dark energy

by teejay 4 Replies latest jw friends

  • teejay
    teejay

    Excerpt from the Wednesday, April 18, 2001 issue of Time Magazine:

    "Using the Hubble Space Telescope to find and study a distant supernova--an
    exploding star-- astronomers from two rival research teams have jointly gathered the
    strongest evidence yet that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up, like
    a rocket with its throttle wide open. And that means something is pushing it.

    What that something might be is, at this point, anybody's guess … For now, the
    unknown force is simply being called "dark energy," to emphasize its mysterious
    nature.

    To everyone's astonishment, both groups found that instead of the gradual, gravity-
    driven slowdown they expected, the rate was getting faster.

    If space really does seethe with dark energy, the fate of the universe, a matter of
    longstanding debate, will be clear. With more dark energy today than yesterday, and
    more of the stuff tomorrow than today, the cosmos should fly apart faster and faster
    as time goes by. There will be no Big Crunch, as some have predicted, with billions
    of galaxies falling in on one another in a fiery apocalypse. Tens of billions of years
    from now, our Milky Way galaxy will find itself alone in empty space, with its
    nearest neighbors too far away to see. In the end, the stars will simply wink out--and
    the universe will end not with a bang but with the meekest of whimpers."

    [end of excerpt]

    today I was thinking about the meaning of this. You have to admit that
    it tends to put into perspective everything that this life has to offer. The
    car that won't start, the jerk of a boss, the money we loss on the recent
    slide in the stock market, the love we lost. The issues that we argue
    and fight about are meaningless if you really think about it. We are
    here for such a short time.

  • patio34
    patio34

    I've been following some articles about the dark energy too.

    Another thing about being here such a short time is that if this IS all there is, we surely want to use it and enjoy our lives to the fullest.

    "I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question."

    Patio

  • terraly
    terraly

    Ah well, the heat death of the universe was going to get us anyway.

  • Simon
    Simon

    I know this sounds morbid but I imagine various races in the universe stuggling against the inevitable many, many years from now.

    Does put our petty woes into perspective.

  • teejay
    teejay

    patio34,

    >>"I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question."

    well said! I don't believe I've ever heard it put that way before. I
    might have to work that into a conversation. I'm getting
    comfortable not having all the answers. So different from what I
    used to be… thank god.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    terraly

    >> Ah well, the heat death of the universe was going to get us anyway.

    the "heat death"? what is that?

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Simon

    >> I know this sounds morbid but I imagine various races in the
    >> universe stuggling against the inevitable many, many years from
    >> now.

    the thought did cross my mind, also, to be there when the lights
    were going out. Heck, for all we know, it's happening right now in
    some corner of the universe (as a side note, for a breathtaking
    view of just a part of the Milky Way, go to
    http://canopus.physik.uni-potsdam.de/~axm/photo.cgi?Image=images/mwpan45s_bright).
    But for Earthers, maybe Gene Roddenberry was right, and I tend to
    believe that he was. One day, perhaps not too far from now, an
    energy source, freely supplied by nature (anti-gravity?) will be
    discovered and harnessed that will make space travel a reasonable
    possibility. That's what alien travelers use. The forms of energy that
    we are so familiar with today (oil, gas, etc.) will eventually be
    depleted, but it will hardly spell the end of the human race.

    I sure would like to be alive then. Even so, of all the times in
    mankind's history, right now is the best time to be alive.
    We're lucky, really.

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