is delta T entropic????

[Mark Kohut]

Is Time Disappearing from the Universe? (A Weekend Feature)



Remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? Well what if the time 
part of the equation was literally running out? New evidence is suggesting that 
time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish 
completely. This radical theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has 
baffled scientists for years.

Scientists previously have measured the light from distant exploding stars to 
show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. They assumed that 
these supernovae are spreading apart faster as the universe ages. Physicists 
also assumed that a kind of anti-gravitational force must be driving the 
galaxies apart, and started to call this unidentified force "dark energy".
The idea that time itself could cease to be in billions of years - and 
everything will grind to a halt - has been proposed by Professor José Senovilla, 
Marc Mars and Raül Vera of the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, and 
University of Salamanca, Spain. The corollary to this radical end to time itself 
is an alternative explanation for "dark energy" - the mysterious 
antigravitational force that has been suggested to explain a cosmic phenomenon 
that has baffled scientists.
However, to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it 
comes from. Professor Senovilla, and colleagues have proposed a mind-bending 
alternative. They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and 
we’re looking at things backwards. Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled 
into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, 
time itself is slowing down. At an everyday level, the change would not be 
perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements 
tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be 
infinitesimally slow from a human perspective, but in terms of the vast 
perspective of cosmology, the study of ancient light from suns that shone 
billions of years ago, it could easily be measured
The team's proposal, published in the journal Physical Review D, dismisses dark 
energy as fiction. Instead, Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is 
caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down 
battery.
“We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion," he 
explains. "What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this 
expansion - that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, 
increasing its rate."
If time gradually slows "but we naively kept using our equations to derive the 
changes of the expansion with respect of 'a standard flow of time', then the 
simple models that we have constructed in our paper show that an "effective 
accelerated rate of the expansion" takes place."
Currently, astronomers are able to discern the expansion speed of the universe 
using the so-called "red shift" technique. This technique relies on the 
understanding that stars moving away appear redder in color than ones moving 
towards us. Scientists look for supernovae of certain types that provide a sort 
of benchmark. However, the accuracy of these measurements depends on time 
remaining invariable throughout the universe. If time is slowing down, according 
to this new theory, our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new 
space dimension. Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists 
would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.
"Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is 
accelerating," says Prof Senovilla. The theory bases it’s idea on one particular 
variant of superstring theory, in which our universe is confined to the surface 
of a membrane, or brane, floating in a higher-dimensional space, known as the 
"bulk". In billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether.
"Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever," 
Senovilla told New Scientist magazine. "Our planet will be long gone by then."
Though radical and in many way unprecedented, these ideas are not without 
support. Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, say the concept 
has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can 
emerge, it can also disappear - that's just the reverse effect."
Posted by Rebecca Sato and Casey Kazan.
Sources:
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jVw4s04zG-RxqVoKjwLps7coom8A
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19626354.000-is-time-slowing-down.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/18/scitime118.xml



----- Original Message ----
From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; Pete Cleland <pmcleland2003 at yahoo.com>; 
Brad Andrews <braden.andrews at gmail.com>; mark levine <leevyne at aol.com>
Sent: Fri, July 23, 2010 1:21:37 PM
Subject: Re: is delta T entropic????

Too ironic. Got an empty page from the link.

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 4:07 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is Time Disappearing from the Universe? (A Weekend Feature)
> Jul 10, 2010 ... The Daily Galaxy - Great Discoveries Channel -Your Daily ...
> www.dailygalaxy.com/.../2010/.../is-time-disappearing-from-the-universe-...
>
> Almost too late to post this before you know....................
>
>
>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."