If it takes place at the speed of light, we won't see it coming.
Higgs data shows alternate reality will SWALLOW UNIVERSE
That Higgs Boson we all got excited about last year because it would reveal the mysteries of the universe? One boffin now says his analysis of the data suggests the Higgs is, in fact, an obituary for the universe. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston yesterday, Joseph Lykken of …
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 08:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
And I don't see why the hell we wouldn't just step over into the oncoming alternate universe when the time comes. Like passing between the passenger car and the dining car on the train?
"Oh good, look - the dessert universe is here. Let's everyone step on over and get some cake and cookies and a cup of tea now."
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 13:21 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
"You could always try working on a different number base that would make pi expressible in just a few digits."
Pi is an irrational number (i.e. a real number that cannot be expressed as a fraction), so the only way to do that would be a base-pi number system, which would make every single other number irrational instead. Not an improvement...
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 15:14 GMT Frumious Bandersnatch
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
re: How quaintly Euclidean...
I see what you're trying to do, but any of these "alternative universe" theories are rooted in maths. Even if they exist, there will be no universe where 2+2 = 4.1 or Pi isn't both a constant and an irrational number. The fundamental rules describing the geometry of alternative universes has to be the same as ours according to all the theories. The most likely scenario is that physical constants like ratios of fundamental forces or binding energies needed for chemical bonds or decay rates or the like could be subtly different, though it's vaguely possible (in a mathematical sense) that if a particular string theory happens to describe the Whole Sort of General Mishmash that is the multiverse, and the alternative universe has slightly different parameters, then we might actually be able to see extra dimensions there on a macroscopic scale. That would probably be the weirdest possibility. Even so, the metric spaces of our universe would also apply there, so Euclidean distance would still apply on some scales while a Minkowski space metric (which still requires Pi!) would be more natural in others.
I see that a previous poster got a downvote for suggesting alternative lead-based lifeforms. You'd have to tweak the fundamental physical constants by a massive amount before that would even be a remote possibility. Before you'd even managed to get there, you'd find that the stars had gone out due to not being able to self-sustain their fusion reaction. Then we'd have a lot more to worry about than alien invaders. Something like Ice-9 would be a lot more plausible than Pb-based life.
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 18:05 GMT relpy
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
@ Frumious Bandersnatch
There's no requirement for any universe that the ratio of the circumference of the diamter of a circle to its radius will be either irrational, transcendental, or constant. In fact we live in one where this is not the case. But yeah okay, I'm trying to be cute and possibly not doing it very well.
As an aside I'm not sure any of these theories "require" "Pi" as such. In fact I think that may ultimately be a circular argument. Rather I suggest that the formulation of mathematics that we have chosen happens to use Pi amongst other values as a fundamental constant. There are other, equally valid, mathematics - some axiomatically different, others possibly merely different formulations of the same underlying maths. No doubt each of these would have an equivalent value in the place of Pi - possibly to re-inject the irrationality as it were - but you hopefully get the point. Essentially, if we lived in a less locally Euclidean space would our trigonometry use Pi = 3.14... and then what would our maths look like? But does it matter or make an actual difference - not really no!
As another aside - ref your comment on the Pb based life forms - if the universe was so structured we'd have nothing whatsoever to worry about. This is not why the universe is structure the way it is, but it is one of the reasons we get to make fatuous comments on it :-)
Beer, it's a half. And it's cute. Even if I'm not.
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 19:46 GMT Frumious Bandersnatch
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
Don't get me wrong... it was a fine attempt at making a joke, and I'm all for that, but the part of me that holds maths in such amazement(*) just flat out refuses to even consider Pi being some other value, even in an alternative universe. I literally just doesn't compute. A universe where e**(pi*i) isn't -1 is as unimaginable as one in which effects precede their causes or don't have causes at all, or where entropy doesn't grind everything down. Besides, even "non-Euclidean" geometries (eg, geometries without the parallel postulate) don't mean that they don't use and need Pi. If you take a plane journey through three points on the globe, the triangle you trace out has >180 degrees, so it's non-Euclidean, but it's obvious that if you go up a dimension from the 2-D Cartesian representation to the earth as a 3d sphere that everything still works and revolves around Pi ...
(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 20:52 GMT relpy
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
okay so you're right in as much as if you choose to base your maths on a euclidean geometry then euclidean rules apply. the point is that yu don't need to do that. that however comes with repercussions.
I can't imagine a formuation of geometry / maths in general that doesn't require irrational numbers - in fact I don't think the idea makes sense, so ultimately all I'm really doing is arguing over whether we call the the fudge factor that converts our non-euclidean view to euclidean and back "Pi" - and this is a possible conversion even if we might choose not to do it.
sadly i lost my love and wonder of maths somewhere in my first year :-(
unlike beer :-)
-
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 10:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
As it happens we don't live in Euclidean space ... we just live in a universe that can be (mostly) explained by Euclidean mathematics. Maths as you might not have guessed isn't real, it doesn't actually exist.
That aside, alternative universes are all very mind games and fun, but we really have no reliable evidence to suggest that the universe we know isn't the only possible universe ... sure the next one doesn't have to be carbon based ... but that doesn't make a circle any different than the circle we know!
More likely, this bubble will look like to those on the inside, some 13 billion years later, to be very much like what we call the big bang. The possibility of surviving the moving will be zero.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 15:17 GMT sisk
Re: The laws of physics will be different in the encroaching bubble.
Neat idea from a sci-fi/fantasy novel I read once (Starshield or some such....I forget exactly):
The (very unrealistic) setting in that novel has laws of physics that aren't constant across the universe. Earth had, about 10,000 years ago, drifted from one physics zone (which was based on magic) to another (with the laws of physics as we know them) and humanity's days of living in a different set of the laws of physics are the basis for many legends of powerful wizards and dragons and such. What I found most interesting about it was that a species leaving their home planet for the first time will invariably assume that the laws of physics are constant right up until their engines stop working because the laws of physics have suddenly changed.
Of course it's all fiction, but it makes for a fun thought experiment, especially in light of this 'alternate universe is going to eat us' thing.
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 13:40 GMT larokus
Re: :-D
technically elevators do not 'fall' as you and Hollywood have proposed unless the many multiple safety factored cables were to be cut, as the counter weight is in fact considerably heavier than the elevator itself. If the brakes and stopping systems were to completely fail the elevator would in fact shoot upwards at breakneck speed. I admit though that jumping out to the alternate universe of steady ground would still prove hazardous.
as an aside and back to topic, sounds like I have plenty of time to buy more sweet sweet tech devices and bust plenty of nuts all over my hot girlfriend before we are completely wiped out so frankly dear i don't give a damn
-
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 14:08 GMT Gav
why not now?
And even if we could see it coming, what would we do? The article suggest we'd "put our affairs in order", I more expect that our affairs would go it quite the opposite direction.
What isn't explained here is why he is so confident it won't happen for billions of years. What's stopping it happen now?
-
-
-
-
Saturday 23rd February 2013 02:42 GMT cordwainer 1
Re: Moot
How is a statement of probable fact "trolling"? Humanity, sadly, doesn't seem to be overcoming its tendency toward mass violence, or the bigotry inherent in the "us vs. them" fear-based struggle for survival. I certainly hope DAM is wrong, but he's hardly the first to point out we're rapidly running out of sufficient resources for an ever-increasing population. . . and, as a species, unwilling to work together to share those we have.
-
-
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 10:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Moot
I'd suggest that for the majority of mankind's existence they didn't even think in such 'global' terms and on a localised scale more than enough 'tribes/cultures/societies' really have been wiped from the face of the earth ... however in relatively modern times where humanity has been dominated by linear religions that welcome the end of the world ... such idiots have been proven wrong time and time again ... however, they weren't looking for the rational end of the world they were of course expecting God to step in and end it! Hence they were looking in all the wrong places for the end!
-
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 13:57 GMT larokus
---> @ iuniverse2.0
filled with uppity girls drinking flavoured water and walking staring at their chick iphones omg'ing all over twittbook and faceter to prove their worth and great knowledge of hollyworld while professing right from wrong and how killing animals is wrong while eating fish sushi. (urrgh my ex-gf comes exactly to mind, completely itarded oh and SO tech savvy, like.. come on, cause like, all these apps I have), and men's jeans only coming in 'skinny' where men are longer men but we should all just be 'metro' (isn't that ironic)
-- just fkn shoot me since the hipsters refuse to all die
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 06:48 GMT Steven Roper
Re: Spider Robinson covered this a few years ago
James Blish also examined this "bubble universe" topic in 1959 with his Cities In Flight saga. In the final book, A Clash of Cymbals, he describes a collision between two universes (this one of matter and another of antimatter, since the Higgs wasn't known about back then) and how this entire universe would be engulfed as a result.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 09:51 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Re: Spider Robinson covered this a few years ago
There's something like it in Greg Egan's Disapora, too, although his bubble isn't advancing at
c. [[WARNING: he spends half the book is more than 3 spatial dimensions.]]I think A Clash of Cymbals is stretching a bit. (But why hasn't Hollywood made any of them into movies?)
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 10:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Spider Robinson covered this a few years ago
Not dumb and stupid enough for Hollywood. I watched the last Batman film with the family, over 2 hours of my life I won't get back again (guys, you could disable any fusion bomb with small arms, you just need to disrupt the trigger. More holes in the plot than in a tonne of P-doped silicon). By comparison, Blish's wildest fantasy is close to sober fact.
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 06:51 GMT asdf
yawn
The string theorists have been saying this for years. Susskind covered this quite well in The Cosmic Landscape (recommended largely math free high level overview of the largely current state of the art of cosmology). I guess the experimental physicists are once again surprising the theorists by starting to prove the theory empirically already.
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 13:26 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: yawn
How can you have a maths free overview of cosmology? Other than the one that starts "it's big, it's very big..." and that has been done already.
You have obviously not read Stephen Hawkins' "A Brief History of Time". Go and pick yourself up a copy from your nearest charity / second-hand book shop. IIRC, the book has one equation in it, which just goes to show you can give quite a comprehensive overview of cosmology entirely empirically, and make quite a lot of money from selling it in book form.
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 16:37 GMT asdf
Re: yawn
Yes to truly understand cosmology you have to be a math nerd. I have never seen anybody able to explain non mathematically in but the vaguest terms for example why string theory needs a certain number of dimensions (just the math breaks down, the strings vibrate too much, etc). For the other %99.9 of humans though Susskind, Hawkings, and Brian Greene do a good job of at least giving a taste of what the Ed Witten of the world are working on and what a wonderfully weird reality we live in.
-
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 17:51 GMT asdf
Re: yawn
>It goes back well before the string theorists ... Linde *always* claims to have done something in the 1970s.
String theory has been around since the early 70s as far as concerning bosons. So its probably more apt to treat them as contemporaries but yes you are correct that it came out of the inflation studies. I only said string because I learned it from a book by a leading string theorist and misspoke.
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 18:22 GMT Britt Johnston
Re: galactic sized accelerator mechanism
I think you have touched on the cause - at the rate accelerators are getting bigger, in a billion years or so, one will fill the known universe, so forcing an alternate universe to bubble into existence.
An alternative could be to stop Moore's law for accelerators.
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 16:42 GMT asdf
Re: yawn
>That's kind of the entire point of experimental physics, dude!
A slight inside joke that the one thing seemingly consistent in modern physics is the theorists underestimating the ingenuity of the experimentalists. You don't necessarily need a particle accelerator as big as a galaxy to continue to push the boundaries of what we can prove.
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 08:05 GMT Destroy All Monsters
When bubbles collide!
Are we alluding to the fact here that the mass of the Higgs is "low" and so the vacuum may "decay" to a lower-state energy with high probability (because not stabilized by a high Higgs mass?) I can only say... HIGHLY speculative. Let's talk about angles on pins instead.
Additionally. with some luck, the universe will be expanding so quickly by then that any of the multicolored bubbles will never see each other....
Also: http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/04/what-would-a-higgs-at-125-gev-tell-us/
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 17:56 GMT asdf
Re: When bubbles collide!
>Additionally. with some luck, the universe will be expanding so quickly by then that any of the multicolored bubbles will never see each other....
They may never contact each other but any given point in space will be eventually enclosed in a new bubble if a bubble forms (and continues to grow) anywhere in that point's event horizon.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 13:19 GMT Peladon
Re: Alternative
Well, I'veonly got my Pocket Fowler (Oxford Fowler's Modern English Usage) here with me at work, but:
p37-38:
alternate, alternative
1 Both words are adjectives and nouns and come from Latin alternus meaning 'every second' and have had closely related meanings over several centuries of use.
Fowler does say that these days alternate as a noun is much less common, though more common in American English, though alternate as a noun meaning a variant was in use in the 18c.
Garner (Garner's Modern American Usage) is also OK with 'alternate' as both noun and adjective. For use as a noun:
alternate; alternative. A. As Nouns. Alternative is needed far more often than alternate.
.
.
Alternate = (1) something that proceeds by turns with another; or (2) one that substitutes for another.
The Chicago Manual of Style recognises bothuses as well:
"alternate, adj. & n.; alternative, adj. & n. Alternate implies (1) substitute for another {we took the alternate route} or (2) taking turns with another {her alternate chaired the meeting}. Alternative implies a choice between two or more things {I prefer the second alternative}."
OK. I'll shut up now. I've probably been doing too much editing :-). I'd better stop before we get into whether it's OK to start sentences with conjunctions (er - yes. It is. According to Garner, Fowler and Chicago anyway, and that's good enough for me and my Editors :-P).
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 10:25 GMT P. Lee
Re: Alternative
Alternative: another exclusive option
Alternating: changing between two or more options with some sort of pattern.
Hence, "I never wanted to grow old, but I disliked the alternative more." "The colour test consisted of alternating blocks of red, green and blue."
Dunno what the dictionary says, but that's my definition.
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 10:28 GMT M.D.
Re: You can't bake a universe without breaking Higgs
I want a Unicorn - should save on fuel ....which could save the Planet long enough for a Unicorn to come play with it!
Result!
Pass the Teapot (and BTW, you definitely get a Nobel vote from me, your theory is at least as probable as some schmuck claiming that (maybe, he's not TOO sure of his numbers) we will all die ...someday!
<drinks Tea, as his Coffee limit for the day already reached>
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 09:48 GMT rogue-Element
We need Donnie Darko
The rules of the tangent universe were documented by Roberta Sparrow (Grandma Death); we need water to form the portal between the two universes and be on the lookout for an unusual metal object that is the transitional artifact vessel.
Oh and we need Maggie and Jake Gyllenhall to tell each other to "Go s*ck a f*ck"
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 12:20 GMT FutureShock999
Expansion in an expansion...
So, haven't read my Susskind (but will be), but if you consider that OUR universe is supposedly expanding, and we don't know what into, isn't it very possible that OUR universe is busy inflating inside an alternative universe and destroying it? And that the whole concept of universes is merely an endless set of alternative reality/physics models popping into existence from instabilities within each other?
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 12:59 GMT Rol
Re: Expansion in an expansion...
My thoughts too.
Comparable to a file of infinite length being overwritten by a subsequent update.
Maybe the new universe having been created in this universe will improve on the current model, to the point it is stable?
..and by that reasoning in a few years time it might be proven we are living in an alpha release and not a beta.
Here's hoping "God" is happy with the revenue flow from this release and isn't pursuing greater profits by constantly releasing new versions, with rounder corners and a more bling.
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 15:56 GMT Ugotta B. Kiddingme
Really? three pages of comments and I'm the first?!?
"There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
~Douglas Adams~
-
Tuesday 19th February 2013 16:01 GMT Chandy
Excellent news
This is fundamentally fantastic news, as it can be used to explain an infinite lifecycle of universes, answering what will happen at 'the end', and giving a potential answer to 'what was before?'.
I'm interested to know if this can be made to fit within the current 'big bang' theory. I find it very hard to believe that we just so happen to be in universe v 1.0, so some re-imagining of the bang into 'pop into other existing universe and take over' may be needed. Presumably we should also start looking towards the edges of our own universe for a boundary with the old universe (n-1) that we haven't expanded into yet?
Altogether, an horizon-expanding bit of work. Well done chaps, and chapesses.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 04:44 GMT mfritz0
The key word is "Alternate" reality
The original "Big Bang" had the universe expanding until it reached a maximum size then collapsing back to nothing. Now the newest theory says it will keep expanding forever, until all matter cools to the temperature of absolute zero. This theory creates an "Alternate" universe and it could be exactly identical to this one. Who knows? If you could control the Higgs field (the absolute vacuum of space) you could conceivably produce any reality you so desire. By the time this takes place, if man is still around and we all haven't ascended into "energy beings" where we all exist as pure energy, perhaps those left in the physical realm will be intelligent enough to realize how to control all the dimensions of this multi-verse, and they will be able to go back in time (perhaps) to where they will never have to worry about this approaching change. There are after all, 10 dimensions (with respect to time) in this reality, and I'm sure at least one of those dimensions leads away from this disaster.
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 07:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Interesting concept
Sort of a variant of the "ekpyrotic" Universe theory, but with bubbles replacing colliding branes.
Re. Higgs. I am convinced that the Higgs effect is not the only gravitational interaction, there's still the other 9something percent which is theoretically caused by curved spacetime.
I would speculate that the Higgs effect is Gravity A and the H2 (aka MetaGod) particle is Gravity B which acts over cosmological distances and has a net repulsive effect responsible for inflation.
At smaller scales it isnt observed because the "block size" is too large, if you imagine Gravity B as a low level format on a hard disk (ie sector level) and Gravity A as the actual data...
Q.E.D.
AC/DC 6EQUJ5
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 14:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
All we think we know about the Universe...
...came from 3 guys, one that used to be a plumber, another can only move 3 fingers (if that much), and the other threw in an equation based on mathematics, which if tortured enough (by a 10 year old, no less) can prove that X = Y for any X and any Y, if you hide a division by zero on the finite induction.
I'm not downgrading them, or what they have done, just pointing out that anybody coming from anywhere could have an insight at how the Universe works, even if they can't mathematically prove it, or even if the math fails to help at some point.
All else is empirical evidence that falls apart and don't apply anymore if you reach the speed of light, look at things too small , or too large, or things that happen in a really small amount of time.
Hell, I'm off for a beer, and just admit that we know SQUAT about the Universe just sitting here, looking up, and scratching a piece of paper... preferably under a star-filled sky, and basking at its beauty.
-
Wednesday 20th February 2013 17:44 GMT jukejoint
@ frumious bandersnatch
the magic and wonder of math is all I have left ... switching math 'methods' on schoolchildren who had already studied it for a few years (mid-elementary school) tossed a lot of us to the curb. One Friday we went home loving math. Monday we were to continue on using a new method - completely baffling - and at the same time efficiently giving us a round sense of failure.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
