[andyt]

The mysteries of the universe are as vast and wide as existence itself. Throughout history, mankind has searched and struggled to find the answers tucked away inside the universe and everything we see around us. As Deep Thought said in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
True, we have yet to come up with the answers to life, the universe, and everything — but oh do we have questions! Solving these mysteries may help to explain not only the creation of the universe, but also how it works, why it works, and possibly how it will end.

The hunt for the elusive Higgs particle continues
1. The Higgs boson
The Higgs boson is a hypothetical particle whose accompanying field is believed to be accountable for giving all other fundamental particles their mass. It is also the only elementary particle theorized in the Standard Model — the closest thing modern physics has to a "theory of everything" — that has not yet been actually observed through experiments. Why the difficulty proving this particular particle's existence? The Higgs boson has such a rapid decay that its appearance in the world is ineffably brief. Instead, physicists look for evidence of the particle's decay itself through experimentation.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has been working to find the elusive particle via experiments at the Large Hadron Collider — the world's largest and most ambitious particle accelerator. By accelerating particles at the LHC to near the speed of light and then smashing them into each other, scientists have recently been able to estimate that they will likely find the signal for the particle somewhere around the mass of 115 to 130 GeV. Now that we know where to look, we're likely to find out sooner than later whether the Higgs boson exists or not — and for physicists around the world, that'll be exciting news either way.
If the Higgs boson does exist, we may finally be able to build a complete picture not only of how the universe works, but why its works the way it does. If it does not exist, the entire scientific community must to go back to the drawing board and begin investigating a new description of our physical universe.

The drop of an apple led to one of the greatest mysteries in history
2. Gravity and the mysterious graviton
We've all heard the story of how Newton's observation of an apple falling out of a tree led to his formulation of the law of gravitation. We also know that gravity is the always-attractive force that acts between objects. What you might not know, however, is that gravity is one of the most fundamental yet weakest forces in the universe — so weak, in fact, that the physics world has yet to be able to explain precisely how it works.
Sure, we are quite positive of gravity's existence — drop something and it crashes to the floor, easy enough — but if gravity is a force, according to the Standard Model, it must also have its own accompanying particle. The accompanying particle in question is called the graviton. Gravitons are tiny, massless particles that somehow tug on every bit of matter in the universe. Mysteriously, they are able to do this while being ridiculously weak on the planetary scale yet uncommonly strong in relation to, say, two positively charged protons. We don't know why it acts differently on planets versus elementary particles — heck, we don't even know how to detect them, although we have made various attempts to date.
Since the scientific community has yet to come up with a concrete way to detect the graviton particle, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) was doing research between 2009 and 2011 to look for wave-like evidence of gravity. Scientists thought they could detect ripples in space-time that are thought to be caused by the acceleration of mass, but by the time the experiment was shut down, they had yet to find anything. There are facilities that have the equipment to continue the experiment, but they are currently focused on solving the Higgs issue. Sadly, even if the Higgs boson is found, it still won't shed much light on the gravity quandaries that still remain.


We think dark matter exists, but proving it is the hard part
3. Dark matter
Dark matter is a mysterious sort of glue that not only holds galaxies together but is theoretically responsible for their creation. It was initially hypothesized in 1933 to explain mathematical discrepancies while calculating the mass of galaxies; essentially, more matter is required to hold galaxies together than we can see. Since then, we haven't learned a whole heck of a lot more about dark matter.
In fact, we seem to know more about what itisn't than what it is. We know it isn't antimatter. We also know it isn't dark clouds of normal matter. Many physicists believe that it accounts for about 83% of the matter in the universe — even though we've yet to prove it exists!
The tricky thing with dark matter is that we can't detect it directly; it's invisible. Dark matter only reveals itself through its gravity, so we must instead measure it through its interaction with normal matter. Currently, there are two conflicting experiments being conducted in attempts to confirm the existence of dark matter.
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) detector at the Soudan Mine in Minnesota is searching for weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, whose discovery could resolve the dark matter problem. Even though dark matter is expected to be everywhere, it is estimated that some WIMPs may pass through an entire galaxy without interacting with any normal matter, making discovery very difficult. Although scientists have not yet detected WIMPs directly, they have found significant evidence that they exist.
In direct conflict with these findings, the experiment XENON100 at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy has so far yielded only negative results in regards to WIMPs. That isn't to say that WIMPs don't exist, merely that they are harder to detect than scientists had previously presumed.

Some of Einstein's theories have crumbled with time, but what about lightspeed travel …
4. Faster-than-light travel
Admit it — if you've ever watched Han Solo and Chewie take the Millennium Falcon to light speed, or stared in awe the first time you saw the Starship Enterprise jump to maximum warp, you've wanted to see faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Surprising all of us, last year it almost seemed possible. The Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus (OPERA), another experimental instrument operating at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, is in part looking at whether or not particles called neutrinos may be able to break this cosmic speed limit.
This highly sophisticated instrument has given results leading some to believe that they have caught neutrinos moving faster than light. A set of neutrinos was sent from CERN's lab in Geneva through the Earth and then observed at the OPERA lab under Sasso Mountain. The entire trip was recorded to have taken under 3 milliseconds, 60 nanoseconds faster than light would have taken.
Needless to say, there are many who have their doubts. Proving faster-than-light travel exists would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which states that the speed of light (186,282 miles per second, or 671 million miles per hour) is a cosmic constant and that nothing can travel faster than this limit — a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe.
If FTL travel is in fact possible, it opens the door to the possibility of time travel as well. Don't get too excited — there won't be any quick hops to the future in your DeLorean to pick up the next lotto numbers or buy a Gray's Sports Almanac from a local thrift shop. If neutrinos are traveling faster than light, though, they could theoretically arrive somewhere before they departed, so communication to the past may be a possibility. If we could somehow take advantage of this, you could make your alternate past self wealthy by sending a message encoded in neutrinos to invest heavily, for example, in Google stock at the time the company first went public.
But then again, if one can send a message to the past, we must also say goodbye to relativity and causality as we know them. Since cause would no longer need to procede effect, before and after would cease to have meaning. People would retire before graduating from grade school, and eventually, the universe as we know it would cease to be. Speaking of which...


A planetary collision is just one of the many theories as to how we'll meet our demis …
5. How will it all end?
Assuming the standard model is true, our universe's end will likely all come down to one of three theories, each of which depends upon three things: the shape of the universe, how much dark energy is contained within it, and how the densities of dark energy will respond to the expansion of the universe.
There are believed to be three possible shapes of the universe: an open universe, a flat universe, and a closed plane of space-time.
In an open universe (think of a gigantic, saddle-shaped object), the universe is likely to experience the Big Freeze. In this scenario, the universe will continue to expand until matter has stretched incredibly thin, the stars have all burnt out, galaxies have ceased creating new stars to replace them, and all mass as we know it has ceased to exist. Everything will become dark and cold. The universe won't so much as end as it will simply fizzle out, settling into a silent and lonely slumber at absolute zero.
Another possibility for universal armageddon is the Big Rip. Not as dependent on the shape of the universe as much as the amount of dark energy contained within it, this model implies that the acceleration of the universe will continue to increase without slowing, and the dark energy will become so strong that it will overwhelm the other elemental forces. Galaxies, suns, and planets alike will begin tearing themselves apart, all ending in a gravitational singularity — a place in which the standard rules of physics and relativity no longer apply.
Somewhat less unsettling is the theory of the Big Crunch, in which the universe will continue to expand until matter begins to slow the rate of expansion. Once slowed enough, the expansion will eventually come to a halt and begin to retract. Everything — planets, suns, galaxies, black holes, even the indestructible iPad 7000 — will all come crashing back together, culminating in a Big Crunch: essentially the opposite of the Big Bang that kicked our universe off in the first place. The bright side here is that the crunch is thought to be succeeded by yet another Big Bang and the creation of a whole new universe. Unfortunately, of the three, the Big Crunch is currently the least favored hypothesis within the physics community — meaning our dreams of an endlessly cycling universe of birth, destruction, and rebirth may end up being relegated to the realm of science fiction.

[DrCaleb]

That's the problem with copying people's blogs. They get it wrong, so will you.

None of the Theory of General or Special Relativity have been disproven, rather every experiment we have performed has verified Einstien for the genius he was.

And LIGO was shut down before it ever launched. No wonder it found nothing.

[PostFactum]

Anyway that's interesting, I don't think that I would be looking for in someone's blog for this stuff.

[andyt]

DrCaleb wrote:

That's the problem with copying people's blogs. They get it wrong, so will you.

None of the Theory of General or Special Relativity have been disproven, rather every experiment we have performed has verified Einstien for the genius he was.

And LIGO was shut down before it ever launched. No wonder it found nothing.

Quote:

In Brief
In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.
Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal.
This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... relativity And all they said was that some of his theories have crumbled with time. Not which ones. He had a problem with Bell's experiment and with quantum probability. But they are specifically referring to speed of light being an absolute which CERN may have shown not to be - do you have better info on that?

As for LIGO - think about your logic here. The article is saying that there are still important unknowns in physics, including the particle associated with gravity. Whether LIGO was ever operational or not, the gravitron has not been discovered, it's still a mystery.

That's the problem with just using the CKA method of attacking a post instead of thinking about what it's saying, and thus thinking you've made a relevant point. Whatever details the writer may have got wrong, are you saying any of those 5 questions have been answered?


Also, I was reading something about the forces varying in strength across the universe - eg gravity isn't the same everywhere we go in the universe. Can't find the reference for that, but if it proves out, obviously relativity goes out the window.

[Psudo]

I don't understand the cyclic theory of the Big Crunch. I thought the idea was that the big bang created time, so "before the big bang" makes no more sense than "north of the north pole." If that's the case, the idea of the big crunch causing another big bang is nonsense.

Gravity's irrelevance at the atomic scale and over-abundance at the galactic scale (stated as evidence of dark matter) suggest that large assemblies of matter are more sensitive to gravity than the sum of their component parts are when separated by distance. I imagine there's some reason that dark matter theory is preferred to a bizarre definition of gravity that gets stronger at massive scales and weaker at minor ones, but I don't know what that reason is.

I also think it's rather odd how parallels are drawn between the big bang and divine creation. Wouldn't gravity be a better metaphor for creation? Bringing order to chaos, works in mysterious ways, etc.

[Lemmy]

andyt wrote:

Proving faster-than-light travel exists would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which states that the speed of light (186,282 miles per second, or 671 million miles per hour) is a cosmic constant and that nothing can travel faster than this limit — a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe.

Actually, Einstein said nothing could ACCELERATE to the speed of light. He never said things couldn't go faster than the speed of light. Kevin Spacey covered that in some detail as Prot in K-PAX? You should also eat your bananas peel and all.

[andyt]

Psudo wrote:

I don't understand the cyclic theory of the Big Crunch. I thought the idea was that the big bang created time, so "before the big bang" makes no more sense than "north of the north pole." If that's the case, the idea of the big crunch causing another big bang is nonsense.

I'm not sure what you mean here? The big crunch doesn't cause the big bang, it's just the inevitable result of it. So I guess time would have a maximum duration of 26++ billion years. None of these theories make sense from our limited pov. If there are multiple universes, then there could be universes being destroyed and created all the time - in fact doesn't one theory call for just that?

It seems to me that the big rip could just as easily lead to another big bang as the big crunch.

[Lemmy]

Experience tells me that the big rip is almost always followed soon-after by the big crunch.

[DrCaleb]

andyt wrote:

DrCaleb wrote:

That's the problem with copying people's blogs. They get it wrong, so will you.

None of the Theory of General or Special Relativity have been disproven, rather every experiment we have performed has verified Einstien for the genius he was.

And LIGO was shut down before it ever launched. No wonder it found nothing.

Quote:

In Brief
In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.
Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal.
This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... relativity And all they said was that some of his theories have crumbled with time. Not which ones. .

Where does that article say he was wrong? It states he may have been wrong, but nothing is certain yet. We don't know yet. But every experiment we are certain of, from Galactic Gravitational Lensing to the existance of Black holes to Time being not constant - all of Special and General relativity - is proven correct by experementation.

Quote:

"Einstein was shown to be correct long ago, only a few years after he came up with the theory. However, we are still testing out all its predictions. The results from Gravity Probe B are just the most recent, successful outcomes."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... tein-right

andyt wrote:

He had a problem with Bell's experiment and with quantum probability. But they are specifically referring to speed of light being an absolute which CERN may have shown not to be - do you have better info on that? .

That too is still in question. The evidence points to an anomoly that must be explained, but it can be explained by an unusual metal ore deposit in the path of the particles, or an error in testing just as much as it could be explained by Time not being a constant.

I have posted articles here before on that.

andyt wrote:

As for LIGO - think about your logic here. The article is saying that there are still important unknowns in physics, including the particle associated with gravity. Whether LIGO was ever operational or not, the gravitron has not been discovered, it's still a mystery.

Correct, but the article implies that because they found nothing, that they never will. Incorrect.l But the second part of the experiment was scrubbed due to funding, so we may never know.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0711.3041.pdf

andyt wrote:

That's the problem with just using the CKA method of attacking a post instead of thinking about what it's saying, and thus thinking you've made a relevant point. Whatever details the writer may have got wrong, are you saying any of those 5 questions have been answered?

1. The Higgs boson

Probably exists.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -CERN.html

2. Gravity and the mysterious graviton

Still looking.

3. Dark matter

A long time ago.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/au ... atter.html

And, as the last sentence in the article says - "That isn't to say that WIMPs don't exist, merely that they are harder to detect than scientists had previously presumed."

4. Faster-than-light travel

As Lemmy points out, anything with mass cannot be accellerated to the speed of light. This one of those things that may never change. Why?

Velocity is given by Velocity = Distance / Time. We know that as you accellerate, Time slows down. As you approach the speed of light then, what happens to that equation? Distance approaches infinite, time approaches zero. Division by zero anyone?

5. How will it all end?

We'll know that after it ends. The way it looks right now, the Universe will slowly succumb to entropy (see my sig) and end as a constant teperature in an otherwise empty region of space.

andyt wrote:

Also, I was reading something about the forces varying in strength across the universe - eg gravity isn't the same everywhere we go in the universe. Can't find the reference for that, but if it proves out, obviously relativity goes out the window.

When you understand Special and General Relativity, come talk to me. It does not go out the window. Relativity already says that some forces are not constant - see Gravity Probe B - above. Time is not a constant.

[andyt]

I think you're making too much of the article - it's just a summary of "mysteries" ie things we don't know, not some attack on any theory. You're in effect setting up a straw man.

Time is not a force.

[DrCaleb]

andyt wrote:

I think you're making too much of the article - it's just a summary of "mysteries" ie things we don't know, not some attack on any theory. You're in effect setting up a straw man.

Time is not a force.

It is an attack - because the research is shit. We do know the answers with reasonable certainty to most of those questions, and a simple Google search could show them this.

Due Dilligence is what Science is about, and anyone who doesn't do the research for such an article is simply trying to pass off 'faith' as 'science'. It's no different that if they were saying Creationism isn't disproven, therefore it's a valid theory.

The 'attack' comes because many people will read this blog and believe it to be unadulterated fact, and then their brains turn off. Now everytime some one says 'Einstien', they will come back to this article or one of it's reprints and say "Wasn't he proven wrong?" Then it's up to people like me to try to explain them back into reality.

Then some other fool comes along with his blog, and it starts all over again.

[andyt]

Sad to see you take it that way. I certainly didn't see it in that light. I guess because the certainty you speak of I don't see as that reasonable. The answers fit out models, but they do that because they were created to do so. Can't account for the ever increasing acceleration of expansion of the universe - just come up with dark matter, with no actual evidence for it at all for example. I think we're a long way off from having certainty in these questions. Maybe you see that as an attack too?

[DrCaleb]

andyt wrote:

Sad to see you take it that way. I certainly didn't see it in that light. I guess because the certainty you speak of I don't see as that reasonable. The answers fit out models, but they do that because they were created to do so. Can't account for the ever increasing acceleration of expansion of the universe - just come up with dark matter, with no actual evidence for it at all for example. I think we're a long way off from having certainty in these questions. Maybe you see that as an attack too?

You might be seeing more vitrol in my post than I actually mean. I just dislike people like that, whom I think of as those that 'put their own words in print just to see them in print and in their own minds become more important'.

Questioning the science is never an attack. It's what science does to itself all the time. Notice I never say 'we know that', but 'we are reasonably sure that'? I was hoping that your article was actually full of real mysteries. Like this:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... sense.html

There it plenty of evidence for dark matter. We can even plot its course around and through galaxies and take measurements of it that improve our understanding of it. It's effect leaves littl doubt as to it's existance.

Quote:

Many physicists believe that it accounts for about 83% of the matter in the universe — even though we've yet to prove it exists!

There is little doubt of the existence of Dark Matter, something the article you quote gets very wrong. But, we still have no idea what it is made of. But, that's why we keep looking!

[andyt]

Quote:

Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations. Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of Einstein's theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a "cosmological constant." Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein's theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration. Theorists still don't know what the correct explanation is, but they have given the solution a name. It is called dark energy.

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/fo ... rk-energy/

That's a lot of maybes that add up to saying we don't really know why the universal expansion is accelerating.

I think it's great to say we don't know. It's when people start predicting that we are coming to know everything there is to know about physics, as some did, that we get ourselves into trouble. I'm not sure that from our very limited abilities we'll every be able to understand the physical universe.

[Psudo]

andyt wrote:

Psudo wrote:

the idea of the big crunch causing another big bang is nonsense.

I'm not sure what you mean here? The big crunch doesn't cause the big bang, it's just the inevitable result of it.

The Article You Quoted wrote:

The bright side here is that the crunch is thought to be succeeded by yet another Big Bang and the creation of a whole new universe.

If the big bang is the first cause, it doesn't make sense that something would cause it.