Thread: The Blue Meanie's Theory Of Space-time

Ahh nice work! Yeah I just read A Brief History of Time the other day, and I've been thinking about this a bit myself. It seems like an entirely plausible theory to me...

So what do you think about time? Based on this model, and some of what Hawking talked about, beyond point 3 Time would subjectively appear to go backwards as matter goes from a state of disorder to a state of order. I've just been thinking too - if everything remains constant, and this might be a bit of determinism really, but beyond point 3 each reaction should perfectly reverse itself... the entire events of the expanding universe would be repeated.

Originally Posted by Roller

So what do you think about time? Based on this model, and some of what Hawking talked about, beyond point 3 Time would subjectively appear to go backwards as matter goes from a state of disorder to a state of order.[/b]

Actually, no. Time always seems to go in one direction, this being a spin-off of the nature of causation. But after point 3, the universe begins to contract, and time "slows down". This slowing is almost imperceptable, but gets faster the closer you get to point 5, the Crunch.

Of course, this also means that you never actually get to the crunch or the bang - they're like that turtle and archilles thing from Xeno's paradox, except unlike in Xeno's paradox, they're not actiually bullshit, because time itself is slowing.

Originally Posted by Roller

I've just been thinking too - if everything remains constant, and this might be a bit of determinism really, but beyond point 3 each reaction should perfectly reverse itself... the entire events of the expanding universe would be repeated.[/b]

I'm a determinist as well. A rough determinist. But in my theory, though the universe begins to contract, it doesn't neccessarily do so in the same pattern it expanded reversed.

Originally Posted by Roller

It's interesting and all....I'm just wondering why it's necessarily cyclical. It seems that you've started with the assumption that it moves in cycles and performed a post hoc analysis of the data to make it fit this assumption. Maybe I'm just missing something?[/b]

Actually, from any point within space-time, the universe does not appear to be part of a cycle. It appears to be constant, or forever expanding, or doomed and going to contract, depending on where you are within the continuum. And it's not neccessarily cyclical either, because if you take the singularity at point 5 as the same as the singularity at point 1 as identical and the same singularity, then you end up not with a cyclical universe, but with a closed system. One cycle. Not self-repeating, but just a cloosed system.

Originally Posted by Roller

I guess what I'm asking is...what force brings us around the corner from point 2 to 4?[/b]

I don't get this question... could you explain a bit more for poor little me?