Recent content by Lost in Space

What puzzles me is the time dilation thing. I mean, from an outsider's perspective (us in other words) no object can actually pass over the event horizon but just appears to hover on the edge forever. But black holes feed, and their event horizons grow as they swallow more mass, don't they? We...

Yes, quantum theory states that there will always be a vibration of particles and they can never reach a state of non vibration (like a pendulum can never be perfectly at a rest state) because there will always be tiny fluctuations that don't allow a temperature of absolute zero to be attained...

I've always understood (or been led to believe) that virtual particles aren't created in the vacuum but that the vacuum itself is created from virtual particles! These appear and disappear instantaneously thus supposedly not violating the law of conservation of energy but on previous occasions...

The proton can never achieve c as its mass would have to increase infinitely in order to do so. Even it was accelerated to 99.99% recurring of c it can never achieve c because of its increasing mass. That's because c is the ultimate speed limit in the universe according to GR and is defined by...

If increased redshift is due to greater distance and gravity is of little consequence as you seem to be sayng, is this also true of the redshift of two comparable galaxies of the same distance in which one has been Einstein lensed? In other words will the lensed galaxy be more redshifted than...

Are you saying that gravitational fields don't shift light? Do you mean that there is no difference between the redshift of two equidistant galaxies, one of them being lensed by a closer gravitational object? Is this always true or is this because the shift is so small it's undetectable, and if...

And yet aren't we constrained by the fact that we cannot accurately predict the future? So isn't this a boundary of sorts, even if it is a localised phenomenon? If as you say the flow of time is purely perceptual, shouldn't we be able to receive information from the future as easily as that from...

It's hard for me to get my head round this but does that mean then that different parts of the universe can be in front of or behind each other in terms of the time that has passed, and if so would there be any kind of limit as to how much? In other words are there areas of the universe that are...

A balloon can only expand so far before it bursts as its composition is finite. It's an interesting thought however, that some claim the universe can seemingly expand forever. If so spacetime has a beginning but no apparent end therefore it might or might not say something about the infinite...

Yes, I can see how there is no physical boundary condition with relation to space, but surely we have to consider time as well? And yes, two observers are effectively within their own time frame references but the future and the past still exists for them both, doesn't it?

By "pre-existing space", do you mean that which existed before spacetime began? Do you think that time and space could have somehow been separated before the Big Bang? Was the BB a convergence of the same? If we run time backwards to the BB doesn't everything converge according to GR? So could...

Couldn't the 'outer surface' be defined as the present?

Ok. So if the expansion of space is increasing at a faster rate, doesn't that in turn imply that this creation is an ongoing and accelerating process? Is this not closer to what Hoyle envisaged as a process of 'continuous creation'? If the expansion of space is indeed a 'creative' process, from...

Thanks Dave. So does this mean that the expansion of space is not uniform? Won't the mass in the universe affect how space expands even if there's not enough of it to halt the expansion? For example, will the intergalactic voids be like bubbles pushing the galaxies on their edges further apart...

Yes, I've read up on the CMB. One thing that puzzles me about the actual size and topology of the observable universe is that everywhere we look when we use deep field observation we are looking towards the origin of the universe even though we can be looking in diametrically opposite...