Ask a physicist anything.

[pgp_protector]

Because everything is moving away from everything. If the balloon shrank, then everything would be moving towards each other.




OK, here's a question for people: what is the largest desert on Earth?

Antarctic (IIRC)

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Antarctic (IIRC)

Two more questions:

1) I may have answered this before, but... I have a disc of metal (it could be a CD-shaped thing, or a doughnut-shaped thing), and I heat it up. Things (generally) expand when they heat up. So: does the inner ring expands, contract, or remain the same?

2) What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?

 

[pgp_protector]

Two more questions:

1) I may have answered this before, but... I have a disc of metal (it could be a CD-shaped thing, or a doughnut-shaped thing), and I heat it up. Things (generally) expand when they heat up. So: does the inner ring expands, contract, or remain the same?

2) What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?

1) I'm thinking it contracts (Expands inward)
2) Chair, Bed, Toothbrush.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

1) I'm thinking it contracts (Expands inward)

Nope .

2) Chair, Bed, Toothbrush.

Hah, yes.

 

[Jazmyn]

The inner ring expands.

lol the largest dessert on earth:

I still don't get this, if everything is expanding like on the surface of a balloon, how come we can see red shift behind us as well since if the balloon is expanding then what's behind us must be heading towards us, or is everything flat and it's all just a trick of the eye?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

The inner ring expands.

Yes . Now... can you explain why?

I still don't get this, if everything is expanding like on the surface of a balloon, how come we can see red shift behind us as well since if the balloon is expanding then what's behind us must be heading towards us, or is everything flat and it's all just a trick of the eye?

We're just another spot on the balloon. We see redshift because every other point on the balloon is moving away from us. No matter where you are on the balloon, as it expands, every other point on the balloon's surface expands away from us.

Imagine if you covered a deflated balloon with dots, then blew it up. Every dot would see all the other dots move away from it. It doesn't matter which dot you're sitting on, because all dots are moving away from all other dots. Each dot sees every other dot moving away from it, so that might make you think that the dot your sitting on is particularly special, that your dot is stationary and other dots are moving with respect to it.
But the truth, as the balloon analogy shows, is that no dot is special. All dots, not just yours, sees all the other dots moving away.

It might not be entirely correct to thing of the universe as being exactly like the surface of a balloon, but the analogy works for explaining expansion.

 

[Doveaman]

[FONT=&quot]Fascinating[/FONT]

Yes it is, isn’t it?

[FONT=&quot]but what does it have to do with anything?[/FONT]

Not just anything, but everything.

[FONT=&quot]No one doubts the existence of electromagnetic effects in space, you realise, right?[/FONT]

Electromagnetic fields in space cannot be sustained without an electric current flowing through them, you realize, right?

Just ask any electrical engineer or plasma physicist.

Plasma makes up more than 99.99% of the visible universe, you realize, right?

Plasma is composed of electrically charged particles (negative electrons and positive ions), you realize, right?

Plasma therefore is a far better conductor of electricity than copper or gold, you realize, right?

Flowing electric currents in cosmic plasma self-generate electromagnetic fields, you realize, right?

That would explain these:

Electromagnetic fields in plasma generate forces that are 1000 trillion, trillion, trillion times more powerful than gravity, you realize, right?

Such plasma generated forces can and do form and drive galaxies, as the plasma current simulation shows, without the need for dark matter and black holes, you realize, right?

Plasma current simulation Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

Flowing electric currents in cosmic plasma also generate microwave background radiation, you realize, right?.

This comic plasma generated MBR can be easily misinterpreted to be CMBR from the so called big bang, you realize, right?.

Do you see why I simply cannot accept the so called big bang that relies so heavily on hypothetical assumptions and mathematical abstractions when there is another model out there that explains the universe with such simplicity and clarity with empirical support for verification using the scientific method?

Peer-review may not recognize it but it works far better than the so called big bang, making much more sense of the universe than the big bang ever has or ever will.

The death of the big bang would be the death of many cosmologists, including many peer-review cosmology referees, so I can understand why they would fight to keep the dead big bang alive like some kind of Frankenstein monster. But even Frankenstein needed electricity to work.

 

[Jazmyn]

This is probably getting a bit tedious by now, but what about the bits behind and in front of us, why can't we see them? Or is it just a non-understandable analogy?

The outer side of the ring has a wider surface area and is bigger, so it's greater expanding speed and force pulls the inner ring with it? Or is it that to expand away from themselves due to the greater energy the molecules have from the heat, the only way to expand away from themselves is outwards? Thus the balloon universe analogy?

 

[Jazmyn]

Although gas can be squished, so if you put something around the ring to stop it expanding outwards, would it expand inwards? Or more likely sideways?

 

[AV1611VET]

I love this place --- I think I'll stay a day.

I hate this place --- I think I'll stay a year.

Where am I?

 

[Spacewyrm]

I think I remember reading once that quarks can't exist by themselves, but always are joined together as protons and neutrons or whatever it is that they form when they are together. Is that correct?

Also, how did physicists discover the existence of quarks in the first place?

 

[TemperateSeaIsland]

I love this place --- I think I'll stay a day.

I hate this place --- I think I'll stay a year.

Where am I?

Venus?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I think I remember reading once that quarks can't exist by themselves, but always are joined together as protons and neutrons or whatever it is that they form when they are together. Is that correct?

Correct. While it's theoretically possible for them to exist on their lonesome, they really really don't want to .

Also, how did physicists discover the existence of quarks in the first place?

The quark theory of matter was hypothesised after particle physicists kept discovering hundreds and hundreds of particles, a veritable zoo. By positing that they were made of combinations of more fundamental particles, they could vastly reduce the number of fundamental particles in the universe. And lo and behold, we can explain pretty much all particle physics in terms of quarks.

As the field advanced, we had to go from just two quarks (up and down) to six (up, down, top, bottom, charmed, and strange), along with their antiquarks (anti-top, etc). There is also the theory of quantum chromodynamics, which posits that quarks have a colour: 'red', 'blue', and 'green', or an anti-colour, 'anti-red', etc. That's when it gets a little complicated!

But basically, quarks were discovered when the vast number of particles found by particle detectors followed a tantalising pattern that physicists realised was a kind of combinatrix: they could explain all kinds of phenomena with the quark model.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

This is probably getting a bit tedious by now, but what about the bits behind and in front of us, why can't we see them? Or is it just a non-understandable analogy?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'in front' and 'behind'. Do you mean the bits above and below, if we were sitting on the surface of the balloon and looked directly 'off' the surface (as opposed to along it)?

The outer side of the ring has a wider surface area and is bigger, so it's greater expanding speed and force pulls the inner ring with it? Or is it that to expand away from themselves due to the greater energy the molecules have from the heat, the only way to expand away from themselves is outwards?

The second one. If the inner ring contracts, then the particles are actually moving closer together, which is the opposite of what they want to do.

Although gas can be squished, so if you put something around the ring to stop it expanding outwards, would it expand inwards? Or more likely sideways?

It depends on the container. If it's a solid, impenetrable ring, then it wouldn't expand at all. Its pressure and temperature would increase, but not its volume.

I love this place --- I think I'll stay a day.

I hate this place --- I think I'll stay a year.

Where am I?

Mercury? I memory serves, its days is longer than its year.

 

[AV1611VET]

Venus?

 

[AV1611VET]

Mercury? I memory serves, its days is longer than its year.

Close!

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Yes it is, isn’t it?

Yes.

Not just anything, but everything.

How delightfully vague.

Electromagnetic fields in space cannot be sustained without an electric current flowing through them, you realize, right?

Nope. Light, which can be described as an EM wave, doesn't have an electric current flowing through it. But in general, and EM field needs a sustaining current, so I'll tentatively agree for the sake of argument.

Plasma makes up more than 99.99% of the visible universe, you realize, right?

Right.

Plasma is composed of electrically charged particles (negative electrons and positive ions), you realize, right?

Right.

Plasma therefore is a far better conductor of electricity than copper or gold, you realize, right?

Copper and gold are plasmas themselves, you realise, right?

Flowing electric currents in cosmic plasma self-generate electromagnetic fields, you realize, right?

Right.

That would explain these:



Electromagnetic fields in plasma generate forces that are 1000 trillion, trillion, trillion times more powerful than gravity, you realize, right?

They can be, but it depends on the charge flux. A single electron moving at 1 m s[sup]-1[/sup] is hardly exerting an EM field that much higher than strength of its gravitational field. A scale factor of 10[sup]36[/sup] is roughly accurate for common, comparable systems, but is by no means universally true.

Such plasma generated forces can and do form and drive galaxies without the need for dark matter and black holes, you realize, right?

There is no evidence that ionized gas can condense under electromagnetism. Besides, care to explain how stellar formation and bar formation occur under electromagnetism?

Flowing electric currents in cosmic plasma also generate microwave background radiation, you realize, right?

Care to demonstrate how?

This comic plasma generated MBR can be easily misinterpreted to be CMBR from the so called big bang, you realize, right?

Nope. Not only does the CMBR correspond with the Big Bang theory, its corresponds exactly as the model predicted. Care to show plasma cosmology can generate such a background radiation?

Do you see why I simply cannot accept the so called big bang that relies so heavily on hypothetical assumptions and mathematical abstractions when there is another model out there that explains the universe with such simplicity and clarity with empirical support for verification using the scientific method?

No, because, despite your weasel words, promoting plasma cosmology as superior to the Big Bang theory is like promoting Creationism as superior to evolutionary theory: you can scream till your blue in the face, but science has long ago established the facts.

Peer-review may not recognize it but it works far better than the so called big bang, making much more sense of the universe than the big bang ever has or ever will.

Your exaltations are irrelevant. Stick to the facts.

The death of the big bang would be the death of many cosmologists, including many peer-review cosmology referees, so I can understand why they would fight to keep the dead big bang alive like some kind of Frankenstein monster. But even Frankenstein needed electricity to work.

How would it mean the death of many cosmologists? If it could be demonstrated, it would completely rework our understanding of the cosmos. It would revitalise the field, giving cosmologists a whole knew field to study, a whole new way to look at the universe.

But, despite your claims to the contrary, it hasn't been demonstrated. The scientific community has studied the data decades ago, and it is no more valid now then it was then.

 

[Doveaman]

I still don't get this, if everything is expanding like on the surface of a balloon, how come we can see red shift behind us as well since if the balloon is expanding then what's behind us must be heading towards us, or is everything flat and it's all just a trick of the eye?

We're just another spot on the balloon. We see redshift because every other point on the balloon is moving away from us. No matter where you are on the balloon, as it expands, every other point on the balloon's surface expands away from us.

Imagine if you covered a deflated balloon with dots, then blew it up. Every dot would see all the other dots move away from it. It doesn't matter which dot you're sitting on, because all dots are moving away from all other dots. Each dot sees every other dot moving away from it, so that might make you think that the dot your sitting on is particularly special, that your dot is stationary and other dots are moving with respect to it.
But the truth, as the balloon analogy shows, is that no dot is special.All dots, not just yours, sees all the other dots moving away.

Except that there are clusters of dots on the balloon moving around freely without being affected by the balloon's expansion and without any empirical evidence of gravitational influence. According to balloon inflation theorists those freely moving dots should not exist. Another mystery for inflation theorists.

Besides, if there are enormous masses beyond the cosmic event horizon creating gravitational influence on those dots this suggest that the universe is much lager than we can observe, and therefore much older.

On the other hand, intergalactic Birkeland currents in cosmic plasma, which have been empirically verified to exist and which exert a force that is 1000 trillion, trillion, trillion times more powerful than gravity, can easily move those dots without any need for gravitational influence beyond the event horizon which no one can empirically verify. Mystery solved.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Except that there are clusters of dots on the balloon moving around freely without being affected by universal expansion and without any empirical evidence of gravitational influence. According to balloon inflation theorists those freely moving dots should not exist. Another mystery for inflation theorists.

It was unpredicted, but it hardly invalidates the model. Besides, the balloon analogy is just that: an analogy.

Besides, if there are enormous masses beyond the cosmic event horizon creating gravitational influence on those dots this suggest that the universe is much lager than we can observe, and therefore much older.

Indeed. We have long known that there are observational horizons (the light horizon, the particle horizon, etc) that restrict our view of the universe.

On the other hand, intergalactic Birkeland currents in cosmic plasma, which have been empirically verified to exist

Really? Where?

and which exert a force that is 1000 trillion, trillion, trillion times more powerful than gravity,

Your misapplication of the stats is painful.

can easily move those dots without any need for gravitational influence beyond the event horizon which no one can empirically verify. Mystery solved.

Except you're simply pulling these Birkeland currents out of thin air. The mystery isn't so much solved, as it is expounded upon: you've just made more assumptions than I daresay you can account for. Simply positing that Birkeland currents are operating in cosmic plasma doesn't make it so. Where's your evidence? Where's your data?

 

[Doveaman]

Besides, if there are enormous masses beyond the cosmic event horizon creating gravitational influence on those dots this suggest that the universe is much lager than we can observe, and therefore much older.

Indeed. We have long known that there are observational horizons (the light horizon, the particle horizon, etc) that restrict our view of the universe.

So what is this 13.7 billion years all about?