BAM

Discussing this with a friend and still don't know what to think. Just wow. If this holds then that's a HUMONGOUS leap for science.

It's not 'figured out'. It's just another theory in a long string of them.

HA. HUMANS ARE STILL STUPID AFTER ALL.

That's why the question mark. Go tend your rapidly decaying houselawn.

Anyways, anyone else got some (intelligent) input into the matter?

All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.

So say we all.

Oh great. We are living in DC comics.

Um, God created the universe, dumbass.

this theory gives me a raging booner

Doesn't sound like it's testable by experiment particularly much, so I guess it's not much more than an internally consistent mathematical model.

This was an intriguing part of the article, though:

So their "results" follow directly from an approximation of a simplification of a non-testable theory...

[Edit - Conclusion: Humans can be utterly stupid at times]

You'd be surprised by the number of theories that are based on an "approximation" or some "leap of faith" into a certain set of variables that happens to yield the result we want without knowing why...

that aside, I remember a talk given by a guest lecturer at my university in regards to this and it had a similar premise...I'm trying to remember the guys name as he has won the noble prize (i think) and is quite famous...ah bugger it can't remember

anyways, I'm not one for getting deep into the maths of these models as invariably it is over my head, still, how he presented the idea (similar to what is said in the link) is that certain properties of a previous universe will pass over into the next. Problem being that none of them are really measurable.

Still, if we look at our universe and the models that we *think* describe it's evolution and say well, "we know we got these elements from our "twin" universe, assuming it had other similar elements to our current universe what would it have looked like?"

So...basically they are going from a premise that can't be measured or proven and then inferring a lot of stuff that may or may not be true....

sounds like a cosmology theory if ever I've heard one!!!

never the less, it's interesting to think about.

Yes, constructing the theory this way is sound. But then you take the model you've produced and verify it by experiment, no?



... and that also can't be measured or proven.


(Just to throw in an xkcd comic.)

This thread started out good but it's going to turn out really bad.

I read about this last week in New Scientist (yes I need to get out more). Interesting stuff, but I immediately think the answer to

"what was there before the big bang"
"Oh, this mirror universe - we appear to be going in expansion/compression cycles or something"

Begs the question:

"well where did THAT one come from then, smart arse?"

My immediate reaction aside, it's undeniably interesting to read about.

90% of theoretical physics is nonsense, and its all one big waste of time.

These brilliant minds could be spending their time helping humanity, instead they squander it.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

*boom*

Does this mean we can go to the edge of the universe and see our cowboy selves?

Yeah, but theories based on approximate conclusions can sometimes (and have been) biased in that you are specifically trying to look for something in an experiment to match a theory and often ignoring somethings that are staring them right in the face.

Theories made in this way are bad;

Sit at table --> think of theory --> play with maths until numbers work --> design experiment to validate theory (if possible) --> look for data that agrees with theory --> "prove" theory.

then 5-10 years down the line someone will come along and most likely dis-prove the theory with data from another experiment or by re-analyzing the same data in a different way.

This is the proper way to make theories;

Design experiment to investigate a known phenomena --> collect data on EVERYTHING --> look at data --> create theory --> test theory on new experiment

-- the two ways work best together in practice, no major experiment will be built without some possibility of finding/proving something new.

I'm an experimentalist at heart, I like to do the experiment and analysis "blind" in that I look at anything and everything that may be of interest and then try to understand it. This is the major problem in building an experiment to just test a theory, there is so much pressure and so much expectation to find what you want, the actual science ends up being poor. Sometimes it just as important to dis-prove a good theory as it is to prove one.

I'm not saying all theories based on "pure" maths are bad, some have been proven to be really sound, but most of the "important" theories have also been based off data or known principles when they are been derived.

This theory of previous universes is nice and all, but we'll never be able to prove it.

How could this be at all helpful?

http://xkcd.com/171/

This is retarded. All it is is some very creative men sitting around and thinking "Hmm.. we have to come up with a theory about the creation of the universe that doesn't involve God, so it can be scientific... Oh I know! What if our universe stemmed from ANOTHER universe!!!"

Well, here's a question. What proof or evidence is there of that? And if there is proof or evidence, then where did *that* universe come from?

The fact is, we're no closer to understanding the creation of the universe than we've ever been. And quite frankly, we shouldn't bother trying, because it really doesn't matter anyway, and we're never gonna know for sure. We should spend more time working on problems that actually affect our race, like cancer and AIDS and stuff.

Besides it ends up being circular. If you come up with some theory for the creation of this universe, you just push back the idea of existence's origin even further. You don't actually get anywhere. Pointless conjecture.

So it's quite clear now that we are obviously the 2nd iteration of the Matrix, and Jesus perhaps == Neo ? I know I'm convinced

Meh. I'm still waiting for a patch. I hate these beta releases.

Hurr. Not everything's about religion man--it would help the scientific community out immensely. Apparently more experiments to prove it are supposed to be done when the Large Hadron Collider's finished, but if they could somehow prove that this is indeed how the universe started then we could predict the end, figure out why certain quarks act how they do, and then there's the more outlandish stuff like time travel.


Read above.


To a point, but at some point you have to go "this is how things began". There's no need for anything to have been created, there are universal constants to consider.

I dunno, I figured James Bond especially might know more since they're going to be doing more experiments there (and apparently destroying our world with black holes <_<) but apparently not.

You mean the flying spaghetti monster?

Anyway to reply to the last message of "there has to be a point of beginning" I've always had a hard time buying the "infinite regress is impossible" argument. I don't see a problem with an infinite regress, we just can't really comprehend infinity so we like to think that it's impossible.

...That's why it's only a theory.

being good at math makes you good at biochemistry :downs:

here's a question, sarn:

where do you work? what do you do, or what do you plan on doing?

wait, don't bother answering the question. unless you're researching "cancer and AIDS and stuff" you're a waste of carbon. you should either switch to medicine or kill yourself because anything you do is worthless regardless of talent, ability, education, the saturation of research positions and grant money, or the chance that anything you may discover or work on might improve life for people who do not have and might not ever get cancer or AIDS. there's no room for other endeavors because clearly it's beyond comprehension how anything else could possibly improve lives.

Unspeakably retarded opinion.

Edit: Is the wasting illness that makes people say crap like "SCIENCE IS A WASTE OF TIME UNLESS IT'S HELPING [trendy cause]" the same one that causes veganism?

This isn't the first theory I've heard that talks about pre-big band. I watched a pretty interesting TV show about it.

.

The LHC will allow us to push closer to the moments just after the/our big bang but I don't see at the moment any of the experiments on the ring looking into the origin of the universe, more like the origins/building blocks of our current matter, i.e. are quarks the smallest bits? what causes matter to have mass, charge-parity violation those sort of things.

as for black holes, let me just say that the energies we are creating in the experiment are no greater than those occurring in particle collisions right now in our upper atmosphere, only difference is that the ones we create will be in a vacuum and occur a lot more often. Yes there is a chance to create a small black hole, but there hasn't been one created in earths atmosphere since its inception so I don't worry I had to say all that as it's one of the big things the media love to talk about.

the next big accelerator after the LHC was/is supposed to be the ILC (international linear collider) but that is still some many years off, 10-15 at least and I don't really see that answering any creation theories. It also needs a crap load more of funding first...

To be honest I like the theory of repeating universes, but there will always be a question of what came before the first one? Thing is, there might not be an answer, the universe could just be.

We are race that are constantly looking for answers for our existence and a reason for being. In the end there might not be an answer that will fit in nicely with any religion or any of the beliefs that have been installed into our consciousness' over the past millennia that like us to believe there was a beginning.

Existence, our universe, might just be a revolving entity that ends and begins again without any care or thought to those that inhabit it and strive to understand it.

I skimmed over almost all the thread, all I can say is that no one really has more authority of this topic in this community than James Bond.

Time travel? Even if that weren't totally impractical, I can't thing of a single good thing resulting from that. None of that is tangible or realistic.




What do you mean, began? You think existence just randomly winked into being? It's either created or infinite.

It's also nice how the smaller a black hole is the quicker it evaporates. A black hole with the mass of a large mountain would last, what, a few ms? You pretty much need stellar levels of mass and energy to form one that's going to stick around for a while.

It's always driven me up the wall. News companies know better, but their readers don't, and being a tabloid for idiots makes more money than accuracy.

Why can't something just "wink" into being??

and if it did just wink into being what was before could never ever be comprehended or understood by our race at the moment.

[edit]This thread is getting very "deep", I'm off to go climbing now, have fun [/edit]

There's plenty of tangibility and realism to what I said. Is it all science fiction? Sure. But could it all maybe be possible one day? Maybe. And if so, how could time travel NOT help us? Seeing how the universe was created, watching humans evolve, noting how things in history happened exactly, etc etc. And you completely failed to mention the fact that this could explain how certain quarks react. You just fail to want to see anything because 1) you're a cynic and 2) you're religious (and yes, that should be a double negative )


That's what I said. It never necessarily began, it could just exist. Meaning it would, inevitably, be infinite. And it could've just randomly winked into being, who knows. You certainly don't, despite the fact that you've claimed to know something that has eluded millions of scientists over the millenia. Grats.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't trying to get an accurate image of what the universe was like prior to the big bang require some violation of the uncertainty principle? By definition wouldn't it have wiped out every trace of the last universe?

aye, pairs of particles and antiparticles 'wink' into being all the time, then annihilate - why can't universes?

that's terrifying

Fine. Prove that the universe as we know it didn't come into being on July 6, 1987. It's the same basic principal.




Stephen Hawking would beg to differ.

You just tried calling out a guy who works at CERN on his physics. The **** is wrong with you?


Stephen Hawking has written many short stories/anecdotes/books on the idea of time travel and the idea that time itself doesn't even exist. I don't think he'd beg to differ too much.

I should roll out my homer simpson / NERDS picture right about now.

WOULD YOU GET A LOAD OF THE NERDS?!

<.<
>.>

*annihilates*