h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I haven't seen Men In Black. Anything to do with Flubber?

Strangley, I've never understood Kant's (and others') problem with imagining no boundaries. My problem was imagining a universe WITH boundaries.

That's why the multi-dimensional globe concept works so well for me, a seemingly limitless universe that is actually finite.

I'm also of the opinion that when we 'discover' what dark matter/energy/force is, it will turn out to be the effect of dimensions outside of those we've known as part of our perceptible universe.

Physicists determined, years ago (around 1919), that gravity, given some dimensions, may present as electro-magnetism, unifying the two (Kaluza-Klein). Back in 2003 (University of Florida, Gainseville, FL, USA), physicists finally gave some thought to the idea that additional dimensions could be the source of all of the dark stuff we're detecting.

Now, at least, we've mapped dark matter, and the current thought is that this is the substance that keeps the universe from expanding so fast that every star would just shoot off in a straight line. It may be that the dark stuff becomes Einstein's once proposed Cosmic Consant.

If mostly farcical, "Men in Black" did have some insightful special effects. The 'iso-entropic bouncing ball', purportedly an alien artifact, neither lost nor gained energy once set in motion, so once in motion, it stayed in motion at a constant speed.

...whereas the ball in Flubber gained momentum on each bounce. Presumably it would continue until it broke free of any restraining box, and would hurtle across the universe gaining momentum at every encounter until it absorbed the entire universe. A dangerous thing.

I couldn't find video of the isentropic bouncing ball, but here's the trailer for "Men In Black",


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv35TyeRb9M


At any rate, in an expanding universe, objects lose energy in transit since the amount of space between them increases while they're in transit. In a contracting universe, instead there's a thermodynamic gain. In an isentropic or steady state universe, there is neither energy loss or gain.

...and no, definitely not flubber, just one scene involving an anomalous alien artifact...

...flubber represented negative entropy...

. . . yes, fatally dangerous. The trouble with the ball that loses no energy (I saw the film but can't remember that part, so I'm guessing it just keeps bouncing) is that energy must nevertheless get lost, through the surfaces it bounces on. If it tops up its energy it is a form of flubber, perhaps not so dangerous, perhaps just as bad, impossible anyway.

The scene is early in the film when K (Jones) is showing J (Smith) around MIB headquarters for the first time. It bounces around the place smashing lots of stuff then K catches it with some special glove and says "This caused the 1977 New York blackout. A practical joke by the great attractor. He thought it was funny as hell." [IIRC]

> objects lose energy in transit since the amount of space between them increases

Something dodgy there. If the expanding universe means that everything in it expands equally, then the space between would appear constant. That's not the kind of expansion we have; galaxies fly apart, but on Earth things only move around; even continents -- if America is fleeing Eurafrica, it has to be approaching Asia.

What I'm saying is, universal expansion does not account for the loss of energy by things like balls in transit. It would only account for the amount of energy lost by things going straight in a vacuum, which, if it could happen, would be very much less than that lost by balls moving through air and bouncing off things.

Space dragging operates even at the quantum level, since the quanta themselves are being dragged by cosmological expansion during the process of any energy exchange. There is no rigidly fixed metrical framework for the universe, even though one has the illusion of it at the mundane level of our daily lives.

Reflections on the 'shape' of the universe:




In the beginning, my first conceptualization on this, back in Junior High School, I assumed an infinite and unbounded universe, in which any point could equally readily be considered the 'center'.

Later, I got on to the question of geometry and the controversy with respect to negative versus positive curvature. It seemed to me that space had an unequivocally positive curvature.

Next, on the question of infinite and unbounded versus finite and unbounded, after I got on to Hubbles' cosmological expansion, I began thinking in terms of a finite and hyper-spherical finite and unbounded model, in which any point could still be considered 'the center'.

I began wondering about the degree of curvature of the observable universe, on the principle that if one were to select a distant object at Hubbles' limit, that from the point of view of an observer there, we would seem to be at Hubbles' limit and that the regions of the universe visible to ourselves and that remote observer would be restricted to a light cone 120 degrees wide originating with the observer, centered on that distant object at Hubbles' limit selected for the sake of reference, the basis of what the anisotropy investigators are these days calling the 'C - theta sector'. (The G - theta sector only extends over that distance over which gravitational bonding operates, to the limit at which cosmological expansion becomes the overriding principle governing relative motion; the 'local group' of galaxies in other words, a much tinier measure than the C - theta sector.)

Then came the middle 1970s discovery of cosmic voids and subsequent developments on cosmic voids and I realized we'd been bumped from the center of the universe again, the galaxy itself could no longer be considered 'the center', anymore than the heliocentric or geocentric models could be sustained. Instead, our local 'center' of cosmological expansion was the center of the Bootes void, the cosmic void the Milky Way Galaxy is associated with.

At about this same time I began speculating that the terminal velocity of objects at Hubbles' limit being the speed of light, this seemed as though it might represent a symmetrical inverse of the 'event horizon' associated with a black hole, a concept devolving on a concept of the universe taken as a black hole embedded in a larger plenum with a structure like a reticulation of black holes embedded in other black holes (with, of course, commonplace matter and energy sparingly distributed through the voids), extended in time.

Taking it from the basic trumpet flower locus describing the distortions of space-time produced by a black hole, taking the axis of it as the time axis, I realized that while the universe was positively curved in space, with a model like a hypersphere expanding in hyperbolic time, it had to be negatively curved in the time axis.

This was later confirmed with the type 1A supernovae studies, on the point that cosmological expansion seems to be accelerating with passing time, behaving more like an 'outfall' (accelerating over time) than like a ballistic expansion against a common center of gravity.

Meanwhile, on a basis of the dynamics of rotating black holes, on the principle that besides the event horizon, the critical radius at which escape velocity equals the speed of light, one has a second critical dimension predicated on the law of conservation of momentum, taken on the point that tangential velocity at the equator of an object undergoing gravitational collapse cannot exceed the speed of light, and, in the first approximation, tangential velocity doubles every time the circumference of the object undergoing gravitational collapse is halved, I began moving away from the hyper-spherical model in favor of a toroidal model, following on developments in the theory by people Archibald Wheeler and Roy Kerr. (The effective limit of tangential velocity, after inertial and relativistic corrections, is actually markedly less than the speed of light in a vacuum, call it 'slash-C' after the 'slash-h' character used to denote the elementary quantum of spin, as distinct from 'h' (Plancks' constant), denoting the elementary quantum of momentum.)

At any rate, one has a fundamental limit of contraction for rotating black holes formed by a process of gravitational collapse so long as the law of conservation of momentum obtains. (This is where I usually throw in a challenge: before anyone can expect me to accept the existence of non-rotating black holes, first they'll have to show me something, anything at all, in the the entire objective universe, which does not rotate. Good luck!"*

At any rate, at this critical limit, contraction of the rotating black hole around its' equator is halted, ion jets erupt from its' poles and the remainder of its mass migrates to a toroidal ring corresponding to its rotational equator.

In turn, this led to another insight on the nature of time. Again, if one is going to take the axis of the trumpet flower locus representing the gravitational collapse of the black hole as its' time axis, next take a circle representing the center of the toroidal ring (not its' axis, which is perpendicular to the plane the toroid lies in), place the apex or terminus of the trumpet flower locus representing the the gravitational collapse of the black hole on that circle, its' axis parallel to the axis of toroid, drag it unimpeded all around the circle, and you've now got an unbounded cylindrical sheaf of time axes, amounting to an extension of time into a second dimension. (I always have wondered where that second dimension of time that keeps coming up in the physics math since Kepler and Newton and Liebniz comes from.)

So, finally I devolved on a visualization of a larger plenum consisting of a reticulation of toroidal rotating black holes embedded in other toroidal rotating black holes extended in hyperbolic time. The spatial curvature question becomes moot, since a toroid has either positive or negative curvature depending on just where on the toroids' surface one is when one makes the determination.

In the current state of the observational evidence, first the anisotropy studies relating to distribution of matter at the threshold of the universal microwave background, while the results are not completely inconsistent with a toroidal model, they are more consistent with a lenticular or galaxy-shaped model, an extremely flattened oblate spheroid. Second, with first the Spitzer space telescope and more recently, Hubble, since the most recent upgrade to the Hubble space telescope, the effective limit of the observable doesn't extend remotely to Hubbles' limit, but is much closer, the most distant observable objects being galaxy sized masses of incandescent gas in which the process of star formation has not yet commenced... ...and beyond that, nothing... ...though Hubbles' math suggests a physical limit to the universe considerably more distant.





On the PacMan model, I'm kind of reminded of a model for the hypersphere used by Isaac Asimov and Martin Gardner back in the 1960s, involving a worm gnawing its way through a hyperspherical apple. (Steven Kings' "Langoliers"?)




*People have suggested globular clusters and eliptical galaxies as models of non-rotating objects, since the stars associated with them do not rotate in a mass like a conventional galaxy, but instead orbit independently around the common center of gravity of the mass. I think, though, that if a mass like that were to undergo gravitational collapse, the sum of all its angular momenta could not be zero and there would have to be some net rotation.

Amendments to post 31:

Even if the universe has a toroidal or lenticular stucture, the local 'C - theta sector', after the limiting discoveries of the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, still, to all intents and purposes is spherical or quasi-spherical. The hints one has with respect to structure beyond the effective limit of electromagnetic observation, as determined by the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, depend on distribution of matter within that range.

Amndts to post 31, 2:

See also, post 25:

A 'contracting phase' universe, within (but still outside, in a way) the limits of the observable, exists only within a black hole after closure of the event horizon, when (and where), presumably, all of the physical laws begin operating in their reciprocals.

Possibly, that's what we're seeing above the level of the local group under the "G - theta sector" model, accounting for accelerating cosmological expansion.

Amndmts to post 31, 3:

Paragraph 11, 4th clause, amend to read:

", gamma bursts and ion jets..."

Amendment to post 34:

",gamma ray bursts..."

While I think that Pacman lives on a torus, I imagine our universe more like a hyper-potato with radius of curvature varying depending on the density of matter in the vicinity.

I think I'll write a short Post Article about this, before making it into a more detailed Edited Entry.

The mental brown-out effect kind of reminds me of...

Ciao!

Continuing where I left off, somewhat refreshed, I personally favor the 'cosmological foam' model, taking it from the distribution and mechanics of the cosmic voids. Not too far removed from the 'lumpy potato' model.

A fundamental principle with the cosmic voids, they all expand at a rate proportional to that of the universe itself, so that their relative proportions stay the same over cosmological time and they stay tangential to one another and do not interpenetrate.

Recessional acceleration of a galaxy from the center of the cosmic void it's associated with provides an alternative index to Hubbles' math for computing the age of the universe.

Many people prefer the 'wispy cobwebs' model, taking it on the basis of actual distribution of visible matter, distributed over the surfaces of the cosmic voids, marking off the the 'Van der Waals spaces'* between the cosmic voids, which in their interiors seem to be altogether devoid of matter creating a rather wispy and cobwebby appearance.




*Van der Waals was a Netherlander chemist who invented a formula for computing the volumes of the spaces between close packed spheres. If you've got a jar full of marbles of various sizes, the spaces between them are the Van der Waals spaces.

Brings a new meaning to the phrase "surfing the web".