This week it was in the news that scientists have concluded that "The Dark Energy pushing the universe apart may not be what it seems". There is a simple explanation for it, and we can look at this explanation in terms of either information or energy.
Ever since it was discovered that the universe was expanding outward from where the Big Bang had taken place, there was a general belief that the expansion was slowing down. In 1998 two separate teams of scientists that were investigating the expansion both came to the same astounding conclusion. Not only is the expansion of the universe not slowing down, it is actually speeding up.
This demanded a special explanation. Measurements since then have confirmed that the expansion is indeed speeding up. Just as scientists had earlier come up with the concept of "dark matter" to explain why our galaxy should fly apart by centrifugal force, yet it doesn't, the concept of "dark energy" was invented to try to explain why the expansion of the universe was speeding up.
But I find the acceleration of the expansion of the universe to be rather simple to explain. Just as my cosmology theory has no need of "dark matter", it also has no need of "dark energy".
My information theory explains the acceleration of the expansion of the universe in terms of information. The cosmology theory explains it in terms of energy.
THE ACCELERATION OF THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE IN TERMS OF INFORMATION
Both explanations are driven by the fusion taking place in stars. Lighter elements are fused together by the tremendous heat and pressure into larger atoms. Matter in the universe began with about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium, and traces of the next two elements. Aside from the hydrogen the rest was the result of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.
From there stars formed when enough matter came together by gravity to overcome the electron repulsion between adjacent atoms and crunch smaller atoms together into larger ones. This is what forms the rest of the elements, up to iron. Elements heavier than iron require a net input of energy to form and that happens only while the star is actually exploding in a supernova. Only the largest stars explode as a supernova, our sun will simply die out.
There is a direct relationship between surface area and energy. We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. Stars and planets are spherical in form and spheres are the three-dimensional form with the lowest surface area per volume. This shows that there is a direct relationship between surface area and energy.
But when smaller atoms, such as hydrogen and helium, are crunched together by fusion in stars into larger atoms, the new larger atoms have less overall surface area than the smaller atoms which went to form them.
I should explain that surface area gets a little bit more complicated when we deal with fusion. In general, as we might expect, larger atoms atoms have a greater surface area than smaller atoms. But across a row on the Periodic Table of the Elements, the successively heavier atoms are actually more compact, with less surface area.
What I mean in this case by surface area is the amount of change in the surface area of the atom from the first element in that row. Obviously this only applies for atoms in the same row of the Periodic Table.
Another way that we could look at the surface area of atoms that will undergo fusion is in terms of the total displacement of the electric charges of space within the atom. An electron is a concentration of negative charge and the protons in the nucleus a concentration of positive charge. The space in between is an alternating checkerboard of negative and positive charges, in multiple dimensions.
The opposite charges of the electrons and protons attract each other, but it also affects the charges in the space between them. The positive charges in space are drawn toward the negative electron and the negative charges in space toward the positive protons. The electron approaches the nucleus until the attraction between the displaced opposite charges in space equals the attraction between the electron and the nucleus.
For our purposes here we can consider this displacement of electric charges in the space within the atom as it's surface area. As we move to the right in a row of the Periodic Table, to successively heavier atoms, this displacement increases even though the actual surface area of the outermost orbital of the atom decreases.
This is energy and information that seems to have been lost. But neither can be lost, they have to go somewhere. Of course, energy and information is really the same thing because we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it and cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it.
If surface area represents energy, and surface area is really distance squared, then distance must also be equivalent to energy. This makes sense as we know that a higher, more distant, orbit is also a higher-energy orbit. This also means that distance is information.
So if surface area is lost when atoms are fused together in stars, and since surface area is distance squared, and both represent energy and information that cannot just be lost, where do they go?
What about the surface area of the universe as a whole? According to my cosmology theory everything in the universe, both space and matter, are made of the same kind of electric charges. The missing energy and information from fusion would be accounted for if it went to increase the distance in the universe, which would also effectively increase the surface area of the universe.
In other words, the universe would expand.
That neatly gives us our expansion of the universe. But now why would the expansion of the universe be accelerating?
That is also explained simply by fusion in stars. Lighter elements are continuously fused together into heavier atoms. But the larger atoms each has more surface area than each smaller atom. So when heavier atoms are fused together into still heavier ones, it releases more energy per time than the previous fusion of lighter atoms.
This means, of course, that energy and information is being lost faster that must be accounted for. Again, this is accounted for by the universe expanding but it means that the expansion of the universe must be speeding up.
Wasn't that nice and simple? Remember that there is a long-established principle in physics that the simplest explanation for something is usually the best explanation, known as Occam's Razor.
THE ACCELERATION OF THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE IN TERMS OF ENERGY
Now let's look at the acceleration of the expansion of the universe in terms of energy. We are looking at the same event but from another perspective, although energy and information is really the same thing.
The idea of "dark energy" came about because it was a way to explain why the expansion of the universe was accelerating, which seemed to clearly involve some kind of energy.
So there must be some kind of energy that fills the universe and causes it to expand, and for the expansion to accelerate. There is no pun intended, but what if we opened our eyes? There is energy that fills the universe, but it is not "dark energy". In fact it is actually light, and other electromagnetic radiation.
This radiation that fills space is directly related to the nuclear fusion in stars, that we saw drives the expansion of the universe and it's acceleration. When lighter atoms are crunched together by stellar fusion into heavier ones the new heavier atoms contain less energy, which we can see as surface area, than the original atoms that were crunched together.
This missing energy is released as light, and other electromagnetic radiation, and this is why stars shine.
In my cosmology theory everything, both space and matter, consists of negative and positive electric charges. The basic rules of electric charges are that opposite charges attract while like charges repel. Energy always ultimately goes to overcome the basic rules of electric charges.
When energy overcomes the repulsion between like charges it gives us the concentrations of like charges that form the charged particles of matter. When energy overcomes the attraction between opposite charges it gives us electromagnetic radiation in space. The fusion in stars converts the overcoming of the repulsion to the overcoming of the attraction.
The radiation from stars fills the space of the visible universe. But if this radiation consists of energy that overcomes the attraction between opposite charges, which pulls the charges of space closer together, then shouldn't it cause space to expand, and thus to make the universe expand?
If the overall rate of fusion is increasing, because successively heavier elements are being fused together in stars, and this fusion is behind the expansion of the universe, then doesn't it make sense that this is what is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate?
Wasn't that simple?
No comments:
Post a Comment