannot be statically defined because it is constantly changing via a continuum of motion.

I agree with every word that admello has just said. It is a weird feeling to encounter someone who says things that exactly describe thoughts and writings that also independently came out of your own mind. Because, of encountering admello's initial posting on this topic I was the one that sent him a personal message asking him to return to the topic. It's not that I want a backer to gang up on other perspectives, One thing it accomplishes is to put the same idea in someone elses words. This can lead to further clarification or crystallization of an idea. Exposing as many facets of an idea as possible to the light of criticism and then attempt to return a light to the criticism is a good mechanism of progress. I find it interesting that I share a software background with admello and have also read a number of books by J. Krishnamurti. I'm not spiritual and I found disagreement with and contradiction in many things he says. However, he had a way of stimulating my own thoughts and that is also what we are all doing here in this forum. Another word of praise for this forum is that it allows the thoughts of all persons interested in a subject to merge without super strict banning of thought experiments and personal theories. In at least one other website forum the thought police are extremely active and I think that unnecessarily constrains possibilities. But, of course, they have every right to manage their forum as they see fit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Firist, I must confess my error in saying that atomic clocks made using cesiun are dependend on radioactive decay. Thanks for correcting my error. However, this error is not relative to my opinions about time. Orbits and spins and motion and decay rates are all time dependent, ONLY IF A THINKING ENTITY NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND THESE MOTIONS. BY WHAT MECHANISM IS ANY MOTION PHYSICALLY CAUSED BY OR PHYSICALLY DEPENDENT ON YOUR NOTION OF TIME.? IF THE UNIVERSE HAD NO THINKING CRITTERS HOW WOULD THAT PHYSICALY AFFECT THE PULSE OF A CESIUM ATOM OR THE SPIN OF PLANET EARTH? YOU ARE INVENTING TIME EXISTENCE OUT OF PURE THOUGHT. ORDERING IS A THOUGHT PROCESS THAT REQUIRES THE THINKER TO POSESS MEMORY CAPABILITY, OTHERWISE, HE OLNY UNDERSTANDS ONE STATIC VIDEO FRAME (ONE CONFIGURATION OF CONSTANTLY CHANGING ENERGY) AT A TIME AND THAT IS NO UNDERSTANDING AT ALL. ORDERING IS TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON THE OBSERVER AND HIS MOTION RELATIVE TO THE MOTION OF THE OBSERVED AND I THINK YOU WILL AGREE THAT THIS IS ACCEPTED PHYSICS. YES, NOW YOU GET IT! THE MOTIONS INVOLVED IN GROWING, DYING, AND FALLING OVER ARE INDEPENDENT OF AN OBSERVER AND HIS SEQUENTIALIZATION. MOTION HAPPENS AND YOUR NOTIONS OF TIME HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. YOU ARE ASSERTING MOTION MEASUREMENT AND OR UNDERSTANDING IS A REAL PHYSICAL THING APPART FROM AN OBSERVER . IT TAKES A THINKING CRITTER TO MEASURE OR TO UNDERSTAND AND THAT IS WHERE YOU FALL INTO THE TRAP OF MIXING THE OBSERVED WITH THE OBSERVER. Regards

I agree with "roosh" that time is not a real physical thing. It is a mental construct. Roosh points out that "how we measure time" is a big clue to it's true nature. It is always done using one repetitive motion to measure another motion and this is what is called a clock. Einstein is quoted as saying words to the effect, "Time is what you read on a clock". I think he was dead serious. roosh also points out that the memory of a thinking entity is required the unserstand past and future. It is also required to understand motion, which is the thing that defines time. The eyes see a thing that is moving and transports via nerve signals to the brain and the brain records these images in the sequence that they occur. Then the brain processes this old sequence of information information via internal mechanisms that have been embedded in us by evolution. We automatically sequentialize everything we sense and store the information in memory for processing with ideas that we have learned. Our ideas about time have come a long way since we posessing a small brain crawled out of some primeval soup. Now it is time to realize that thinking time is a real physical thing is confusing the observed and the observer. When we observe motion we automatically understand it to some degree because of how we are mentally constructed. Then when enough education has taken place we can understand complicated relative motions of multiple things. We have built ckocks into all of our computers and other motion measuring devices such as oscilloscopes . Roosh also makes an excellent point when he says " every observer can only ever experience the present moment" and he points out that a real past and a real present cannot co-exist with a real present. but what is a real "present"? what is the "now" and what is our relationship to it? The now, as we mentally perceive it, is really the recent past that has been processed eyes, ears, nerve cells, and converted into electrical signals that go to and are saved in our very short term memory. Our conscious brain then processes the encoded information and comes to an understanding. These electro-chemical biological functions do not happen instantaneously. There is a delay. So, you see, we actually mentally exist in the recent past which we call the present because we can't defy the laws of physics and do any better. Technicaly, we always mentally live in the past and our brains draw all conclusions, develop all thoughts, achieve all understanding based on records (memories) of past events. There are many kinds of records, such as, books, electronic recordings, fossils, sedimentary layers of minerals, etc. From these records of past events we construct a mental life that uses the shorthand notion of time to deal with events caused by motion. Motion is and was and will be a real physical thing and it is a form of energy. Here is a little mental exercise: Imagine our early universe, full of objects in relative motion, and a mythical god snaps her fingers and all thinking entities vanish. Given this situation would motion still exist? Of course it would, and this is consistent with all of the motions in our young universe existing before thinking entities arrived on the scene. However, there is no way to measure the motions without the thinking entity even though there are plenty of repetitive clocks. Planets are orbiting stars and spinning on an axis and Cesium atoms are decaying at a very constant rate. However, these natural clocks have no way of being viewed or used as clocks without a thinking entity. Therefore, time is dependent upon the existence of thinking entities but motion and space are not. I think it is obvious that anything that is dependent upon the existence of a thinking entity to perceive it, cannot be an independent real physical reality. For example, all gods. Time is not a physically real thing and a time travel machine will never exist. It;s just a smart ape's mental tool.

Time is a mental construct not a physical reality.. As a mental construct time can only exist in a brain and it is used to measure motion. As a mental construct, it can have a beginning and an end. Current physics has time starting at the moment of the big bang because at that moment there is nothing to use as a clock but, of course, there are no thinking entities either. What we use as a clock is arbitrary and a clock is just something that moves at a relativly consistent speed and repeats at a relatively consistent rate. We thinking entities should not confuse the observer wih the observed..

Physicists generally agree that the singularity causing the big bang also caused inflation. I accept that inflation is the creation of space. I accept that current black holes are also singularities. I assert that all black holes are currently causing inflation via the creation of space. I assert that the creation of space is really a transformation of mass into space and that space is a form of energy. I assert that the "dark energy" spoken of as the reason for the expansion of the universe is really "clear energy" that is commonly called space. I accept that all black holes will eventually evaporate due primarily to the transformation of the energy of mass into the energy of space. I accept that gravity has infinite range. I assert that after the black holes evaporate the universe will stop expanding but there will still be plenty of mass in existence. I assert that gravity will begin to accelerate all mass toward a location at the overall center of gravity. I assert that as all mass continues to increase in velocity the total energy of all space in the universe will be increasingly transformed into kinetic energy. I assert that this acceleration of mass will continue like a bunch of runaway trains all heading for the same station and will eventually crash and form the mother of all black holes. I assert that at that instant a big bang will occur and a vast amount of mass will be instantly transformed into space and the rest of the energy will form a very large blob of quark-gluon plasma. I assert that this process is how the universe experiences an eternal bang crunch cycle and that all energy is conserved and is finite. I assert that the question of what is outside the universe is best answered by the word "nothing", not even space since space is a form of something called energy. I assert that "dark matter" is largely, if not totally, composed of the quantum particles that pop into and out of existence throughout all of space and is nothing more than a transformation of energy. I assert that the concept of the existence of multiple universes is invalid because the range of gravity is infinite. "In the end, there can be only one" That is all I have to say about the big bang. Regards.

I agree with those how say time is a mental construct and not a physical reality. I agree that motion is real physically and is a form of energy but time is not a form of energy. I agree that time is nothing more than a way to measure motion and to measure anything there must be a thinking entity to do the measuring. A clock is nothing more than a repetitive motion with a reasonably consistent repetition rate. We thinkers cannot even think of much without using the notion of time because we were born in a universe where everything is in motion relative to most other things that exist. To be anything remotely close to intelligent we must have and use the mental construct of time to deal with our environment of motion. Viewing time as physically real is a confusion of the thinking observer with the observed. This means that a notion of time, much less time as a physical reality, cannot exist apart from a thinking entity. Imagine our early universe, full of objects in relative motion, and a mythical god snaps her fingers and all thinking entities vanish. Given this situation would motion still exist? Of course it would, and this is consistent with all of the motions in our young universe existing before thinking entities arrived on the scene. However, there is no way to measure the motions without the thinking entity even though there are plenty of repetitive clocks. Planets are orbiting stars and spinning on an axis and Cesium atoms are decaying at a very constant rate. However, these natural clocks have no way of being viewed or used as clocks without a thinking entity. Therefore, time is dependent upon the existence of thinking entities but motion and space are not. I, therefore, assert that anything that is dependent upon the existence of a thinking entity to perceive it cannot be an independent real physical reality.

I think time only runs in our heads and is not a part of physical reality. You might be surprised that there are a (admitted minority) of physicists that are of that opinion. One notable guy is Julian Barbour but there are others, however that does not mean that they all agree on particulars. Some that think time is a mental construct as I do but also think that space is not real. I think that space is real and also think that all real things are forms of energy including space.. Us humans are so wrapped up in measuring and explaining that we find it pretty easy to get our thoughts confused with reality. Our brains invented time when we were pre-human. How else can the brain of a predator attempt to predict the motion of a foe or a prey? Cause and effect at our level of existence is obvious. When we look at the really big and the really small levels of existence things are less obvious. There are many clocks in nature and as our intelligence progressed we discovered them and applied them to our problems and measurements. The universe has no problems or measurements. We have invented some pretty accurate clocks that scientists now use to measure things. Somehow, they think they are measuring time but they are really measuring relative motion. There is no time continuum there is only a motion continuum. Everything that exists moves and everything that exists is energy. All energy is connected either directly or indirectly. There are no multiple universes, there is only one. If there are other vast organizations of energy that are beyond our current ability to sense or theoretically anticipate then these too are a part of the one and only cohesive universe. There are no voids on non energy in our universe and our universe is not bounded by a void of nothing. The universe does not need to be defined by an opposite of existence. We sometimes get wrapped up and twisted around the axle of our language. If I say that the universe is bounded by a void of absolutely nothing, not even space, where does that assertion leave me in understanding anything? Nowhere!!! To assert that space is a void is to say it is the nothing of non-existence. I feel quite confident in asserting that when I move my hand it is not pushing aside molecules of atoms to occupy nothing. I feel much better asserting that the atoms of my hand are pushing aside a certain amount of space which fills in where my hand was very much like moving my hand under water. Further, I assert that the space within my hands atoms is trapped there in those structures because it is a part of their total energy and they cannot exist without it. All of the preceding is, of course, not science. But, it is a philosophy that some scientist might choose to investigate.