Doghead's Cosmic Bar

Hmmm... That's new. Looks like the change is pretty gradual, so far as they can tell. Interesting. *decides maybe it's time to start paying more attention to these things again*

actually I just read a article in new science about something similar and from what I got out of it that due to negative refaction the stars and galaxies may not even be in the postions that we see them thru telescopes. IF that is true then all of our measurements of the universe including light speed would be way off unless someone manages to come up with a mathamatical formula that takes the amount of neg refraction caused by black holes into effect.

and just to be a butt einstein's orginal equations about the universe minus the postive sign is supported in the bible. That theory is that the universe will eventually slow down and reverse direction. The verse states and I saw the stars folding up like a scroll.

Big Evil Grin.

They've measured the speed of light here on earth, ladydyke. Those measurements do not depend on knowing distances, etc. to the stars. In fact, they redfined the meter in terms of lightspeed. I suspect you're referring to the effect of dark matter bending the light rays, so the positions may be off. I'm not sure how much effect this would have on the distance measurements, since they largely depend on redshift. *shrugs*

Oh, and it's not certain that the universe will eventually collapse again. It's really up in the air, since they recently discovered the rate of expansion is getting faster. No one's sure what's causing that as of yet (most conjectures are related to dark matter). Even before this discovery, it depended on the amount of matter in the universe. In simple terms:
Enough matter = universe will eventually collapse
Exactly the right amount = universe will reach an equilibrium
Too little matter = universe will expand forever (heat death of the universe)

If the universe stayed around until it collapsed, or expanded, or whatever, humanity would be long gone by then. According to the Bible, when God intervenes and ends things there will still be people around.

*shrugs* Most likely the sun will give out before the universe collapses, but if we've found a way to travel between star systems (and not blown the planet up ourselves), some humans might survive.

As I understand it, if there's not enough matter then the expansion would go on forever, with energy sources becoming weaker and harder to get to. One theory is that eventually everything would spread out and become atomic dust. That would be difficult for a species to survive.

Then again, maybe we'll have found our way out of this universe by then.

I dont understand why people are surprised at physics that change slowly over time after all the current Science-Creation-Myth model depicts a universe that begins with all forces as one then they seperate forming first time then space then electromagnetism et al. It seems like 'transforming physics' is just plainly inherent to the model.

Up until recently, the assumption was that everything settled down after the Big Bang, so all the attempts at TOE's (Theories of Everything) have that built in as an assumption. The fact that they can change over time will force a drastic reworking of the models.

Yeah change does make them folk's TOEs curl, dont it?

(and yet stasis is one of the few things that almost NEVER is adopted by nature...)

grumble
...Of all the bars I had to manifest in it had to be the one where "Einstien" and "how to get people to stop talking about sex are major topics"

welcome to a bar full of intelligent, creative people. All bars should be like this. As for "how to get people to stop talking about sex" Have you ever found yourself so desperate that you are cybering with a damn robot?! I didn't think so... Unfortunately, it's you bar folk who do most of the cybering.