Dark Energy and the Origins of the Universe
I am very fortunate to be friends with not one, not two, but three physics PhDs. They're good people and willing to take the time to explain specifics of their science to someone that hasn't taken physics since high school. Specifically, I have a lot of questions about dark energy, dark matter, and the origins of the universe. I had an idea how the universe began that felt correct to me, but my understanding of dark energy and the placement of black holes throughout the universe did not bear that out. I'm disappointed and it's hard to let go, but for some reason, I feel compelled to pursue an explanation of the beginning of the universe. And since I can't do that with dark energy/dark matter, I now feel compelled to figure out what dark energy/dark matter is.
For those that don't know, we have observed that our expectation of the mass of particular galaxies is much higher than we calculated based on stars, satellites, etc. There's an x-factor to the equation, something that we aren't observing that increases the mass significantly. Hence dark matter/energy. Mathematically we know it's there, we just haven't figured out how to measure it yet. Now, for the doubting Thomases in the bunch, there are plenty of other emissions we couldn't see or measure until the 20th century, so the fact that we can't see dark energy doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means we haven't developed the technology to observe it yet. I am certain that will eventually change.
Being a writer, I tend to wrap in what would make an interesting story to me. Hence "Galileo Rocks the Baby" and "The Man in the Egg." The former story needs revision, and I haven't even written the latter story. The problem is, now that I know the concept I describe in them is impossible, my motivation to do so has waned dramatically. Now, they're fiction, so why should it matter? Well, I don't know, but it matters to me. When I'm writing a story in Boston, I don't say the sky is green or the sun rises in the west. I could. It's my fictional world, and I can do with it what I will, but green skies aren't what I will. ...unless there is a tornado coming, but in that case the sky normally turns green and will go back to being blue later.
So I had a thought a few weeks back, the impetus of this post because I forgot for awhile. I want to write it down before I forget again. Dark energy is time. Or, more accurately, dark energy is possibility measured over time. The whole-multiverse thing with Jet-Li running into all his possible selves killing them off and becoming the one? Kind of like that but with a better story.
Every fork or cluster in the road creates a new possibility with a new result. Now those results might be the same, so possibility doesn't fragment into infinity. It twists and turns in on itself coming apart and coming back together. Think of it like a tuning fork. You see the fork. You know it's there. But when you tap it, you see a lot of forks just a few millimeters apart from one another. Well what if that wasn't just one fork? What if every position in which that fork moves is a new fork. You go from having one fork to a thousand forks (please don't start questioning the measure applied to when a new fork exists; it's pedantic and that's my job). Extrapolate that out to an entire planet, an entire galaxy and all of a sudden you go from having # starts to #x100 stars, or what have you. Time then becomes an explanation of increased mass. What you see exists in a fourth dimension, creating larger mass than directly calculated.
For those that don't know, we have observed that our expectation of the mass of particular galaxies is much higher than we calculated based on stars, satellites, etc. There's an x-factor to the equation, something that we aren't observing that increases the mass significantly. Hence dark matter/energy. Mathematically we know it's there, we just haven't figured out how to measure it yet. Now, for the doubting Thomases in the bunch, there are plenty of other emissions we couldn't see or measure until the 20th century, so the fact that we can't see dark energy doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means we haven't developed the technology to observe it yet. I am certain that will eventually change.
Being a writer, I tend to wrap in what would make an interesting story to me. Hence "Galileo Rocks the Baby" and "The Man in the Egg." The former story needs revision, and I haven't even written the latter story. The problem is, now that I know the concept I describe in them is impossible, my motivation to do so has waned dramatically. Now, they're fiction, so why should it matter? Well, I don't know, but it matters to me. When I'm writing a story in Boston, I don't say the sky is green or the sun rises in the west. I could. It's my fictional world, and I can do with it what I will, but green skies aren't what I will. ...unless there is a tornado coming, but in that case the sky normally turns green and will go back to being blue later.
So I had a thought a few weeks back, the impetus of this post because I forgot for awhile. I want to write it down before I forget again. Dark energy is time. Or, more accurately, dark energy is possibility measured over time. The whole-multiverse thing with Jet-Li running into all his possible selves killing them off and becoming the one? Kind of like that but with a better story.
Every fork or cluster in the road creates a new possibility with a new result. Now those results might be the same, so possibility doesn't fragment into infinity. It twists and turns in on itself coming apart and coming back together. Think of it like a tuning fork. You see the fork. You know it's there. But when you tap it, you see a lot of forks just a few millimeters apart from one another. Well what if that wasn't just one fork? What if every position in which that fork moves is a new fork. You go from having one fork to a thousand forks (please don't start questioning the measure applied to when a new fork exists; it's pedantic and that's my job). Extrapolate that out to an entire planet, an entire galaxy and all of a sudden you go from having # starts to #x100 stars, or what have you. Time then becomes an explanation of increased mass. What you see exists in a fourth dimension, creating larger mass than directly calculated.