OT: Gravity, Dark Energy, Universal expansion

[narf poit chez BOOM]

/me votes for 'Unprovable, a little silly, but a fun idea'.

[Solymr]

I voted that I like it, but what I mean is I like the idea that someone else thinks about this stuff like I do and as to why it might happen. I don't think the theory is solid, but a cool thought in any case.

[Mudshark]

Of course it is gravity! What was the Disney movie, outside of the black hole? The weird robot one? I am more thinking of traffic, or should I finally get XM? I have heard a theory that the moon stabilizes Earth, and it is slowly,flowing away. Why do I feel like I am living on a ping ball. Well we are, on a grand scale.....

[dogscoff]

I think I may have heard this "gravity goes from pulling to pushing at extreme ranges" theory before, but I don't know if it was disproved or is still around or what. A bit of googlage may find someone who has done some work on it.

Mudshark said:
I have heard a theory that the moon stabilizes Earth, and it is slowly,flowing away.

Actually, the moon is falling, very very gradually. Every orbit it gets a tiny bit closer to Earth. Eventually, it will drop out of the sky and crash into us.

Of course, that's a long long way in the future. In fact, I think the sun will move into the next phase of its life by then, expanding to scorch and swallow up the inner planets (including us) so you've got a good few billion years to worry about it yet...

[capnq]

dogscoff said:

Actually, the moon is falling, very very gradually.

No, it isn't. It's drifting away at a rate of 1.5 inches per year. The reason for this is conservation of angular momentum as the Earth's spin slows down due to tidal friction.

[Spoo]

Looks like a variation on MOND (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifie...onian_dynamics).

[Suicide Junkie]

The moon would only be drifting closer if it started out inside geosynchronous orbit. Since in that case it would be going around more than once per day, and thus pull the surface along.
It would thus spin up the earth at the expense of its own orbit until doomsday.

[aegisx]

Interesting gravity talk. I am in the process of reading A Fire Upon the Deep. Has some interesting gravity concepts in there.

[MasterChiToes]

Dark Matter and Dark Energy are bad science... they are no more than the flying spaghetti monster outside religion.

Basic Logic dictates something the *fudge* is wrong...
Gravity was confirmed because everywhere in the universe we looked, things behaved as gravity predicted.
Dark Matter is now confirmed because everywhere in the universe we look, things do not behave as gravity predicted.
That reasoning is Paris Hilton daft... and people are getting PhD's for it.

It is important to note:
distances and velocities in astrophysics are not beyond question... lots of assumptions, and simplifications, with little attention to other factors that could skew the results. I would question these long before adding new material to universal model.

Also, has anyone bothered to measure the net charge of a galaxy? or the interaction with the galactic magnetic field with the extragalactic wind? Gravity isn't alone in the universe...

Dark Energy is worse... especially with that horrid little article that made the news, about a tipping point where all matter would fly apart at the speed of light. Total nonsense, that 'theory' claimed a density of dark energy that resulted in more dark energy as the universe expanded. Poppycock! Space having an inherent density of anything violates relativity, since volume is not a constant in all reference frames.

*grumble*

[capnq]

Mudshark said: What was the Disney movie, outside of the black hole? The weird robot one?

That was The Black Hole.