Celestia Forums

Please any insight. I have no where to go with any thoughts.

Imagine you're standing on the edge of perfectly still pond. Now throw a rock in the middle. What happens; Ripples. The ripples will expand in all directions at once at a constant speed. i say a constant speed because the inner ripples will never catch up to or overlap the preceding ripples.

The Question. How can the first ripple traveling at a constant speed continually increase its circumference area and maintain its original speed. It is encircling a greater area every new second but not increasing its speed.

Eg. #1 (estimated distances)
1 sec. the first ripple has a diameter of 1 foot
2 secs. the first ripple has a diameter of 4 feet
3 secs. the first ripple has a diameter of 7 feet


This is relative to the Big Bang theory and the question.... Why does it appear the universe is expanding in all directions at a continually increasing speed?

Imagine the ripples again. But only this time imagine there are little white dots on the ripples. These dots represent matter, like stars and galaxy clusters. The pond represents the fabric of space-time. These dots are extremely condensed in the middle of the pond, but as soon as the rock is throne into the middle of the little white dots, they begin to surf the ripples. Although the speed of the ripple is constant, the distance between any two give dots will constantly be increasing as well as the speed in which they separate.

My idea is that the explosion or expansion of the Big Bang theory produced so much energy that it sent ripples into space-time, and the matter is just "surfing" on these waves. Therefore all the gravity of matter in the universe cannot over come the force of these ripples or waves create in the birth of our universe. Remember, when the Big Bang happened, it released matter and anti-matter. After all was said and done matter won. So this would mean that the Big Bang exploded with more energy then what is currently contained in the universe right now. If the universe was created with (example 55% matter and 45% anti-matter), that leaves our universe with only (example 5%) matter created from a 100% energy/force/materiel explosion. Thats more then enough force to carry the 5% matter to the outer edges of existence. The point is, it is not the matter flying away from each other, it is their movement on these "space-waves" that creates their increasing speed and distance. Eventually there will be some decrease in the speed of the space-waves, but given in Eg. #1, the distances would still increase dramatically in proportion to the the size of the wave.
Although the wave could slow its speed down by half, the distances will still increase by two or three fold every second.




This idea came from thoughts on the Big Bang Theory, dark matter and a theory in quantum physics called the Ekpyrotic Theory created by Petr Horava (Rutgers) and Ed Witten (IAS, Princeton) .

Matt

I think, it is said that the Bing Bang created the fabric of space-time itself, so you have a small problem in your theory. I think you can compare it with a piece of paper. You can crunch it together, and afterwards you can expand it again(sorry for the bad language, german student). Now you see, you have ripples in the paper, where after my theory the matter is. And that piece of paper looks like the Microwave Background. I don't know if it makes any sense, what i've said. I hope someone could comment this!

cu

My idea is that the explosion or expansion of the Big Bang theory produced so much energy that it sent ripples into space-time

I don't get it : to create ripples, you need an explosion, i.e. a starting point, right ?
The Big Bang wasn't localized, much more a sort of super hot and dense state of the Universe
I imagine it like that : the Universe itself is not expanding but just changing state

Sorry, but that's a completely wrong model.

At first, concerning your model, water itself isn't moving at all horizontically if you throw a stone into the pond. Only the energy of the impact is moving. So your dot's also won't move, but just go up and down. The greater area covered by the wave as it's moving outwards causes a decreasing amplitude, not a decreasing speed.

Now to the universe. It's wrong to imaginate expansion as being caused by island of matter flying away from a center. In fact the space ITSELF is expanding, causing a similar effect. That means there is constantly more space between everything: distances between galaxies are growing, but also between planets, between your house and the next bus station, between the molecules and the atoms of your body, inside atoms, and even between quarks forming an electron. That means yourself are expanding and also the computer you are working on, your town, your planet,...

Of course this is quite minimal, and in most cases the atomic and gravitational forces, prevent things from breaking apart, and ensure that natural laws will remain the same. But in cases of far distant galaxies this effect can be watched as if they would fly away from us, because there is so MUCH space between us an them that is constantly expanding in itself.

The only models that are explaining that in a roughly manner are a thining cloud of expanding gas, or a ballons surface that is expanding while beeing inflated - causing everything that you may draw on it before, expand also.

maxim.

or a ballons surface that is expanding while beeing inflated

If there's anything at all in which the Universe could expand : no one has ever found any hint that there may be anything else than our 3+1 dimensions* universe. We use the "ballon analogy" only because we cannot imagine an expansion without space in which to expand..
What I mean is that it is the metric of space-time that is changing and not the universe that is getting "bigger" or something

* well, maybe more if the string theories are correct.

'Changing metric' is probably a more exact model of what's going on.

The 'ballon' model is of course quite primitive. I think it was mainly developed to get people off from these completely wrong 'explosion' thoughts.

maxim.