What will happen to the universe?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by VJ



What you don't know could fill several books. No wonder you vote republican.

implying that what you don't know would not fill several books?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Vesayen


I assumed you knew the most basic information about evolution. I guess not.

I dug this up, just for you.

People who don't know how evolution work are only marginally more educated then the functionally retarded in our society.


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

excuse me? Humanity still doesn't yet know how evolution works. It's far from a dead area of investigation there is a wealth of insight being gained essentially nonstop on the intricacies of evolution past and present and there is little sign we will be done even decades from now puzzling out how it works and has worked in the past.

and for the record would you care to quote the part of the article you linked that answered lancer's question?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Lorizael


And, as with most other things for which PHDs are available, a simple understanding of it is almost useless.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Geronimo


excuse me? Humanity still doesn't yet know how evolution works. It's far from a dead area of investigation there is a wealth of insight being gained essentially nonstop on the intricacies of evolution past and present and there is little sign we will be done even decades from now puzzling out how it works and has worked in the past.

and for the record would you care to quote the part of the article you linked that answered lancer's question?

How many times are you going to put words in my mouth, would you like me to start a tab?

The overall concept has changed little and you don't need to know much about transitory fossils to understand the basic concept. It is taught in middle and grade school in parts of our country, so apparently children can handle the idea.

[Lorizael]

Actually, I've found that most people who were taught evolution in elementary and middle school have almost no understanding of the concept.

[Vesayen]

Do middle school and elementary children understand ANY concept they are taught to the degree that they can answer analytic questions about it not already learned by route in a class room?

Children can handle the concept if properly taught-from limited anecdotal evidence I remember they taught it to us for the first time in sixth grade, I was already familiar and understood the idea and while I wouldn’t say that was the majority, I was far from alone in that understanding. I went to a typical New York public school.

Saying that the understanding of evolution has and continues to change greatly as Geronomo said(and is correct) is implying that it has changed so much that it is not simple to understand, and requires a great deal of study. That is incorrect. Our continually new discoveries about evolution do not fundamentally change our understanding about it or require massive study to understand the basis.

And as also said, a simple understanding IS enough. You do not need a PHD to understand evolution, a low level understanding of its basic principles are enough, because its basic principles ARE basic.

[Lorizael]

Vesayen, while you are not the monumental genius you seem to think you are, you are more intelligent than the average person, and you are completely wrong about this. Most people don't get evolution. Therefore, it's not simple.

[Vesayen]

I don't think I am a monumental genius, I do though like you said, think I am above average.

If you give me *twenty minutes* to sit down with any American over the age of 14 who is of average intelligence, I could teach them a working knowledge of evolution.

Actually I'm adding one other condition... they can't be a creationalist or religiously hostile to the idea of evolution-it will take more then 20 minutes because then I have to convince them, not just teach them.

[Lorizael]

Eh. That's not really something I can argue with. I just think people are stupider than you think they are. Too many people think that humans come from monkeys, that humans are the final product of evolution, and other crap like that.

[Vesayen]

So you would agree that almost anyone could be taught evolution, in a small amount of time, with minimal effort?

[Lorizael]

*blink blink* What? No. I didn't agree to that. I'm just saying that I have no way whatsoever to prove or disprove your supposition that you can do that.

[Flip McWho]

Ves, if by basic understanding of Evolution you mean that we through some degree of natural selection have developed into the beings you see now through many and many years of existing then you are right.

[Odin]

The Ekpyrotic Model:

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

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

The ekpyrotic universe or ekpyrotic scenario is a cosmological theory of the origin of the universe. The name comes from a Stoic term for "out of fire". The ekpyrotic model of the universe is an alternative to the standard cosmic inflation paradigm, both of which accept that the standard big bang Lambda-CDM model of our universe is an appropriate description up to very early times. The ekpyrotic model is a precursor to, and part of the cyclic model.

Brane cosmology assumes that the visible universe lies on a three-dimensional brane which moves in higher dimensional space. Our brane may be one of innumerable others moving through these extra dimensions. The ekpyrotic scenario was proposed by Khoury, Ovrut, Steinhardt and Turok in 2001. It suggests that the visible universe was empty and contracting in the distant past. At some time, our brane collided with another, parallel "hidden" brane, which caused the contracting universe to reverse and begin expanding. Hot matter and radiation was created in the collision, which started the hot big bang from which the present-day universe originated. The brane collision, from the four-dimensional perspective of the visible brane, looks like a big crunch followed by a big bang.

The scenario is appealing because it replaces cosmic inflation with a theory that achieves many of the same successes in a framework that seems compatible with string theory. An important distinction between the ekpyrotic scenario and cosmic inflation is that in the ekpyrotic scenario, the primordial nearly scale invariant spectrum of quantum vacuum fluctuations, which is the seed for all structure in the universe today, is generated in a contracting universe, before the big crunch. In cosmic inflation they are generated immediately after the big bang, in an expanding universe.

--------------------------------------------------

The cyclic model is a brane cosmology model of the creation of the universe, derived from the earlier ekpyrotic model. It was proposed in 2001 by Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok.

In the cyclic model, two parallel orbifold planes or M-branes collide periodically in a higher dimensional space. The visible four-dimensional universe lies on one of these branes. The collisions correspond to a reversal from contraction to expansion, or a big crunch followed immediately by a big bang. The matter and radiation we see today were generated during the most recent collision in a pattern dictated by quantum fluctuations created before the branes. Eventually, the universe reached the state we observe today, before beginning to contract again many billions of years in the future. Dark energy corresponds to a force between the branes, and serves the crucial role of solving the monopole, horizon, and flatness problems. Moreover the cycles can continue indefinitely into the past and the future, and the solution is an attractor, so it can provide a complete history of the universe.

An earlier cyclic model of Richard Tolman failed because the universe would undergo inevitable thermodynamic heat death. However, the cyclic model evades this by having a net expansion each cycle, preventing entropy from building up. However, there are major problems with the model. Foremost among them is that colliding branes are not understood by string theorists, and nobody knows if the scale invariant spectrum will be destroyed by the big crunch, or even what happens when two branes collide. Moreover, like cosmic inflation, while the general character of the forces (in the ekpyrotic scenario, a force between branes) required to create the vacuum fluctuations is known, there is no candidate from particle physics. Moreover, the scenario uses some essential ideas from string theory, principally extra dimensions, branes and orbifolds. String theory itself is a controversial idea in physics.

Originally, ekpyrotic models described two branes separated along a fifth dimension which collide once. Crucially, both the ekpyrotic and cyclic models create the fluctuations we observe today in a contracting "ekpyrotic" phase. However, in the ekpyrotic model, while a future collision with a different brane could conceivably happen in the future, ending our epoch in a conflagration, this happens randomly, not periodically. There were problems with the old ekpyrotic picture having to do with the very special, nearly supersymmetric initial state required in order to end up with a nearly homogeneous universe: the problems solved by cosmic inflation, such as the monopole, flatness and homogeneity problems were shifted to a set of fine-tuned initial conditions. The ekpyrotic picture was not connected to the issue of dark energy.

There are other technical differences having to do with the nature of the branes. For example, in the ekpyrotic model, they are D-branes; while in the cyclic model, they are orbifold planes.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by VJ
Now for the interesting question: is the universe expanding endlessly or will it eventually stop expanding and start contracting, thus ending with a "big crunch"?

Not a Big Crunch, but a BIG BOUNCE.

The universe contains matter and anti-matter. As it contracts, these opposing particles with come in contact more and more often, creating mutually annihilating explosions. These explostions will eventually be consistent enough and powerful enough to halt the contraction of the universe, and send it hurdling back into whatever universes hurdle back into after a Big Bounce.

<-- universe

[Lorizael]

Even though there is significantly more matter than anti-matter?