For the past 10years it's pretty much been an established fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

Interesting time theory, the most commonly accepted Concordance theory says that we understand ~4% of the makeup of all of the components of the universe, that includes all the matter and all the energy.

if restricted to just matter we understand ~1/6 of the matter in the universe, the other 5/6 being dark matter which is gravitationally detectable but other wise unaccounted for.

good article here

All we are is dust in the wind.

Meh, I am still on the side of the fence that Space never started and will never end. Our Solar System will die, and perhaps our Galaxy will die or converge with Andromeda. But space? Man can't comprehend something that didn't begin and will never end, so we make up stuff to explain something we will wont' even be around to witness.

Oh well, they need to get paid like the rest of us right (scientists)? :p

You are currently sitting in the middle of it, do you notice anything?

expansion of the universe is like expansion due to temp. Each little piece expands a little bit, individually imperceptible, but when taken as whole in large structures the result is large the bigger the structure the bigger the expansion.

Supposedly gravitationally bound objects like the solar system or the galaxy don't experience expansion, but I am not so sure about that as all matter in the universe is gravitationally bound to all other matter, perhaps there is a threshold, I dunno.

Gravitational filds change the rate of time flow. Time is flowing more slowly on the space station than here on earth. Taken to the extreme of falling into a black hole, and assuming a large enough black hole so that the gravitational gradient doesn't shred you from tidal forces, time would so slow further and further as you fell further and further. From your perspective you would never reach bottom but your local time would be flowing at a rate that would allow you to watch the death of the universe, whether it be w/ a bang(unlikely) or a wisp of diasappering matter(seems most likely at this point).

I just saw something recently about how a seemingly unrelated part of physics has been used to demonstrate that there is a maximum size to either a black hole or at least the event horizon -- but for the life of me I can't seem to remember the details. For some reason I seem to remember it within the context of some scientist who just passed away and the work that he had done in the area.

Does this ring a bell with anyone????

last I learned the Schwarzschild radius (which means the radius of the horizon) and the mass are directly proportional to one another: if one black hole weighs ten times as much as another, its radius is ten times as large. But they learn new stuff every day

I know that when my radius expands so does my black hole so I guess its true.

Interesting stuff, kind of like an Apocalypse or something. Or a Revelation. Would the four horsemen be riding slower also? ;)

(had to do it, if I didn't someone else would have)

Bush hates "time dimension".

I found it!!! The Holographic Principle (yet unproven)...
I guess an interesting tidbit related to this is the fact that some super-massive black holes may have a density less then the density of air!!! In looking for the above site, I stumbled across this thought provoking
passage...

I just read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" and it obviously is a tad outrageous/goofy but it does have some absolutely hilarious lines in it.

My take on the "time/space" thing is that we don't ask the correct questions. So..............if Einstein's work is closely examined, you can deduce that he actually believed that it would be possible to get the answer to a question before it is asked. Therefore, if his theory could be put into practice...since we don't know the right questions...we might get the correct reply nonetheless.

Yes, it has a few flaws but I just started on it!;)

If all else fails, keep in mind what Woody Allen said:

"I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it's hard to find your way around Chinatown."

we'll need a mop

Well, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, the expansion of the Universe is actually an expansion of space itself, and galaxies are moving away from each other because they are "being carried along by space." The theory does NOT limit the speed at which space expands, only the motion through space. Thus, the distance to this quasar can be greater than 13 billion light years. In fact, if we ask the question, "How fast is the distance between us and this quasar increasing?" we get the seemingly amazing answer of 540,000 km/sec or about 1.8 times the velocity of light. This number is ultimately not very interesting, both because this is not the best way to think about distant objects, and because there are objects farther away whose distance is growing even faster. To quote Fermilab's Judy Jackson, "there is no speed limit on the Universe."

When we run the numbers, we find that this quasar is about 27 billion light years away today. This is the value we would obtain if we could magically freeze the Universe in time and then measure the distance with a meterstick. From the redshift, we can then compute the distance to this quasar when the light we see today was emitted: it is 27 billion light years divided by 6.82, or about 4.0 billion light years. These numbers may seem paradoxical (and to be sure they depend somewhat upon our knowledge of the cosmological parameters; the uncertainties are -2.8 to +3.6 billion light years), but they do make perfectly good sense within Einstein's theory. The theory is well tested and its predictions make sense when carefully examined.

Found that in my Draft Folder...but it makes sense to me...I think.;)

With our understanding of gravity so limited, we sure do come to tremendous conclusions.

So.... perhaps I won't waste the money on that new Rolex?

More fun that the end of time ...is stopping time!
Read the book: The Fermata by Nicholson Baker

So then, the dimensions of space & the dim's of time are not constantly proportional to each other... ? It does feel like time is always speeding up. :cool:

I'll just blame the hippies. They have finally found a way to stop the escallating conflicts on earth. Now we can finally all just live together in peace.

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but what does it have to do w/ my post?:confused:

yes, thats why I specified a very large black hole, you need to keep the tidal forces down on the way in and then once there not be crushed. Unfortunately once you get in you will keep falling untill you reach the singularity at the center, the place where all the laws of space/time breakdown(at least to our current state of understanding)

We can't have any sort of multi-dimensional space/time discussion without some words from an expert on the subject.

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while performing neuro-surgery: Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller): "Wherever you go, there you are."