March 2003 - irrational_physics

Tuesday, 11 March 2003 - irrational_physics

Irrational Physics: The observably finite universe after all?

The New York times reports on new observations regarding cosmic background radiation and discusses the implications for the shape of the universe. If this is true then it throws all sorts of theories into doubt, recasts the need for inflation, “and more”! Thoughts: Can you have multiple parallel dimensions? Would energy waves looping back into the universe create any kind of interference pattern when they cross back over themselves? (That last one is kind of ridiculous, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.)

Monday, 10 March 2003 - irrational_physics

Irrational Physics: Meta – iPhysics

iPhysics (Irrational Physics) is an experiment in non-linear thinking. I’m recording random musings on the nature of reality, for posterity and perhaps for contemplation. I doubt any of these bear much resemblance to what’s actually going on (although the notes in “The births of multiple universes” seem to bear similarity to some recent theories - seeing the theory come out about 6 months after I had the thought was part of what inspired me to start recording things). Below are three random thoughts I had over the past year. I’ll post more as I think of them. Feel free to mail me your thoughts (please note whether you’d mind it being published and if so, attributed).

Irrational Physics: The births of multiple universes

Assume for the sake of argument that any given region in space will grow to the point that there is an external event horizon beyond which objects fall out of reach (see Steven Weinberg’s “The Future of Science, and the Universe”). Were this the case, would you see a collapse of the contents of a given set of objects within the event horizon after everything fast enough or distant enough to escape had escaped. Would this collapse look like one supermassive black hole and would that black hole, absent any possible outside influence, eventually explode into its own new universe?

Irrational Physics: Elementary particles

There is a theory which states that the reason we have particles the way we do is that any universe in which all particles behaved differently in the slightest way would not wind up with the universe we have today, but there may be other universes in which particles and forces have different properties. Question: what if we actually did start with a universe in which there were all sorts of particles with different forces (i.e. you could have an “electron” with all sorts of different options for charge and mass") but the “it only works if the numbers are this way” collapsed the universe of particles into the limited subset we see today. By way over overextended analogy, think of “life” simulations which tend to collapse to a small number of self replicating surviving objects while everything else is wiped out.

In this scenario, “electron” is not really an elementary particle from the beginning of the universe, it’s just one of the classes of particles which survived to the later stages of the universe. Ditto all other particles.

Follow-on question: what sorts of interactions would cause the sort of cancelation and annihilation of all but the existing particle/force combinations and would there be any observable evidence available today?

Irrational Physics: The size of the universe and the forces between objects at distance

Thinking about the theory that the speed of light is not invariant over time, what would the universe look like if there was an outward pressure on the space between any two objects which varied directly (perhaps exponentially) with the space between the objects and inversely with the size of the universe. e.g. in an early state universe objects are much closer together but the space is fairly large relative to the size of the universe, so pressure is high and space pushes apart. In the later stage universe the space between close objects is the same but the size of the universe is much much bigger so you’d hardly notice it over the noise of the forces, yet distant objects (galactic clusters, etc.) would be far enough apart that the pressure would be measurable.