OllyK

I'm not sure about that at all. In my limited (as previously seen) knowledge, fields etc have carrier particles, the Higgs Field has the Higgs Boson. I can't find any reference to the commonality of Dark Matter (general) and Higgs Boson or Field (specific). Do you have any reference?

Again, feel free to correct me, but isn't it the hope that String Theory will become the theory of everything, not the otherway round?

Always happy to accept references...fire away.

Iain Young

The 1st ship travels at the speed of light

The 2nd ship travels at the speed of light relative to the 1st ship

The 3rd ship travels at the speed of light relative to the 2nd ship

So, each ship is only travelling at the speed of light in relation to its parent, but if you were stood on a planet watching them go by, it would appear that the 3rd ship is travelling at 3x the speed of light...

OllyK

Logically that makes sense, but from a relativistic POV I think you are incorrect, I'm trying to get my head round it still!

TonyG

Length contraction comes into play.
From outside, the first spacecraft, (travelling at SOL), you would measure its length as 0 metres. So looking at the second spacecraft, it's travelling 0 metres to get from the rear to the front of spaceship 1, which takes 0 seconds. From your point of view (outside), it is only travelling as fast as spaceship 1. Same thing applies to spaceship 3 inside spaceship 2.

Iain Young

Same here. I now remember why I didn't become a physicist

Edcase

No doubt straight past a bloody speed trap!

Can't even drive to mars without a ticket nowadays

OllyK

Starting to get there...
http://science.howstuffworks.com/relativity1.htm

suprabeast

oh gosh i'm not sure if i can afford to lose an entire afternoon to reading... oh sod it, be back in a couple with more knowledge!!

Iain Young

Got work to do, but I've bookmarked it to have a read through later

OllyK

Damn this thread is eating up almost as much time as the cat thread from a few months back

Brit_in_Japan

Isn't one of the principles of the big bang theroy that time started with the big bang? So the edge of the universe is at time = 0. There is nothing beyond that.

That's always one of my problems trying to get my head round this stuff, what was there just BEFORE the big bang? Where did the matter come from and what time was it?????

OllyK

It would seem that space and time are inexorably linked from the stuff I have been through today. As for the rest of it...

King RA

I think my brain just exploded :bang:

OllyK

I keep hearing the occasional roar as the thread passes overhead

Iain Young

Perhaps that's how it all started. Everyone started thinking about it and there was a big bang

jameswrx

iTrader: (4)

Blimey, what did I start!

My head is messed up with all this, we've been talking about it at work again and I've come back and read through all this

I think a few points in this thread have touched on my own thoughts on the matter of 'what was there before the big bang' and 'what's the universe expanding into'. I think the main problem is we label things and have names for things we understand and try to apply them to theoretical models of the universe expansion for example. What I mean is if you say to the average person "the universe is expanding" then like myself (a couple of days ago) they picture the expansion into a larger space. Where the problem lies is we really have no comprehension of this space/nothingness, it's not just empty space as it firstly appears when you say about expanding it's nothing we know of and therefore nothing we can label. It can't be looked at as space or emptiness as it's the wrong label.

It's a huge headache for me to comprehend but there is no name for the area (another label that doesn't apply) beyond the edge of the universe.

As for scientific messing with photons and being able to create an event horizon.. maybe there have been many trillions of efforts to unravel the secrets of the universe and (like someone mentioned earlier) destroyed everything and wiped the entire universe out. Maybe it's all happened trillions of times and we're just the latest to get close, maybe finding the answer will be the end of us. We look at where we are as millions of years of evoloution and are in amazement, but as we've effectively invented time to give us a judgement basis (based on there was/is 'something' prior to the big bang), the time we know of has no bearing at all on what was around prior to the big bang and what 'something' lies beyond the edge of the universe.

What is beyond and before and after all this, what is ' ' (I'm going to call it that becasue to me there is no word to describe that we can comprehend)

unclebuck

Yea... mental man. I'll have some of what he's been smoking....

paul-s

which is exactly why you should live for the moment every single day !!!