A Few Questions About The Universe | Vital Football

A Few Questions About The Universe

BodyButter

Vital Football Legend
Given that the universe is only around 10,000 years old... just kidding.

Some of you guys have a much better understanding of the universe than I do so I'm hoping you can help me with a few questions:

My understanding is that the universe is expanding but that expansion is slowing down. It's also my understanding that scientists expect the universe to eventually start contracting and fall in on itself.

1) Is that roughly correct?

2) What happens then? I mean, is there a critical density beyond which the universe would then explode again or would it continually get more and more dense and, like a Darwin Award winner, dense itself out of existence?
 
As far as I understand it, and it isn't my strongest subject, the Expansion is increasing in speed, not slowing down. One theory at one point was that the universe's expansion may slow down, and then gravity would pull all the objects back together until everything was at one point, which would then cause another big bang. I'm not sure that's the accepted position now.

Rosie will be able to tell you more. He's ace on Space!!!
 
Michu Kaku is the best to watch on Youtube to explain all this stuff, he is easy to understand aswell makes slow coaches like me feel clever after watching his programmes until about a day after watching it and forgetting what the thing was about lol

The speed of the universe is increasing as Heath says, but there are now theories in which the bubble universe theory exists aswell where imagine a room full of floating bubbles and in each one of them bubbles is a universe with different laws of physics, and when one of them bubbles collides into another bubble you get a big bang so in effect there is infinite multi universe's floating around and they create other universe's over and over re-using the same matter etc inside that bubble (universe)
 
I believe the most recent measurements show the expansion of the universe to be accelerating. It is postulated that this is being caused by dark energy.

On a side note, I once heard a chemist come with a great put down to astro-physicist Brian Cox. He said that chemistry is superior to physics because they don't describe everything they don't understand as "dark". Well it amused me......and Brian too at the time.
 
I want to hear some views on what effect this acceleration is likely to have on Villa's chances of landing a trophy next season.
 
LOL VOTN thats a good en, Brian Cox is quality i think he is a sound bloke and would make science at school fun,

What i always wonder about is what if the universe is just a tiny part of something else like an atom of another life force, as in our body we have the same elements we see and find in the universe iron mercury etc so is it possible that there are worlds within worlds if you could zoom in or out enough to see,
 
BBJ - 27/6/2013 21:53

I want to hear some views on what effect this acceleration is likely to have on Villa's chances of landing a trophy next season.

That depends on the acceleration of the universe to the acceleration of Villa and whether the maths balances out. I would presume we will have to accelerate faster the the universe for that to happen so I doubt it will make any difference, though we will find out the answer to the equation next May.

Hope that helps



:94: :94: :94:
 
I remember bits and pieces of a conversation with a friend of mine who happens to be a physicist/aerospace engineer. I think the theory is after the big bang the universe rapidly explanded, expansion slowed and recently (like last billion years)/ at present expansion is speeding up exponentially.

I know there are several theories as to what will happen next (not that I can tell you what they entail) but by that stage our sun will have destroyed the solar system. Plenty of time for us to find a new planet though, that is a couple of billion years away.
 
The expansion of the universe is accelerating. One theory is that it will eventually slow down and gravity and other forces will pull it all together until it reaches a singularity called the Big Crunch.

Another theory is that the expansion will continue to accelerate and eventually every object is moving away from one another faster than the speed of light so the observable universe is non existent to the extent that even a single atom would appear to be an infinite distance from the nearest atom. The universe will effectively be destroyed in the sense that nothing can or ever will interact with anything else ever again. This is called "the big rip" because the expansion has pulled the universe apart

Another theory is the multi verse hypothesis, which suggests that when a part of space moves away faster than the speed of light because of the expansion of the universe it could break off to form its own universe. As the observable universe is so small there could be infinite multi verses that cannot be observed.
 
Be carefully when you see the word “Accelerate” when talking about physics. Accelerate means a change in velocity (speed & direction), either going faster or slower, you can in fact you can Accelerate to a stop.

I think current theory is that the expansion rate is constant, think of ripples in water when you throw a blues nose in for a bath, the ripples seem to be faster when they are close to the impact. In fact they travel at the same speed (minus drag), it just the ripples have more of an area to cover further away from the impact.

Energy (hence matter) cannot be created or destroyed. That means there is a finite amount, once all this has been expended into “space” the universe will stop expanding. At that point its anyone guess. Hopefully by then Villa will have won a pot or two