Does the universe as an expiring date?

There have been three main theories on the Universe origin

(1) Steady State
(2) Big Bang
(3) Cyclic or oscillating

There are also many theories upon its ultimate fate, bang, crunch, freeze, rip, bounce ...

Universe fate

This is one of my favorite universe sites. Check out the interactive link. It points out that no matter what, we only see stars as long as they have fuel. When the normal stars go out, red dwarfs and black holes will be all that's left. When the red dwarfs finally go out, there will be no light in the universe. In 10^100 years, even the black holes will evaporate. The one thing this site does not explain is the rate of acceleration in the expansion of the universe. With information I have recently seen on TV, perhaps there is another universe outside of ours, with an even greater mass.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/history-universe.html

Steve
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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

And a bit more seriously on the topic: weren’t the universal options either expanding to complete entropy or contracting back to square one or something, and that so far we can’t tell?

Regards

PK

The one thing this site does not explain is the rate of acceleration in the expansion of the universe. With information I have recently seen on TV, perhaps there is another universe outside of ours, with an even greater mass.

Who knows for the universe may only be able to expand to a certain size

The real problem in understanding this stuff is the limits of the human experience.

People are comfortable contemplating normal sized things like dust motes or galaxies and the like. But for really big things, like m-branes or really small things, like super-strings, our imagination fails because there is nothing in normal life to condition us to think in those terms.

A few really bright people can get a rudimentary understanding of these things through mathematics but for those of us who are math-a-phobics, we get to imagine these things through the use of similes and metaphors. Sometimes people mistake the metaphor for reality. When a physicist talks of a super-string particle they don't really mean a teeny-tiny little bit of vibrating string. That is just an easy to understand mental image. Same for things like m-branes: there aren't really massive shower curtains hanging in space waiting to bump together and create a new universe. But that is a reasonable mental image for the math.

A good example of this is the atom. We usually think of atoms as being like tiny solar systems, with the nucleus being the sun and electrons orbiting around like planets. But we know that atoms aren't really much like mini solar system. The scales are way off (if the nucleus of a hydrogen atom were the size of the sun then the electron would be out somewhere around the orbit of Pluto, and a whole lot of nothing at all in between.) Also, electrons are not like planets, not discrete little points, instead they are smudged out clouds of probability. But we use the solar system analogy because it makes sense to us, is easy to grasp and makes explaining chemistry a lot easier.\

Sorry for the long-winded post but my central point is: the universe can likely never be accurately imagined by us simply because it is so far beyond normal human experience. So we use math. And we use metaphor to create mental images to explain the math.

Nothingness is just that, nothingness. I think you may be thinking in terms of an infinitely vast space completely devoid of matter and energy. But that is still something: empty space that the universe is expanding into. It is not like that. Nothingness is just that, nothing. It doesn't exist until the expanding universe creates it.

As I have said several times before: the universe is not under any obligation to conform to the human concept of common sense.


And even my description of an electron as like a smudged out cloud of probability is a simile. Just a more useful one than thinking it a solid planet. Similes within similes. Yes, Chris, it really is turtles all the way down. :P
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Nothingness is just that, nothingness. I think you may be thinking in terms of an infinitely vast space completely devoid of matter and energy. But that is still something: empty space that the universe is expanding into. It is not like that. Nothingness is just that, nothing. It doesn't exist until the expanding universe creates it.

The latter part here would suggest that a universe has a boundary although this boundary itself is expanding into new space. Now then, this infinitely vast space completely devoid of matter and energy could actually be a vacuum that's sucking our universe into it. Perhaps were not naturally expanding but actually, under vacuum conditions, being sucked apart in all directions. The boundary edge of the universe as it expands so creates the space that it moves into does defy logic. But, as you rightly imply, unless ones prepared too defy logic you will never be able to comprehend the possible workings going on behind this mysterious science.
What seems illogical to our minds does not mean that it's necessarily illogical to the true workings of the universe.

Fill a ballon with some flour, blow it up then pop it. Take a slow motion picture of the flour particles. ...

My own theory is quite simple. I think there is one Universe and it is infinite, and is populated by an unknown number of black holes. Every so often a local black hole absorbs so much matter that it simply explodes. What we are seeing is simply the aftermath of our own local black hole exploding, as if we were at the centre of that balloon, with stars instead of flour particles. ...

You have to take your imagination one step further. You are, I think, still thinking in terms of something being outside the universe (in your example, you are thinking a vacuum exists outside our universe). It doesn't. Nothing exists outside the universe, the universe creates the space as it expands. It is not expanding into anything, it just expands.

Yeah, I know, doesn't mate up with common sense. But the universe doesn't have to. :)

Well this vacuum theory of mine permits me a shortcut to deriving an idea of where energy first came from. It may be a bad shortcut I know and of course taking shortcuts can lead you up the wrong path. But it does not mean that I can't accept your ideas on how the universe expands into the space it creates for itself. You could easily be correct if so how do you think the energy that created our universe first came about. I like the vacuum theory purely because I can then imagine how this energy came about...but yes, using my earthly imagination could be where I'm going wrong here. But there is also something else on my mind and that being "was our universe created at the big bang with all our 11 dimensions in operation and only after creation did most of them become wrapped up then ineffectual" The reason behind this is simple, to explain how illogical events do occur in our universes that make it what it is - is purely down to the fact that during creation it was under the influence of multiple dimensions during it's initial construction. Maybe for only millionths of a second but to understand it all today we need to work it out using multiple dimensional concepts of science. They don't exist as far as I know but to shortcut my question here lets say that at creation the mathematics applicable at that stage meant that 2+2=6...Now we know that logically 2+2=4 but since we have to accept illogical occurrances that may be in a multi active dimensional world 2+2 can equal something completely different. Some thing for you to chew over Kenzie, just some lateral thinking on my behalf here but theres nothing wrong in applying illogicalness if some of the answers we do know do defy our logic.

My bed time know, I've stayed up too long enjoying myself in debate with you.