Not quite. While there was a Big Bang, there won’t be a Big Crunch, as you mention. Within the last 15 years or so it’s been found that not only is the Universe expanding, but that expansion is actually getting faster. It looks like the Universe will expand indefinitely, resulting in an eventual Heat Death, where all stars and other objects will be so far away from each other that no energy will transfer between them.

dissipation? where does matter,light,time and space go when they are swallowed by a black hole then?

Not all energy/matter will be swallowed by a black hole. And even so, black holes evaporate and release everything as infrared light (Hawking radiation).

What I meant was that things will be so far away from each other that energy emitted by one object will never reach another, thanks to the ever-accelerating expansion of the Universe.

this infrared radiation has not been proven, just theorized, the calculations can only go so far with limited data, it does seem logical, in an expanding universe, that galaxies will continue to move ever further apart, but that shouldnt influence what goes on in most of them anyway, i cannot believe the material will be wasted, the cosmic recycler will find a way to use it, what we can see is that entropy is increasing and chaos recedes eventually, but i dont believe we have all the factors

It will influence what goes inside galaxies, because space itself is expanding. This means that even stars, molecules, and atoms will become separated by great distances inside the galaxies themselves (and, indeed, inside everything else).

You have to remember that a scientific theory is not just an idea someone came up with (there’s a difference between philosophical theories and scientific theories). Hawking radiation fits in perfectly well with both relativity and quantum physics. Gamma-ray bursts (the brightest explosions in the Universe) may be a result of the final phase of a black hole evaporating.

Material in the Universe won’t get “wasted”, it will just end up not interacting with any other material.

It’s not a question of belief, it’s a question of well-established science.

i think you may be forgetting about gravity and dark matter, and the strong and weak nuclear forces in the nucleus of atoms, not to mention string theory that follows none of the rules of astro-physics, space may be expanding but there are no theories to suggest that expanding space lessens the natural attractions of force, the objects that are moving away from each other are already exerting too little force on each other to influence the widening distance, and fyi belief is a corner stone of physical discovery, what becomes of everything that goes into a black hole is far from well established scientific fact, it is based totally on mathematical perception, you ask any physicist, we have more questions than answers

Ah, but gravity is the misshaping and warping of space. So gravity becomes affected by the expansion of space, too.

I am a physicist, but I could be wrong about this next bit about the strong and weak nuclear forces: Because the forces have a range of a distance, they shouldn’t “overcome” the expansion either. This is because distance is just a measurement on space – as space expands, so will the unit of measurement. So while a metre now will be vastly different than a metre in the distant future, it will still be a metre, and so those forces should still hold. As I said, that’s just my initial thought, I’d have to check up the cosmology on that.

Yes, what happens in a black hole is based on mathematics, but that’s because a black hole is effectively a mathematical object. The maths we use to describe black holes is the same maths we use elsewhere. In each case, it seems to work fine. If we were to change the mathematics to describe a black hole, we’d have to change the mathematics everywhere else too, but then it doesn’t work out for everything. And considering everything is governed by the same scientific laws, this shouldn’t happen.

good point, but it doesnt prove your argument, as mr.Hawking himself will admit, he has been quite often mistaken in his assertions, my understanding of the expanding universe is that the most rapid expansion was at the start, so given the enormous scale of space, even after fractions of a second from the expansion, that the expansion itself produced its greatest force in its first few moments, so, if the expansion of space was going to separate sub-atomic particles for example, surely that would have happened when the expansions force was at its greatest? (i am aware it was mostly hydrogen and it has only a proton in its nucleus), or how did the first galaxies coalesce? my reckoning of the offered material is that galaxies etc continue to move away from each other, mine and your concept of expanding space differs slightly but by your account i think the natural forces will continue to hold bodies with influence over each other in relative positions where that force exerts more than the expansion

Immediately after the Big Bang the Universe was too hot to allow matter to form. Deuterium (a form of hydrogen with a proton and a neutron) formed from a few minutes to around 20 minutes after the Big Bang, when the Universe had cooled sufficiently, and un-ionised atomic hydrogen formed almost 400,000 years after.

So the expansion of the Universe right at the beginning didn’t pull subatomic particles apart for the simple reason that those particles didn’t exist yet!

While the Universe was expanding, the accelerated expansion – what I’m on about – seems to have begun about 7 billion years ago. So maybe the force resulting from dark energy only comes into affect in very large scales (when the Universe became big enough), much like the strong and weak nuclear forces only really have an effect at very small scales.

so are you telling me that atoms only formed after the expansion had slowed? in which case why was it weaker then? if it is pulling them apart why did it let them form, you seem to be suggesting 3 separate stages of expansion 1. the start when it was too hot to form elements 2. a period when elements could form and the expansion didnt effect them, slowed down or even stopped and 3. a new period of stronger expansion, i am not disagreeing that this is possible, of course it is

Yup, that’s pretty much it. In the very early Universe (the first few minutes) there was simply too much pressure and therefore heat energy for matter to form. It’s only when it got a bit bigger that the temperature dropped enough to allow matter to form. Same thing happens when you try to cram too much gas into a volume: at first it heats up, and as you force more and more in the collisions between the particles start to break the molecules and atoms eventually atoms apart.

Once things cooled down normal matter could form (hydrogen mostly) which in turn formed stars and galaxies. This went on for the best part of 7 billion years, and then when the Universe was big enough, dark energy started playing a part. The slow expansion began to accelerate, and we noticed this in the late 90s when we saw spectral signatures of events that suggested that they took place *before* the Universe was born. Further observation revealed that things really far away aren’t just moving away from us, they’re getting faster the further out they are.

The Wikipedia articles on the Chronology of the Universe, Dark Energy, and I’d say Hubble Expansion should give a good overview of what’s going on.

I think their brains are taking a wee break now…

Good stuff, though. Certainly beats all the abusive bile elsewhere on journal today.

By the way, Lamb. Were you on three hours ago — or longer?

*applause*

what work are you doing on the recession?

OMG!
My local milliner is using his hat skills to tackle the hat aspect of the recession.

Other way round: events happen because time exists. I haven’t heard Hawking mention that: could you point me to an article about it, please? I’d be interested in reading about it.

no i cant do that, i havnt hours to find it, and i like your concept of time, but if there were no events would there still be time? explain it to me please

Yes, as events are a way to measure time, they’re not time itself. The tick-tocks of a clock are events in time, but if the clock stops, does that mean time no longer exists?

Because time and space are two versions of the same thing, you can use one as an analogy for another: imagine a universe completely empty of matter and energy, would that mean space doesn’t exist simply because there’s no way to measure it? Likewise, if there are no temporal events, does that mean time doesn’t exist?

Time is simply a dimension just like length or height: even if there’s nothing there to measure it, it still exists.

time is a measurement of energy, energy will always exist in one from or another

No, it isn’t. Energy and time are exclusively quantifiable, one in joules, the other in seconds.

but time itself is an event no? lets not confuse motion and event, if you concur with the hypothesis of the expanding universe then i assume you also agree about the singularity? that there was no time, no space? and then? AN EVENT!, the rapid expansion, this is why fred hoyle could not agree with the expanding universe, because he agreed with you that events happen because of time and not visa versa, this version does not fit with the expanding universe, einstein himself could not countenance it when he published the special theory( personally i think the Theory was more special) he introduced the universal constant, in hindsight he was forever embarrassed about it, space and time 2 events! existence=an event! so even when entropy has reached its maximum and all matter in the universe is completely inert, and no energy exists, events are still happening because motion is an event not visa versa, the existence of the universe is an event as was the beginning of time

Philistine

I’m not sure if you’re joking or just incredibly ignorant and stupid.

anti-intellectualism! the way forward, lets get stupider and we’ll always be better off!

If they had thrown a stone in a pond at the start it might have saved them five years work

Which god?

which end?