How Does The Universe Work?

[talisman]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Higgs boson hasn't been discovered yet because accelerators haven't been powerful enough to discover it yet. the LHC at CERN will be powerful enough to do so when it opens (which I think is in 2007).

[Porkbutts]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Yeah, gravity is caused by warps in time and space. Let me give you an example. You have a square rubber sheet, it's 2D. You drop a bowling ball into it, and it makes a huge crater-like thing. (The bowling ball is hanging in the sheet, it has not fallen through). If you place a tiny pebble pretty much anywhere in the sheet, it falls towards that crater. There you go, gravity.

P.S. Black holes occur when the objects rip through the sheet.

[Porkbutts]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

I think anti-matter is like the opposite of matter.. It acts the exact same way regular matter does, but instead, it has a negative charge. That's pretty much it.

1 is the opposite of -1, yet they are both the same distance from 0.

[Afrobean]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Yeah, gravity is caused by warps in time and space. Let me give you an example. You have a square rubber sheet, it's 2D. You drop a bowling ball into it, and it makes a huge crater-like thing. (The bowling ball is hanging in the sheet, it has not fallen through). If you place a tiny pebble pretty much anywhere in the sheet, it falls towards that crater. There you go, gravity.

P.S. Black holes occur when the objects rip through the sheet.

You just used the concept of gravity to explain gravity. GJ.

[LightningSlash]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

I don't think that the Universe revolves around anything. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger until eventually it explodes- then it gets small again. The universe is kind of like a penis in that sense.

Looking back at all these forums I remember you guys from the days of young. Kudos if you can figure out who I am- I know one person who can .

[emptiness]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

lol...he said penis...but yes according to the Big Bang Theory the Universe started out as a small ball no larger than a golf ball...Then with radiation and stuff..it exploded and continually grows larger and larger. i only know bits and pieces..but ya..theres my two cents. If anyone can elaborate...please do. Im trying to get an Astronomy major one day. Not before my Chemistry major

[T0rajir0u]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

I think anti-matter is like the opposite of matter.. It acts the exact same way regular matter does, but instead, it has a negative charge. That's pretty much it.

1 is the opposite of -1, yet they are both the same distance from 0.

That's basically it. The antimatter particle of a proton has a charge of -1, but the same mass. The antimatter particle of an electron has a charge of +1, but the same mass, etc.

You have a square rubber sheet, it's 2D. You drop a bowling ball into it, and it makes a huge crater-like thing. (The bowling ball is hanging in the sheet, it has not fallen through). If you place a tiny pebble pretty much anywhere in the sheet, it falls towards that crater.

This is a common metaphor used to explain what's going on in relativity, but it's slightly misleading because it doesn't explain why objects tend to go towards dips in the sheet.

Let me go through it step by step:

- Draw a whole bunch of grid lines through empty space. A three-dimensional coordinate grid. When it's totally empty, all of those lines are flat and don't change with time.

- A massless particle traveling through empty space travels in a straight line: that is, it travels along a grid line.

- Now put some matter and energy in. Lines running close to matter and energy will tend to curve toward it - the more mass/energy, the more curvature.

- Now everything moves along the new lines, only they're curved. Things will speed up/slow down depending on how curved the lines are.

I don't think that the Universe revolves around anything. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger until eventually it explodes- then it gets small again.

Why would it explode? What would cause an explosion?

The theory that I think you're referring (very poorly) to is the Big Crunch hypothesis, and it works like this:

- The universe is expanding too slowly. The force of gravity eventually pulls everything back together.
- Once everything becomes close enough together, it'll explode out in another Big Bang.

There's plenty of credible scientific evidence that suggests that this scenario is highly unlikely - for one thing, not only is the universe's expansion not slowing down, it's speeding up. The rate at which the universe is expanding now is very finely balanced with gravity, but if it were just a little too high, we have the scenario known as the Big Freeze:

- The universe is expanding too quickly. The force of gravity can't pull everything together, and eventually everything is too far apart.
- Once everything becomes too far apart, everything becomes cold because heat energy escapes into space.
- Everything becomes chunks of cold crap floating in space. Nothing happens. Ever.

There's a nice discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

But seriously, I wish some of you guys would try to do a little bit of research before you post about crap you don't know anything about.

[Charlotte21]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

dammit you're all retarded. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS GRAVITY. it's easy as hell to figure out how it works, that's not the problem. no one knows WHY it exists because no one knows why mass exists, and mass is what causes the bends in space time. It's so incredibly profound... how the hell does spacetime know to bend just because there's some mass in it? Why does the earth orbit the sun? Does the earth know the sun exists? No... it has no clue. It's action at a distance and no one knows why it happens.

Welcome to the difference between rationalism and empiricism, a course by Charlotte.

Science is part of the empirical mode of thought started by Aristotle which is decided entirely by physical experiences through the senses. The only acceptable things in Science are those which we can somehow examine, measure, understand, and postulate.

Philosophy is a part of the rationalist mode of thought originally started by some derivative of religion sometime around 20 millenia ago. It didn't really start picking up speed until a man named Socrates, who was followed by Plato, brought some thought to the table. Plato was the one who recorded and explained the work of himself and Socrates, and started the school of thought called Rationalism, which most philosophy strings from.

The difference between science and philosophy is that science is recording how something happens and the forces that are involved, and philosophy is try to create a supposition as to why these things happen, and for what reason or purpose.

We are trying to hypothetically understand what is physical, not what is metaphysical. To clarify: science and philosophy are two seperate facets regarding the same thing and cannot be defined in the same ways.

Thank you for your time,

Charlotte

[jewpinthethird]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

The universe isn't a living being like us

Says one mitochondria to the other.

[Omeganitros]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Stuff

In other words, you can't use the rules of Chess to play Hungry Hungry Hippos.

[talisman]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

charlotte you missed this post:

reach.... ok consider the electromagnetic force. We know the force carrier. (the photon). The weak force. We know the force carriers (W and Z bosons... I think). Pretty sure we know the carriers for the strong force as well. But we have no clue what the force carrier for gravity. A graviton has been proposed, but hasn't been observed. Therefore, as far as we know, we have no idea how gravity REALLY works. We know what gravity does, but not how it does it. That's what I'm saying.

(Higgs boson = mass which is obviously closely related with gravity, why I brought it up).

that's my clarification. I wasn't even trying to be philosophical in the first place, but my language was imprecise and led people to that conclusion.

[gerbi7]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

I think gravity is not caused by relativity, and that thing you made up about grids, why do they curve? O_o

What if gravity just turns out to be a leakage of arractions from electrons to protons, of different atoms?

[Yanah_God]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Another thing I'm wondering is what creates gravity. The larger the mass in space the more gravity.

Actually, it's just that there are more tiny specks of mass each pulling an object in the same direction, adding to the effect.

[emptiness]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Instead of being pulled by gravity..Universe is infinitely expanding so that objects move outward which mean that Galaxies continually are farther apart from each other.

What causes gravity is the great attraction large masses produce to form clusters such as a galaxy. As a supernova occurs the objects pulled from the center mass are scattered throughout space otherwise sucked into a black hole created by the blast.

Blackholes are a big mystery because while the universe expands. Blackholes pull matter into its center. hmm...now i just lost my train of thought but hey...thats what i think. My Take on things.

[Patashu]

Re: How Does The Universe Work?

Instead of being pulled by gravity..Universe is infinitely expanding so that objects move outward which mean that Galaxies continually are farther apart from each other.

What causes gravity is the great attraction large masses produce to form clusters such as a galaxy. As a supernova occurs the objects pulled from the center mass are scattered throughout space otherwise sucked into a black hole created by the blast.

Blackholes are a big mystery because while the universe expands. Blackholes pull matter into its center. hmm...now i just lost my train of thought but hey...thats what i think. My Take on things.

Gravity only pulls things together when gravity is overpowering expansion. And, if expansion is speeding up like we think it is, gravity is effectively becoming weaker. Eventually galaxies will be pulled apart, then solar systems, then planets and even black holes themselves. The outcome of this will be a big rip, where every atomic particle is isolated in its own little universe, light years away from anything else.