To say the universe is expanding is logically equivalent to saying everything in it contracts.
Now if this contraction is caused by vacuum energy, why does it occur at a rate of 55 to 120 orders of magnitude (i.e., ten to the power of 55 to 120 times) more slowly than the amount of vacuum energy would suggest?
Well, what if vacuum energy does not just cause everything in the universe to contract? What if it does much more than that? What if it first and foremost prevents it from expanding?…
Let me put it differently. Why is there vacuum at all? Why doesn’t everything in the universe touch everything else?
Wrong. Vacuum is not filled with particles that all touch one another. Only virtual particles emerge in it, and these submerge again within the smallest interval of time. And regardless of whether a non-total vacuum contains some virtual or even some real particles, those particles are then scattered across relatively large distances, so what is there between the particles? Total vacuum.
So James’s “affectance” is now reduced to touch? No, you’ve just made him roll in his grave telepathically!
The same reason that our solar system objects don’t touch each other. The same reason that all the objects in our galaxy don’t touch each other. It’s because they are both expanding because the objects are moving farther away from the cores of the solar system and galaxy. Why would they move farther away from the core, you ask? Because the objects came from the cores.
Our solar system is actually the object the sun, expanding. The object the sun is made up of the core and surrounding objects, like a atom is made of a nucleus and surrounding electrons. As the outer objects get farther away that means the entire object expands.
The solar system IS the sun, expanding. The entire solar system IS the sun. It is one object which we call the solar system, but it IS all the SUN, expanding.
A space can get larger without things in that space changing their actual size. They might be smaller by comparison to the space, but themselves have not changed or contracted at all.
What is ‘vacuum energy’?
There is no vacuum, just areas that have smaller and smaller stuff in them which you aren’t able to detect or interact with based on your much much larger relative size and scope.
The idea of vacuum as in NOTHING IS HERE/NOTHING EXISTS AT ALL is absurd and logically self-defeating.
That is what they said - but I have reason to not believe it.
James makes sense in claiming that it is merely the natural resonance of electromagnetic radiation occurring throughout the universe. I recently read someone else saying that same thing - makes sense to me. Besides the big bang is silly.
I agree the big bang is silly if posited as the creation of reality itself. But as the creation of merely this one universe, assuming there would be countless other universes out there blinking into and out of existence across cosmic time, I see nothing wrong with that idea. Granted we would still need to have some notion as to the causes why a big bang would occur in the first place, which I don’t think we have. So absent that it does still seem a bit silly. Then again, what are the alternate explanations?
Natural resonance of EMR, sure that could be the case, although I would assume physics would be able to theorize, predict and measure that based on a technical-mathematical understanding of EMR. Of course EMR is still a bit of a mystery even to physics today, it is treated more from an engineering standpoint and assumed this means it is understood. The philosophical, truly physical understanding of what it really is and why it really exists seems lacking.
My best possible theory about big bangs would be they represent the quantum flux occurring on a much much higher order or magnitude. What we experience as one big bang creating our universe would be akin to the quantum flux in a very very higher dimension from ours moving down from an up position.
That little blip of tiny energy and ‘flux’ (ignore the word quantum if you want, I am not hung up on it and I tend to agree with you that quantization is problematic as a concept) in the much much higher dimension was up/positive (expressing its energy in that dimension) and then a tiny moment later went down/negative across the statistical curve (represented an absence of energy in that specific place and time in that higher dimension/order of magnitude of existence), like what you see with a wave crossing the same point over and over, up and down and up and down.
When it moves down, as a negative, that causes a big bang in our much much lower order of existence. Why? Because in this theoretical idea anyway, if you were to move down or up forever you would never reach an end, you would only eventually reach a new level of reality akin to the one you left along time ago; each level of reality is stable in terms of itself and its own orders of magnitude with which it can interact and experience.
This would mean that every tiniest moment of time in our realm, countless universes are being born and dying way way ‘below’ us. But in those universes’ own relative time scales, they experience billions or trillions of years of existence. Likewise, our own universe and all of our experiences of time and space within it are just the tiny blip of time inside a single little energy ‘flux’ that occurs near-instantaneously in the deep fabric of a reality much much higher up than ours.
I have no idea if this is true or even makes a lot of sense. But it’s a cool idea anyway.
“Actual size” and “themselves” are meaningless terms. To say the whole gets larger while its parts stay the same size is logically equivalent to saying the whole stays the same size while its parts get smaller.
The energy of a space containing no particles. It may be the same as dark energy (and I think it is).
Well, unless there’s actually nothing rather than something… But sure, let’s say there’s something rather than nothing. Then the idea of vacuum as nothing is not what I meant, not what’s meant in contemporary physics.
Put a small 10 cubic centimeter balloon inside a larger 1,000 cubic centimeter balloon. Now make the 1,000 cubic centimeter balloon 10,000 cubic centimeters. The larger balloon got larger and the small balloon inside stayed the same.
What you are claiming is that is the same as the large balloon staying 1,000 cubic centimeters and the small balloon getting smaller to 1 cubic centimeter. You know what they call that? NONSENSE.
What you’ve missed is that that last sentence of mine is a reformulation of this one:
‘To say the universe is expanding is logically equivalent to saying everything in it contracts.’
So ‘the whole’ there means τό ὅλον, to holon, the universe. To say that the universe expands is logically equivalent to saying that, among other things, the light-second—by which the centimeter is defined—gets shorter… The speed of light decreases, because light traverses a smaller part of the whole—per second, which also gets shorter. (And if there’s a Democritean atom, that also gets smaller…)
The speed of light does not decrease because the speed of light is defined by light travel time. 1/299,792,458 of a second of light travel time is 1 meter, and that means 299,792,458/299,792,458 of a second (1 second) is 299,792,458 meters, which means the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per seocnd.
The speed of light has NOTHING to do with how large the universe is, and is not affected by any change in size of the universe.
So to recap, it is total nonsense to claim the larger balloon getting bigger and the smaller balloon staying the same is the same as the larger staying the same and the smaller getting smaller. Those are two different animals, never to be confused as “the same.”
No, you’ve just made him roll in his grave telepathically! 