Strange

Good catch. I wasn't very clear what I was trying to say (even in my own head). Can I get away with saying I meant "a period of time equal to the current age of the universe"? No. Oh, well. I was trying to remember a figure I saw that gave the probability in terms of a number of gigayears , but I don't know where that came from now.

Nowhere does that say anything about a value falling below zero. It does say that the equation of state of dark matter energy (the pressure divided by the energy density) might be approximately -1. That is the only specific value I can see mentioned. So why do you keep claiming that bits of text say things that they don't?

If I had read it, I would probably recommend Katie Mack's new book on the subject

Excellent approach. There is not a strong consensus. From purely quantum considerations, the measurement of various constants (including the mass of the Higgs boson and the top quark) put constraints on whether we are in a false vacuum state and how close to being metastable the universe is. This is generally agreed, but the data is not precise enough to come to a definite conclusion one way or the other. This is complicated by trying to take gravity into account. My understanding is that the presence of mass in the universe appears to make the possibility of the universe being in a metastable state much less likely. But we probably need a quantum theory of gravity to really understand that. It is possible that the universe is in a metastable state and could, at some point decay to a lower (true vacuum) state. However, the probability of that happening is so low it is not likely to happen in the lifetime of the universe. After all, it hasn't happened yet. It is also possible that the universe is not in a false vacuum state at all. In summary, it is an interesting theoretical problem in physics but not something that needs to be worried about in any practical sense. (Apart from anything else, no one would ever know if it happened!) For the second question, I would also refer to the False vacuum wikipedia page as a starting point.

OK. So you think Newtonian gravity is completely wrong. Interesting. Only observation can show that you are wrong. That is how science proceeds. People who have studied science know that "common sense " is pretty much the worst basis for deciding on the correctness of ideas. OK. You are unable to support your personal beliefs. That is not surprising, it is the nature of quasi-religious beliefs to be unsupported by evidence or facts. Yep. Thank you for confirming that (rather obvious) fact. I have just started reading that too. Interesting. Although, again, it is just a claimed principle not one that must be true. There is an entire website dedicated to correlations such as number of people who drowned in swimming pools versus number of films Nicolas Cage has appeared in. I would love to know what the causal relationship is. Presumably it involves an undetectable ether.

! Moderator Note Stop bringing your pet theory into every discussion. You already have three threads open for this purpose. (And one to complain about the fact.) Please follow the rules. This is not your blog.

Classical logic can be shown to be "wrong" in the same sense that Newtonian gravity or Euclidean geometry is. In other words, incomplete (as you will know, it is extremely rare for any scientific theory to be shown to be completely wrong; I can only think of two examples in the history of science.) If you are unwilling to change what you believe even when observation shows that you are wrong, then that is religion not science. (And that may explain why you are clinging to an old idea that has been abandoned by serious scientists. What next? Phlogiston?) Where is this principle documented? As it is so important, you must be able to provide a reference.

I would start by asking for some evidence that the universe came from nothing. There is no point asking about a creator unless there is evidence of an act of creation.

You have been repeatedly corrected with explanations about why you are wrong. But you just repeat the same incorrect statements over and over. You also frequently claim that an article says something but when others read it they explain it doesn't say that. You insist it does but refuse to quote the bit where it says what you claim. So, effectively, you are making up stories about what the article says. As you are unwilling to actually listen and learn anything, I will stop trying to correct you. It is a waste of time. I will answer direct questions (when I can). But any incorrect statements will , from now on, just be met with "no".

But again, no quotation of what it said. Why? Nope. But the measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson did put constraints on the stability of the vacuum.

Then stop reading things you don't understand.

Please quote the exact sentence where it says the cosmological constant is less than zero. (Because it doesn't.)

WHICH OTHER WIKI? Is this the Wikipedia that only exists inside your head and says all sorts of nonsensical and plainly false things? Why not provide a link to whatever you are referring to?

Which Wiki page? Why not provide a link to what you are talking about. Why do you think the cosmological constant has changed? It was originally assumed to be zero. When the accelerating expansion was discovered, the value was found the be slightly greater than zero. It doesn't say it is "under 0". It says (note that Λ is the cosmological constant): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant Which is greater than zero, not under 0. The cosmological constant (as far as I know) has nothing to do with false vacuum. The rest of your statement is completely the wrong way round. Vacuum decay could only happen if the current vacuum were metastable. If the current vacuum state were a "true vacuum" then there would be nothing for it to decay into. I am going to go with: you did not grasp it. Given the evidence so far, it is the most plausible answer. You have misunderstood nearly everything. People have tried to clarify but you have either ignored or misunderstood their explanations. You need to take time to learn things from the beginning in a structured way. You can't just leap into the middle of things and expect to understand.

Nope. But what if observations show your invented principle to be wrong.

! Moderator Note Maybe not say anything about it.

And, of course, none of these descriptions are what light "is"; they all just model its behaviour.

Good pint. Treating light as rays is very useful for many purposes form optics to computer graphics, but it doesn't really correspond to what light "is", just how it behaves.

This page: https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/scientific-notation.html (which might be useful to the OP - and apologies if it is too basic) just calls it "the digits". It also goes on to describe engineering notation which, as an engineer, I have always found very confusing. Wikipedia gives three names for it: coefficient, significand and mantissa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation Although the discussion of the naming is slightly off topic, hopefully the links are useful to the OP... (but we had better drop it now!)

You know what to do if you don't like it: concentrate on getting on getting your papers published in proper peer reviewed journals instead of wasting your time trying to convince random members of an internet forum. If you don't want to be treated like a crank, then don't behave like one.

No, these brown dwarfs are orbiting the galaxy, in the same way that our Sun is orbiting the galaxy.

It might surprise you to know that you can do both. One of those is that you cannot ignore observational evidence (therefore "no observation can force me to give up this principle" is an anti-scientific stance). It was a statement about the theory that is based on the mathematical model of spacetime: that this theory is incomplete and will, eventually, need to be replaced (i.e. the theory is "doomed").

Nearly all stars are orbiting the milky way at roughly the same speed. Some are a bit faster or a bit slower. Some are moving inwards a bit and some outwards. Some are moving "up" and some down. Some are orbiting others. Some have had interactions that cause them to be on a path that leaves the milky way. And so on.

I think in your (implicit) assumption that there will still be a continuous "wall" (wavefront?) of light at a great distance. If you look at something sufficiently far away then you will receive very few photons: some might go just above you head, some to your right and, every now and again, one might enter your eye (or telescope). Some images of very distant objects are taken over very long periods because it takes hours or days to catch enough photons to make an image. But your model does explain why the intensity falls off with the square of the distance: the photons are spread out over the surface of a sphere whose area is proportional to radius squared.

Errrr.... thanks. I think. (It doesn't really answer my question, though.)