Good News: the Universe May Not Be Dying

[TacticalPeek]

Good News: the Universe May Not Be Dying
Fri February 20, 2004 05:28 PM ET
(Page 1 of 2)
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cosmologists had a bit of good news on Friday -- they are just about twice as certain as they were before that the Universe is not going to be ripped apart.


more
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=4406472


I'll withhold judgement until after the November election.

[mouse7]

1. Let someone post another "I hate cats" thread in the lounge...

...then read the instruments again.

[Cat Atomic]

2. Isn't the Andromeda Galaxy still supposed to collide

with our own in a few billion years? I don't really care what happens to the universe if my galaxy is a heaping mess! I'm galacto-centric.

[Dudley_DUright]

4. Quite possible

I think the time scale is about 5 billion years, but by then the earth will be a burnt cinder inside the sun which will have expanded out to a radius greater than the orbit of the earth in its red giant phase. I am even more geocentric than galacto-centric. We need to get working on warp drive soon!

on edit: the time of collision is more like 3 billion years. We don't have much time!!!!!

Here is a neat website that does some computer simulations of what an Andromeda Milky Way galactic collision might look like.

http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/tflops/

[Cat Atomic]

7. I can deal with the potential loss of our solar system...

But I can't cope with losing the Milky Way! Seems like we'd just be getting a good start on our galaxy-wide empire by the time Andromeda shows up and pulls a Ghengis Khan. :P

[Dudley_DUright]

3. Not that Cosmologists were too worried about it anyway

but it is a potential consequence of the dark energy that seems to make up about 70% of the universe. A good article also just appeared in the NYTimes science section on this topic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/17/science/space/17DARK.html

[havocmom]

5. That's teh good news? I was hoping for a universal mercy killing

to end the commericals for that Survivor show on TV

[cryofan]

6. this article is bullshit

If the universe is an open system, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not work the same. In fact, we really don't know what the universe really is.

Also, even if the universe continues to expand forever, that does not mean that the universe will go to some low level of energy forever. We know that local fluctuations in the baseline energy level will occur. And so therefore life can carry on in those areas. In fact, those local fluctuations may well serve as a locus for attracting matter and energy and therefore become more than just a fluctuation in energy levels.