Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case | Hacker News Reader

Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case

quantamagazine.org

32 pointspseudolus12 comments

I’ve had metaphysical conversations with people who bring up that the universe is expanding at a faster rate and our ultimate result is to be all alone, with no hope for communicating with other potential civilizations. It’s a sobering reality and makes you question things.

And if that turns out to be false, we need to remember the need to be humble and stop pretending we know everything!

If other civilizations are like ours, I have zero faith in them surviving long enough after becoming technologically advanced to communicate with each other.

One of my "great filter" theories is that when a species gets technology they stop relying on "fittest evolution" and end up with a dependency on tech to literally stay alive. The species never realize this until even a small disruption in economy, supply chain makes them realize its too late.

The Machine Stops by E.M.Forster (1909)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/th...

The dark forest theory is compelling hence it would be good not to be heard by other civilizations.

With the way things are heading it seems we as a planet are too stupid to consider the dark forest theory. If it ever came to light that we were not alone and the other planet was actively hostile 30% of the US would scream as loud as they could into megaphones in the hopes of showing that other planet "what we are made of".

We need just enough faith in our conjectures to do the work. And a little shit talk on the side.

What we don’t need is total control, children who smash other kids toys, sexism, bullying, drunk idiocy, and whining about long hours, derision of passion, or taunting people who try their best

There’s a lot to do and not much time given

> whining about long hours

I could get on board with the rest of your list, but this struck me as odd to include. Can you elaborate how it fits into that list?

"On Call" cannot be created or destroyed. Just moved around.

Is Betteridge’s Law really a law? Some say it might be!

I’ll give this a pass because this is a question that is capital-H hard to answer with certainty, so a shift in probability is newsworthy.

I think a question in the headline is fine when the answer is not known. And of course this one even includes to answer the headline with the question. In this case, the question is useful for framing the topic discussed.

In my bizarro completely unscientific visualization it makes sense.

Say you have a waterbed made out of very stretchy material. It's bound by a hard frame, but the sides of the frame can slowly expand if enough pressure is applied. Without anyone on the bed, the system is in steady-state. The sides can just barely hold the waterbed bladder without expanding.

Now let's say a bunch of kids jump onto the waterbed. They make indentations in the surface which cause them to roll towards each other (gravity) but also the waterbed is trying to repel them (dark energy).

The extra force of the kids put on the waterbed's surface causes the sides of the waterbed to slowly expand. As the waterbed expands, the repellent force lessens and the expansion slows until it hits steady-state again (or the kids get bored and go outside to play).

Since the universe has no hard edge, it could be there is no steady-state, but the repellent force causing it to expand just gets weaker and weaker over time as matter gets more and more diluted.

I guess all this hinges on whether it's matter causing the repellent force, or if it just exists outside of matter.

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