Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Playa d'en London
Posts: 9826

is there a hidden parallel universe?

interesting science read re: our beloved universe.


taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech


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A new theory for the origin of the Universe is intriguing astronomers with the idea that a "Big Splat" preceded the Big Bang.

It proposes that there may be an unseen parallel universe to ours.

The idea, which is still at the development stage, may provide hints about what happened before our Universe exploded into existence some 15 billion years ago.

The theory has been outlined in the past few days at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US.

Paul Steinhardt and colleagues at Princeton University propose the so-called "ekpyrotic model". It explains important details about the nature of our Universe such as why the cosmos is expanding the way it is.

M-theory

For the uninitiated, the ideas are difficult to grasp. At their heart is string theory, the idea that the fundamental building blocks of space and time are tiny vibrating strings. String theory has excited theorists in the past few years although it has remained very much untested.

Steinhardt's ideas about the origin of the Universe are based on an extension of string theory called M-theory.

M-theory does not do away with the Big Bang. The evidence that everything emerged from a 'fireball' with a temperature of 10 billion degrees, expanding on a timescale of one second, is now very compelling and uncontroversial.

Instead, M-theory looks at events before the Big Bang, proposing that the Universe has 11 dimensions, six of them rolled up into microscopic filaments that can, for all intents, be ignored.

Professor Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University told BBC News Online: "Steinhardt and his colleagues offer a fascinating idea, invoking the idea of more than one universe embedded in higher-dimensional space."


The action of the Universe takes place in five-dimensional space. Before the Big Bang occurred the Universe consisted of two perfectly flat four-dimensional surfaces.

One of these sheets is our Universe; the other, a "hidden" parallel universe.

According to the Princeton researchers, random fluctuations in this unseen companion universe caused it to distort and reach towards our Universe.

The floater "splatted" into our Universe and the energy of the collision was transformed into the matter and energy of our Universe in a Big Bang.

According to Professor Sir Martin Rees: "All these ideas about the ultra-early universe highlight the link between cosmos and micro-world - the ideas won't be firmed up until we have a proper understanding of space and time, the 'bedrock' of the physical world."


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I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.
- Calvin (and Hobbes)

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: MA
Posts: 2728

So, that's where wonderaz comes from! That explains so very much!

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I only want your happiness, knowing I can never be yours to share it.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location:
Posts: 16728

quote:

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Originally posted by urbanjunkie:

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A new theory for the origin of the Universe is intriguing astronomers with the idea that a "Big Splat" preceded the Big Bang.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location:
Posts: 16728

Before the Big Bang occurred the Universe consisted of two perfectly flat four-dimensional surfaces


*rubs belly*

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Playa d'en London
Posts: 9826

quote:

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Originally posted by Chantrea:
So, that's where wonderaz comes from! That explains so very much!

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
Posts: 18808

Interesting.

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Have a good day, and if you feel like subjecting your genitals to high doses of x-ray radiation I'm sure the world will kindly thank you.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 1827

IMHO...

I think these scientists actually don't know a thing. 100 years from now, what is taken as fact now, will be laughed at. And what is taken as fact then, will be laughed at 100 years from then.

Amazing, but the world was flat once. And we were the center of the universe, and everything revolved around us.

A round planet was laughed at, yet is now true.

Time will proove these men wrong...you will see.

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CLICK MY LINK. I HAVE A FORUM!! COME TO MY FORUM, PLEASE???

In retrospect, I probably should have taken the vanilla icecream. But the chocolate looked far too tempting. Little did I know at the time, it was actually little children all mushed up into a fine icey paste. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night, and neither did those kiddies. Well, I didn't stand for such a crime!! NO WAY. I marched back in that store and demamded an explanation. And there is was. Double chocolate icecream. Sitting there, waiting to be ingested. Oh, the taste. Oh the pure orgasmic feeling when you consume the delicious cream. Oh, how I love chocolate icecream.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 15130

Piano.. none of this is stated as fact. This is more conjecture than anything. Actually, didn't the article say it hasn't even been tested? (God knows how they would do that anyway...)

It's just another possibility. Maybe true, maybe not.

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"i luv u!" -- Chantrea
Graphic Cheeseworks.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Shreveport, LA
Posts: 2947

I was watching on Nova about a year ago where a scientist had fired a laser through a vacuum and discovered a release of photons. The photons were not present in the vacuum before the laser fired so it was thought that they had to come from a outside source. The only theory they could think of was that the photons had come from a parralel universe as no other source was evident.

Not total proof but a step in the right direction for finding out.

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"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." -Robert Heinlein

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