Has observing the universe hastened its end?

Lawrence Krauss and his colleague James Dent believe that by making this observation in 1998, they might have caused the universe to revert to a state similar to early in its history, when it was more likely to end.

"Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe," says Krauss.

The researchers said that they came to this conclusion after calculating how the energy state of the universe might have evolved.

Until recently, cosmologists thought that the big bang 13.7 billion years ago occurred after a bubble of weird high-energy "false vacuum" with repulsive gravity decayed into a zero-energy

"Ordinary" vacuum. The energy released during this transition could have made matter and heated it to a ferocious temperature, which essentially created the massive explosion of the Big Bang.

The discovery of dark energy, along with the realisation that the universe's expansion is accelerating, reveals that the vacuum may not have decayed to zero energy, but to another false vacuum state. In other words, some energy was retained in this vacuum, and this is accelerating the universe's expansion.

Like the decay of a radioactive atom, such shifts in energy state happen at random.

"So it is entirely possible it could decay again, wiping the slate of our universe clean," says Krauss, adding that everything in the universe would cease to exist if this transition did happen.

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It sounds like the normal astronomical bollocks these guys come up with every year.

Os.

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In quantum mechanics we learn that the behavior of the very smallest objects (like electrons, for example) is very unlike the behavior of everyday things like baseballs. When we throw a baseball at a wall, we can predict where it will be during its flight, where it will hit the wall, how it will bounce, and what it will do afterward.

When we fire an electron at a plate with two closely spaced slits in it, and detect the electron on a screen behind these slits, the behavior of the electron is the same as that of a wave in that it can actually go though both holes at once. This may seem odd, but its true. If we repeat this experiment lots of times with lots of electrons, we see that some positions on the screen will have been hit by many electrons and some will have been hit by none. The observed "interference pattern" for these electrons is evidence of their dual wave-particle nature, and is well described by thinking of each electron as a superposition of two "states", one that goes through one slit, one that goes through the other.

To add to this already mysterious behavior, this interference will only happen if both possible paths that the electron can take are not distinguishable. In other words, if we could somehow tell which slit the electron went through each time, we would no longer get the interference. The act of making a measurement of the electrons path fundamentally changes the outcome of the experiment.

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KTC said:

I once watched a squirrel walk across the top of a church spire. I believe it was because I was watching said squirrel that it jumped. It died splat on the ground in front of me. Observance kills.

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That's why I don't really pay attention. It would be just my luck I get blamed with the end of the world.

Os.

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Unique said:

i hope not. i'd mess it up for sure.
and a whole lotta would go missing.

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Ziljon said:

we're all the same, we just want to be observed, appreciated, understood.

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KTC said:

who are you calling a clown?

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Danger Jane said:

man I WISH I could understand this stuff


maybe then silly friday would make sense

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