The Nature of the Universe, Time Travel and More...

[Will The Serious]

they might well turn out to be no more valid than the epicycles of the Ptolemaic and Copernican models of the Solar System. It might be that computational irreducibility means that approximations are the best we can do to describe reality and there is no neat equation or sets of equations to do the job.

The thing is, those systems are valid. They are valid in that they are capable of mathematically describing the observations. Scribing a set of perfect circles with epicycles can both reflect the movement of the planets we observe from our centered position on Earth. (Venus is the one that sketches out the pentagram).

They can also describe ellipses directly.

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What those methods don't do is accurately convey any cause.

One issue with those two methods were their tendencies to grow in complexity in order to continue describing the irregular effects of a dynamic system controlled by gravity where every object, beyond the Sun and Earth, affected every other object as they moved. When our powers of observation and recording showed more and more variation from the fundamental models, we kept adding more epicycles upon epicycles to describe them. The simpler mathematics of heliocentric ellipses allowed for more accurate estimations with less steps in the math. Today's models have far outstripped any version of Ptolemaic modeling. Every new inconsistencies we discover are, as in the past, meet with another layer of complexity to the accepted system.

But, what are we to do when we have no other good and consistent ideas to replace them with? One question is, what about tweeking a system we have already abandoned? Perhapse our beliefs in the invalid systems of the past, get in the way of searching a potentially productive avenue to understanding?

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The predictions of epicycles are nowhere near as accurate as Newtonian dynamics. The predicted orbits don't correspond to conic sections, which describe the motion of orbiting bodies much better as Johannes Kepler demonstrated by meticulous observation and which Isaac Newton explained with the help of his invention of fluxions (calculus). The predictions of Newtonian dynamics are not as accurate as Einsteinian General Relativity, which accounts for the precession of planetary perihelia, inertial frame dragging (Lense–Thirring effect) and time dilation effects.

ETA: The mechanisms linked in the previous post might emulate planetary orbits to some degree, but they don't provide a simple unifying mechanism with few constants (such as big G). The gravitational constant itself might well depend on the distribution and density of mass in the entire universe. See, for example:

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I do not subscribe to all the ideas that are brought forth in that YouTube channel, but I find them interesting.

 

[Will The Serious]

The predicted orbits don't correspond to conic sections, which describe the mosetstion of orbiting bodies much better as Johannes Kepler demonstrated by meticulous observation and which Isaac Newton explained with the help of his invention of fluxions (calculus).

Isn't it interesting that conic mathematics was very well studied and understood by Apollonius of Perga, about 350 years before Claudius Ptolemy developed his geocentric system. Hypatia of Alexandria rewrote, I think, 6 of Apollonius's 8 volumes on conics not that long after Ptolemy developed his circle-based cosmos. Pythagoras himself, in the mid to late 6th century BCE, described the Music of the Spheres in which each planet's musical frequency corresponds to its relative orbital distance from the Sun. It seems he was very likely describing a heliocentric cosmos.

Yet, humanity latched onto and based future astro-science in an erroneous system for over a thousand years when they had the foundations to know better.

-Will

 

[Will The Serious]

they don't provide a simple unifying mechanism with few constants (such as big G). The gravitational constant itself might well depend on the distribution and density of mass in the entire universe.

Where do you think Big G comes from? What if we used a different unit for Force? How about C²? Wouldn't that value be different if we used a different unit for Mass or Energy? Why is it C², why not just say C=the square of the speed of light? Does the square of the speed of light ever change? Don't these cosmic constants, like Big G and C² just act as scalars to preserve the units? Could we have a unit of Mass m that equalled a unit of energy, and vice versa, such that we can say E = m? We could have a unit of Force F that was equal to M•m/r² by taking our current unit of force and defining a new one that was F(new) = F(old)/G.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The origin of G is explained in the viseo. There are versions of physical units that define c = 1. If you watch other videos by the guy (Unzicker) that I linked, he speculates that constants such as c and h have geometrical origins. He lays the blame for the impasse in modern physics at the door of people such as Feynman taking the wrong turn when developing QED. That would mean we've been going wrong for over 70 years with a modern analogy of epicycles (the standard model) that requires two dozen or so experimentally determined constants to be inserted. Some other of Unzicker need to be taken with a large shovel of salt. Perhaps that's my fault and/or perhaps his speculations are wrong - I'm just not the person to determine that. However, reduction of the number of arbitrary constants would appear to be a valid goal.

 

[publiusr]

They can also describe ellipses directly.

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Will

A lovely chart that perhaps points towards "elegance" being a distraction....the chart suitable for FULL METAL ALCHEMIST at least.

Now, if I got an orrery and nailed "Earth" to a fixed base such that it still could turn--and put pens on the other bodies--would they still draw that pattern--or something else?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, pretty much like that. Epicycles were invented for the Ptolemaic geocentric model to explain retrograde motion and adapted to the Copernican heliocentric model, where they were even more inaccurate - requiring the insight of Kepler that orbits are conic sections and the mathematical skill of Newton to explain why gravity allows that to be so. Here's a rough illustration of the simplicity of the heliocentric scheme compared to the geocentric scheme.

 

[Will The Serious]

Now, if I got an orrery and nailed "Earth" to a fixed base such that it still could turn--and put pens on the other bodies--would they still draw that pattern--or something else?

That is the pattern from an Earth perspective. It is part of why Phi is the Golden Mean. The heavens have the pentagram drawn in them with the path of Venis etched o'r head. The pentagram contains the Golden Mean.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

That's probably orbital resonance. The sidereal period for Venus is 226.701 days, so 13 orbits (13 x 224.7 = 2921.1 days) is very nearly equal to eight Earth years (2922 days). It's not exact though. The synodic period with respect to Earth is 583.92 days and five times this period is 2,919.6 days - hence the pattern, which does not repeat perfectly.

Venus -Orbit in respect to Earth - Wikipedia

 

[Santaman]

Hmm, found this one: According to the article the universe is expanding because it gobbles up other smaller universes..
https://www.livescience.com/space/c...g-it-to-expand-new-theoretical-study-suggests
Kinda doesn't sound weirder than any other theory if you ask me...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Hmm, found this one: According to the article the universe is expanding because it gobbles up other smaller universes..
https://www.livescience.com/space/c...g-it-to-expand-new-theoretical-study-suggests
Kinda doesn't sound weirder than any other theory if you ask me...

I can think of several potential hurdles for that hypothesis:

• Explaining the Hubble tension (distance ladder techniques imply 73 (km/s)/Mpc, whereas the CMB implies 67.7 (km/s)/Mpc - a discrepancy of over 4 sigma or about 1 in 16,000 by chance)
• Explaining the uniformity of the CMB (isotropy of 0.001% implies an RMS variation of 18 μK)
• Replicating the spatial frequency distribution of the CMB
• Explaining or predicting future measurements of CMB spectral distortion
• Explaining what happens when smaller universes have different physical constants, such as from spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking
• Providing ways to falsify the hypothesis - such as observing continuous, ongoing absorption events and their frequency

 

[Santaman]

Umm.. it just sounds way more cool than something as totally "meh" as dark energy?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I have no idea what dark matter and dark energy really are and nor does anyone else. Considering they constitute 95% of the universe, it's very embarrassing for physics.

 

[Santaman]

Yeah.. all that dark energy/matter we're either not smart enough and/or technically just totally incapable to device a detector for either which is embarrasing indeed, or they don't exist.
The latter probably means that a lot of theories need to be revised or can be thrown in the thrash and a LOT of hassle and palaver to come up with something new.

 

[Will The Serious]

Here's some math for you Asbo.

The radius of the Milky Way Galaxy is 52,850 ly. The Milky Way is estimated to be 13,610,000,000 years old. It's spiral shape seems consistent with a rotating center spewing out material from two opposite sides along that rotating equator. If this description is accurate to that dynamic, the stars farthest out from the center would be the earliest stars spewed forth 13.61 billion years ago. They have thus traveled a distance of nearly 53,000 light years in 13.61 billion years.

That gives those stars an average velocity of 53,000/13.610,000,000 =
0.00000389419 light years per year, or 389.416 x 5.88 x 10⁴ miles, which equals about 23 million miles per year. Of course gravity has been accelerating those outward flying stars back towards the center for 13.61 billion years, as well.

If one were to assume a constant gravitational mass but an ever decreasing density of that mass, the acceleration of the galaxy's gravity would be greatest in the beginning and closest to the origin point (center), as well as far far less at this point in time. That means most of the lost velocity happened in the beginning and that average of 23 million miles per year has not been seen by the outer stars since well before the halfway point in time from the beginning.

I'm sure the stars are still traveling outward at a great velocity, but probably not even one one-hundredth of the average speed. I wouldn't know how to calculate what those outer stars' theoretical velocity is now, but it is amazing that we even need the concept of dark matter to explain why galaxies hold together the way they do. They could be falling apart at tremendous speeds and still not appear to change over the entire history of human existence. Maybe there is nothing holding galaxies together. They are simply falling apart too slowly over their great distances, for us to witness.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

@Will The Serious Galaxies might look like garden sprinklers to you, but that doesn't mean they are garden sprinklers. We have a lot of data on how stars in our Galaxy and other galaxies move and your analogy does not agree with the observations at all. Some stars might have very eccentric, elliptical orbits or even parabolic or hyperbolic trajectories, but they are the exception, and are explainable by galactic collisions and close encounters. Dark matter, MOND, etc. were invoked to "explain" anomalous galactic rotation curves, and we still don't know which explanation, if any of them, is correct.

The Sun orbits the Galactic centre at 217 km/s, or about 0.07% of the speed of light, so it takes roughly 1,400 years to travel one light year and circa 250 million years to orbit the Galactic centre. Our Milky Way moves with respect to the CMB at roughly 552 km/s, which is detectable as a large dipole Doppler shift anisotropy in the CMB that is subtracted from the maps of it that you commonly see.

Thankfully, my PhD student days are over, so I don't have to respond to random brainwaves from members of the public by politely demolishing them. If you want to imagine whatever explanation you like for physical phenomena, go ahead, but please don't expect me or anyone else to be your unpaid research assistant. There used to be a mod around here who disapproved of treating this forum as a blog for one's own hypotheses that are not grounded in actual research or real observations.

In addition, if you want to flag another user, it's more efficient to use the @ prefix before their full login name. That way, they'll get a notification.

 

[Will The Serious]

I apologize Asbo, if you felt compelled to respond to my musings. You have been an extraordinarily valuable contributor to this thread and I am pleased to have met you and had these interactions with you through this thread.

As you know, I am not a physicist, nor a student of such. I throw out ideas here because it seems like a great place on a forum dedicated to scifi, to try out a few odd ideas. I present nothing I say as informed, researched or authoritative. I don't expect such things from others who don't make claims to know. We have discussed the ideas around real science concepts such as Singularities and Dark Matter as those incompletely defined concepts that do not have hard scientific laws to do anything but suggest there is "something" so names like Dark (invisible), and Singularity (a single undefined event) are used.

@Will The Serious Galaxies might look like garden sprinklers to you, but that doesn't mean they are garden sprinklers.

Of course. My thoughts on the subject actually came to me when I saw a video of the Space X rocket fuel being discharged after ejection. However, the garden sprinkler is exactly what they look like. That doesn't mean I am suggesting they are garden sprinklers.

In addition, if you want to flag another user, it's more efficient to use the @ prefix before their full login name. That way, they'll get a notification.

I felt that the @ tag was unnecessary in a thread I knew you already got notifications of new posts for. If you prefer a more direct tag, I am happy to comply.

I hope all is well with you and that you continue to participate in this thread, despite my occasional raising ideas of wild physics musings. I will probably do that once in a while in the future, as well. But that doesn't mean I don't welcome a more sensible and supportable point of view.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I apologize Asbo, if you felt compelled to respond to my musings. You have been an extraordinarily valuable contributor to this thread and I am pleased to have met you and had these interactions with you through this thread.

As you know, I am not a physicist, nor a student of such. I throw out ideas here because it seems like a great place on a forum dedicated to scifi, to try out a few odd ideas. I present nothing I say as informed, researched or authoritative. I don't expect such things from others who don't make claims to know. We have discussed the ideas around real science concepts such as Singularities and Dark Matter as those incompletely defined concepts that do not have hard scientific laws to do anything but suggest there is "something" so names like Dark (invisible), and Singularity (a single undefined event) are used.


Of course. My thoughts on the subject actually came to me when I saw a video of the Space X rocket fuel being discharged after ejection. However, the garden sprinkler is exactly what they look like. That doesn't mean I am suggesting they are garden sprinklers.


I felt that the @ tag was unnecessary in a thread I knew you already got notifications of new posts for. If you prefer a more direct tag, I am happy to comply.

I hope all is well with you and that you continue to participate in this thread, despite my occasional raising ideas of wild physics musings. I will probably do that once in a while in the future, as well. But that doesn't mean I don't welcome a more sensible and supportable point of view.

-Will

I'm not watching the thread so only likes or @ tags will summon me from the depths.

I have no problem with people having unorthodox ideas - there is a possibility that some might turn out to be correct. To quote Niels Bohr: "Your theory is crazy, but not crazy enough to be true." What I don't have is the spare time to examine them.

 

[publiusr]

The Norway spiral (SLBM test) fooled a lot of folks into thinking it a wormhole—but that’s not what they look like anyway. Hurricanes and traffic patterns are perhaps closer examples to galaxies.

Those mystery traffic snarls where you see no wreck/cops/ambulances…that’s a better spiral arm analog IIRC.

 

[Will The Serious]

Those mystery traffic snarls where you see no wreck/cops/ambulances…that’s a better spiral arm analog IIRC.

I am unfamiliar with spiral patterned traffic snarles.

The dynamic here is that stars are not created in the center of galaxies and spewed forth, but instead, were created elsewhere and are collecting into galaxies where they happen to fall together in a spinning plane?