The Disappearing Universe
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Like (say) a vacuum metastability event?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum#Vacuum_metastabili...
But in that novel, the sphere of destruction expands only at c/2.
Highly recommend the talk.
I can see the elegance of using fractal math to explain the big bang, cosmological expansion and the apparent structure our universe exhibits (as opposed to being an inert soup).
"Then the Star Maker said, "Let there be light." And there was light. From all
the coincident and punctual centers of power, light leapt and blazed. The
cosmos exploded, actualizing its potentiality of space and time. The centers
of power, like fragments of a bursting bomb, were hurled apart. But each one
retained in itself, as a memory and a longing, the single spirit of the whole;
and each mirrored in itself aspects of all others throughout all the cosmical
space and time.
"No longer punctual, the cosmos was now a volume of inconceivably dense matter
and inconceivably violent radiation, constantly expanding. And it was a
sleeping and infi-nitely dissociated spirit.But to say that the cosmos was
expanding is equally to say that its members were contracting. The ultimate
centers of power, each at first coincident with the punctual cosmos,
themselves generated the cosmical space by their disengagement from each other.
The expansion of the whole cosmos was but the shrinkage of all its physical
units and of the wave-lengths of its light. Though the cosmos was ever of
finite bulk, in relation to its minutiae of light-waves, it was boundless and
center-less. As the surface of a swelling sphere lacks boundary and center, so
the swelling volume of the cosmos was boundless and center-less. But as the
spherical surface is centered on a point foreign to it, in a "third dimension,"
so the volume of the cosmos was centered in a point foreign to it, in a
"fourth dimension."
"The congested and exploding cloud of fire swelled till it was of a planet's
size, a star's size, the size of a whole galaxy, and of ten million galaxies.
And in swelling it became more tenuous, less brilliant, less turbulent.
Presently the cosmical cloud was disrupted by the stress of its expansion in
conflict with the mutual clinging of its parts, disrupted into many million
cloudlets, the swarm of the great nebulae.
"For a while these were as close to one another in relation to their bulk as
the flocculations of a mottled sky. But the channels between them widened,
till they were separated as flowers on a bush, as bees in a flying swarm, as
birds migrating, as ships on the sea. More and more rapidly they retreated
from one another; and at the same time each cloud contracted, becoming first
a ball of down and then a spinning lens and then a featured whirl of star-
streams.
"Still the cosmos expanded, till the galaxies that were most remote from one
another were flying apart so swiftly that the creeping light of the cosmos
could no longer bridge the gulf between them."
"In the 1911 Act the term of author's copyright was extended to the lifetime of the author and 50 years thereafter; this remained the case under the 1956 Act and the 1988 Act. The 1911 Act in effect extended the meaning of "author" so that this period of copyright applied to all types of works, not merely printed works. Under the 1995 Regulations (set out below), the period of author's copyright was further extended, to the lifetime of the author and 70 years thereafter." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_Kin...
But knowledge of the Big Bang and the Hubble redshift aren't, by themselves, sufficient to explain what Stapledon wrote. Those things just show that the universe has expanded. For most of the 20th century, people assumed that the acceleration of the universe would diminish -- either asymptotically approaching zero, or reversing into a "Big Crunch". For the galaxies to accelerate beyond the point where photons can bridge the gaps between them, they need to not only have been accelerated, but to keep accelerating, which is a very unintuitive notion (what would be driving the acceleration?)
My guess is that Stapledon was influenced by Einstein's Cosmological Constant, which predicted exactly this kind of acceleration, but which Einstein himself had repudiated several years earlier, calling it "his biggest blunder". When I first read Star Maker in 1997, I figured that even if Stapledon had been up-to-the-minute about the Big Bang, he somehow hadn't gotten the memo about the Cosmological Constant. So I chalked this passage up as one of several things that Stapledon had definitely gotten wrong.
A year later, Dark Energy was discovered, and suddenly it appeared that Stapledon was right all along. This did my head in a bit. Somehow, Stapledon had been spectacularly smart/lucky in crafting his story from a mix of freshly-proposed and freshly-discarded theories. So no, clairvoyance isn't strictly necessary to explain this. But just to be safe, I'll retain that parenthetical question mark after "fictional(?)" when describing Star Maker.
20th century cosmology could be seen as a long argument over the sign of Einstein's constant.
(Standard disclaimer: I'm not a cosmologist, and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.)
"Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical Universe and spirituality. There he proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom" and developed in a report published in Nature.[15] Lemaître himself also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a pejorative term coined during a BBC radio broadcast by Fred Hoyle who was an obstinate proponent of the steady state universe, even until his death in 2001." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
So some have (mistakenly) attributed intuition of dark energy to Einstein and his cosmological constant or some like you would argue that Stapledon was spectacularly smart or lucky but I think I'd attribute it to Lemaitre and I think indirectly (or directly) Stapledon heard or read about this. Perhaps as an academic he was even present at the "British Association" meetup on science and spirituality.
But if so, why did Lemaitre keep Einstein's cosmological constant in his own work and why did he think the expansion rate of the universe was increasing?
Even so I'd like to believe Stapledon really was traveling among the stars 'in some way', also his description of the out of body experience is oddly similar to credible accounts later in the 20th century and might be autobiographical but if not could be explained by him reading earlier accounts of this psychological effect.
edit: apparently Lemaitre discovered Hubble's law before Hubble did! http://www.universetoday.com/90862/the-expanding-universe-cr...
Still, like you, I do like to imagine that Stapledon tapped into something that was somehow beyond the ordinary. I don't feel like speculating beyond that, but however he did it, Star Maker is an extraordinary book.
At the end it states: "SNIa cosmology provides stunning confirmation of cosmic expansion – as predicted by Lemaitre in 1927! • Expansion currently accelerating – as proposed early on by Lemaitre to explain the age of the Universe • Is it Einstein’s CC or some exotic new phenomena? Observers busy trying to find out. Theory badly needed!"
Perhaps the dark energy is the combined weight of all those unproven undiscovered astral dimensions :-) Or perhaps it's something more mundane as unproven strings or quintessence: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/201... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12261-is-dark-energy-l... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintessence_(physics)
Stapledon's works have inspired me to no end. He is brilliant and visionary. I humbly believe if his works were written now, they would still be ahead of their time. Now, as to the following:
1. fsiekfen: "Even so I'd like to believe Stapledon really was traveling among the stars 'in some way', also his description of the out of body experience is oddly similar to credible accounts later in the 20th century and might be autobiographical but if not could be explained by him reading earlier accounts of this psychological effect."
2. nkoren: "Still, like you, I do like to imagine that Stapledon tapped into something that was somehow beyond the ordinary. I don't feel like speculating beyond that, but however he did it, Star Maker is an extraordinary book."
The two of you and others I assume, might be curious to know about "The Opening of The Eyes" (there used to be an online version here (http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/openingoftheeyes_index....) but it's down now. If you like, I could make the .mobi file I created available somewhere from the various parts.
Not commonly known, as far as I can tell, even among Stapledon fans. It was published posthumously by his wife and is written in the first person. Essentially, it's an essay by him to his "creator". I won't comment on what that entails; hopefully his work speaks for itself. But within that story he mentions this - the exact quote:
"Long ago (it was while I was scrambling on a rugged coast, where great waves broke in blossom on the rocks) I had a sudden fantasy of man's whole future, aeon upon aeon of strange vicissitudes and gallant endeavours in world after world, seeking a glory never clearly conceived, often betrayed, but little by little revealed."
It says... something. I'm not sure what. Either way, the piece is a powerful expose on the author. You get to see a lot into his mindset, and even into the challenges he faced in relation to his proposed philosophies. Some interesting commentary on Christianity as well, among others.
But in the end, I guess you get the feeling there's more to him than simple imaginative power. The concept of "fiction as cover for non-fiction (so people will read your stuff without calling you a lunatic) tends to crop up in some of his works too. Either way, his works are nothing short of incredible.
Cheers
The link is fortunately still present in the internet archive, but if you have a mobi version handy that would be nice for offline reading on my ipad kindle app. You can sent it to fsieFKen at gmail.
There is more to him then simple creativity, he was an academic philosopher and romantic, yearning for the spiritual and his mystic side really shows in this book. There is some similarity with other writers like the dutch Frederik van Eeden (psychiatrist) and his book "The Deeps of Deliverance", Herman Hesse, Kahlil Gibran and Dostojevski.
"Olaf Stapledon married Agnes Zena Miller, a first cousin from Australia, on July 16, 1919, at Friends Meeting House, a Quaker establishment at Reigate, Surrey. Agnes, the oldest of four children, was born in New Zealand on May 25, 1894, the daughter of Frank Edward and Margaret Barnard Miller. Frank was a brother of Olaf's mother, Margaret the daughter of Charles Barnard, headmaster of a Quaker school in Yorkshire..." Stapledon spent four years in the Friends Quaker Ambulance Corps. "Although he was involved with socialist groups and contributed some articles to leftist journals, Stapledon's earliest literary aspirations were poetic. His first book was Latter-Day Psalms, published in 1914 by Henry Young and Sons, Ltd., of Liverpool." Stapledon's writing reflected intense wrestling with concepts of God and faith. Also: Olaf's agnosticism also derived from his parents. His father apparently subscribed to no sect at all, so any direct religious influence would therefore have had to come from his mother. She was a Unitarian... In his mature years Stapledon denied that he was a Christian, although the increasing strain of mysticism in his work from the 1940's on indicated a deep-rooted sense of religiosity. [Source: Olaf Stapledon: The Man Behind the Works, by Sam Moskowitz.] http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Olaf_Stapledon.html
There is more to him then simple creativity, he was an academic philosopher and romantic, yearning for the spiritual and his mystic side really shows in this book.
I know! I rushed a bit there, but one of things I cherish about Stapledon is his devotion to the nuance of the intangible, the senses, the "spirit" to which he so often refers. Perhaps one of his crowning contributions is that he melds embracing reality as it is and the essence of worship; it's so rare to find the two in the same place, I've found. Maybe I haven't search enough, and will take a trip through some of your suggestions, so thank you. And that link - an interesting site! Thank you for that as well.
For me, for what it's worth, I had spent years searching for something I couldn't quite place, and once I found him, realized it was this tremendous sense of scope, our littleness and such sensitivity to thought and creativity. At time he's so rich in descriptiveness a break helps, sure, and then you pick up again where you left off.
And when this process is over, what happens to all the black holes, isolated from everything else.. do they just dissipate out, creating a uniform, cold, low entropy universe?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe...
And, after that, oblivion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe#Curr...
You can see why that's not practical, because everything you left behind would be gone. Still, there are scenarios where this might be a valid solution.
However, you could never reach a destination that's speeding away from you faster than the speed of light. Because you can't accelerate your spacecraft beyond that speed, parts of the universe will always be unreachable - which is the point of the article.
You might wonder why galaxies moving away from each other faster than the speed of light works at all given the cosmic speed limit. The answer is that their "movement" is not normal, inertial movement as we know it. Instead you might imagine that new space is being created in between them, driving them away from each other by simply scaling up the distances involved.
Given the practical and theoretical limits on spacecraft acceleration, people have been thinking about a different way to travel, a way that doesn't involve momentum but instead manipulates spacetime to simply shift an object to another position without acceleration. The article hints at this as well. It makes sense because technically the acceleration and deceleration part of a journey is wasteful and limiting. At this time, it's the only way we know how to get from A to B, but we're all hopeful that one or more alternatives can be researched which allow us to simply go somewhere else without using traditional movement.
Consider if you were travelling on the surface of an expanding balloon. Your distance from the starting point would increase faster than your speed relative to the surface at your current spot, because the part of the surface you'd already travelled across would continue expanding. Now do that in three dimensions.
You just broke my brain.
You're going to need a very big oven.
It's better to think of the Big Bang as an unimaginably intense period of expansion and cooling of whatever substance the earliest universe was made out of (see Inflation theory). It was not an explosion that happened in a pre-existing spacetime.
You're already there. Since all of space expanded from one point, by definition the Big Bang actually happened right here (and also over there) [1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem
The best analogy I've seen is that of ants on a balloon. They live in what appears to them to be a two dimensional universe. As you inflate the balloon, they observe their own universe getting bigger. But the "point where the Big Bang happened" to them is not a point that even exists in their universe any more. They cannot get back there, since the higher third dimension does not exist in their universe.
This is core point of relativity. There is no absolute coordinate system whatsoever. Everything is defined as in relation to something else.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are still lots of issues with just surviving the journey, let alone making a foreign planet habitable and establishing a society. We need lots more discoveries in energy and understanding human physiology before it becomes just an engineering problem.
Glad that I won't have to see this depressing end to the universe but still sad for humanity, that we won't last forever.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_hum...
It's the very last thing on the map of the universe:
But at least one could do the respective trips to slightly closer galaxies within a lifetime: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0509268.pdf (published in Phys.Rev. D, http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.107... )
If we could travel at light speed that is, which we can't and likely never will.