Re: Another sort of expansion?

From: jonathan (Write_at_Instead.com)
Date: 02/18/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 23:39:43 -0500

"Jo Schaper" <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote in message
news:1118e64na8sod0a@corp.supernews.com...
> Since we are all reading our March Scientific American magazine, may I
> direct the group to the article on the Big Bang?

A spectacular set of animations from the wmap survey
is here. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_or/mr_media2.html
The third from the bottom, ripples in fluids, is
especially informative in picturing the origin of
the universe

If you want the very latest view of the evolution of the
universe, you should read the paper from the Princeton
Physics Dept entitled "A Quintessential Intro Into
Dark Energy" by Dr Steinhardt, one of the founders
of the inflationary model and perhaps the leading
cosmologist around. The entire dept is steeped in the
complexity science I so love to rant about.
http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/

>
> The authors are talking about the expansion of space, not matter, from a
> densely filled space to a sparsely filled one. Their analogy is to tape
> paper pictures of galaxies on balloons. The balloons expand, but the
> galaxies do not.

You have to think of space in terms of potential energy, not
just spatial dimensions. If you heat the interior of the baloon
it gets larger eh? But the matter involved isn't fundamentally
altered. The expansion is just the energy of the big bang
dissipating so the rate slows, at least until recently. The
expansion is increasing now that the universe is matter
dominated. This is due to the recent formation of
dark energy. Which, in my terms, is an emergent system
property that spontaneously appears when a system
achieves self-organized criticality...becomes fully
niche filled.

With life, when fully niche filled, the next large evolutionary
step takes place. Such as two celled life from single
celled. Such as intelligence from animals. Such as
dark energy from radiation.

The universe evolves, and in the Darwinian sense. Both
are attractor solutions. Both follow the laws of self
organizing systems. I'm telling you something that is
rather difficult to digest, but it's true. We need to
understand life first in order to understand the physical
universe .../not/ the other way around.

Our classical views of the universe are all wrong...exactly
backwards in fact.

>
> I am not the smartest turnip on the truck, but can someone explain to me
> where the fundamental difference is between so called 'empty space' and
> so called dense space or matter? I'm having trouble cogitating on the
> concept that space and distance may be expanding, but that matter stays
> the same size (trapped, as I think I understand, by gravitation).

A hurricane is a more organized form of the atmosphere. So it
becomes dominated by it's own forces and structure.
The surrounding environment becomes a minor player in
behavior by comparison to the organized system.
Keep in mind that the laws of self organization are
at heart thermodynamics. So the mental conception
of the universe should be formed by fluid motion.

>
> This is at the same time of having survived an education where matter
> was treated as little more than congealed energy--that is, at the sub-
> atomic level, 'space' between protons, neutrons, electrons, and the
> other 23 flavors of little charges and forces can be proportionally very
> huge, and matter, in one sense, is considered just patterned energy
> vibrating very fast to create the illusion of solidity.
>
> Unlike some savants around here, I freely admit this concept of
> 'differential speeds of expansion' and the 'non-expansion of matter'
> coexisiting with an expanding universe causes me trouble.

When space becomes more organized then energy is formed.
When energy becomes more organized then matter is formed.
Each higher emergent property is dominated by it's own
internal forces. A direct analogy of space...energy...matter is
heat....clouds....rain.

Does a drop of rain really care if the cloud that released it
dissipates later as a result? The drop has condensed out and
has become something else with a 'life of its own'. The
cloud then has only little to say about the behavior of
the rain.

>
> Or, do the cosmological physicists mean something else by the word
> 'expansion' than 'increase in linear or volumetric distance'?

The universe is a living thing. And like any living thing, you'll
never grasp its full beauty with a scale, a ruler or a
camera.

>
> So confusing...
>
>
> TIA
>
> Jo
>

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