
Universe May Have Been Around Forever, According to Rainbow Gravity - bmelton
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/universe-may-have-been-around-since-forever-according-to-rainbow-gravity-theory/
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laureny
I don't see why the idea that "the universe might have been around forever" is
so surprising since as far as I know, the prevalent theory is that time
started at the big bang, which means that saying "before the big bang" makes
as much sense as "going north while standing at the north pole".

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chc
But that still isn't the same thing as "forever." Time does not go back
infinitely — according to current theory, the universe definitely has a
beginning in time.

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jckt
The whole dimension-tautology has always irked me. Time, as a unit, is simply
the "time" it takes for light to travel a certain distance. Distance, OTOH, is
the "distance" it takes for light to travel under a certain amount of time.
AFAIK one of the authors of this theory is a proponent of a variable speed of
light. So if at some point in time light didn't move, then time didn't move,
then that would mean that our universe existed since forever...? Not a
physicist, but sometimes I feel weird when I am reminded of the fact that the
Big Bang had a definite starting point 13.8B years ago (as you have done so),
and then think about how time is really... a function of length and length is
just a function of time.

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rpearl
No, time is defined in terms of atomic properties. It is not a function of
length. (Length is, however, a function of time). A second is defined as the
duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the
transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the
caesium-133 atom.

A meter is defined in terms of the speed of light and the definition of a
second. A meter is exactly the length of the path traveled by light in a
vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 seconds.

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jckt
Ah, thanks for that. I look pretty stupid now...I have actually heard of that
definition but somehow I was thinking of time being ultimately defined by
Planck units (time required for light to travel a Planck length).

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terabytest
The article doesn't even explain how they come to the conclusion that the
universe has been there forever from the "rainbow gravity" concept.

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lkrubner
Rewind the tape to 1900. Everyone who is non-religious assumes the universe
has been around since forever: it is eternal. Then people like Edwin Hubble
and Georges Lemaître notice that distant galaxies are red-shifted, and they
calculate the amount. From this they conclude that the universe is expanding.
From this they conclude that the universe must have at one point been
compressed to a single point, and then exploded: a Big Bang.

But if there is no red shift, then there is no Big Bang, and the Universe is
not expanding. Therefore we go back to where we were in 1900, when everyone
assumes that the universe is eternal.

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ExpiredLink
Great! Just one detail is missing to complete the picture: explain eternity.

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Myrth
I know it is hard to accept that there might be things humans might not be
able to explain.

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easy_rider
The fundamentals seems to be provable by data-mining on gamma Ray bursts.

Funny coincidence, I just started "mining" some BOINC projects again since a
week ago, including Einstein@home, because I couldn't stand all the CryptoCoin
mining talk lately.

[https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Einstein@Home](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Einstein@Home)

[http://www.aei.mpg.de/972495/einsteinathome_gammapsrs2013](http://www.aei.mpg.de/972495/einsteinathome_gammapsrs2013)

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AnthonyMouse
How is this supposed to be reconciled with the second law of thermodynamics?

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csmuk
Perhaps the second law is only locally true.

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AnthonyMouse
We know it _isn 't_ locally true. That's how the inside of your refrigerator
gets colder after you supply it with electricity.

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yohanatan
Maybe he's speaking of a much bigger 'local' like 'our corner of the universe'
or 'the distance over which our deep space probes have so far traveled'.

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csmuk
Exactly. The universe is a pretty big place.

Time dilation is another one. It's locally insignificant enough to be
considered noise/error.

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trekky1700
I think this is the best title on HN today. Especially the "According to
Rainbow Gravity" missing the theory bit.

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zw123456
I don't think the article explains how the rainbow theory explains the
existence of Cosmic Background Radiation.

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easy_rider
The article doesn't seem to want to explain anything to me..

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Myrth
it's a nice reminder that big bang is one of theories and not an indisputable
dogma

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millstone
Here's the (much better) SciAm article:
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-
gra...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity-
universe-beginning)

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thenerdfiles
Didn't Christiaan Huygens author a system of mechanics of light in
rainbows[0]? — he developed an angle prediction system in algebra, if I
recall.

[0]:
[http://ww2.odu.edu/~jadam/docs/jadam_geometric_optics_and_ra...](http://ww2.odu.edu/~jadam/docs/jadam_geometric_optics_and_rainbows.pdf),
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm)

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tedunangst
What about according to Gravity's Rainbow?

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anigbrowl
(somewhat) more informative Scientific American article on which this useless
blog post is based: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-
gra...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity-
universe-beginning&modsrc=most_popular)

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stephenwinter2
I didn't really discuss the Rainbow Gravity Theory. But I referred to the
Scientific American article here<br>
[http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-
bang-...](http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-bang-
cosmology.html#scientific-american<br>) My statement is: The difference
between singularity and the world is differentiation. Differentiation is a
kind of 'stretching'. The methods of stretching are called time and dimensions
in space.<br> It's nothing else than a crutch for thinking. 'All at once' is
for thinking equal to nothing (singularity).

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foxhill
given that a sensical idea of time couldn't really exist before the universe,
i believe it is sound to say that current understandings of the universe
already state this.

just that "forever" is 13.8 billion years long and counting..

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dhughes
I've always wondered if in the entire universe we humans are the first
creatures to have evolved and we will spread out populating the universe.

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jdjb
Seems statistically unlikely given the hypothesized number of life-supporting
planets + our planet's age versus the age of the universe.

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stefan_kendall
Unlikely but possible. Much like the creation of a universe, perhaps.

Given infinite time, you might flip heads a million times in a row.

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meric
Or might not, no matter how far you go, there are no even numbers in the
infinite set of odd numbers, and you can tell that without counting very high.

