Earlier we Googled to get the answer to what happens if we could fall through the centre of the Earth. In doing so, we’d be using the gravity of the Earth. We have no extra gravity of our own so the question is not answered by the above. Let’s clarify the question: there are three possibilities I can imagine for what could happen: we could come to rest smoothly at the centre, like a train arriving at a station; we could spring smartly into the hole, like a putted golf-ball; or we could overshoot and return, in an oscillation like a pendulum.
Googling "gravity at centre of Earth" reveals the statement that "At the very center, the gravitational force is zero because there's equal mass pulling on you from all sides, and it all cancels." So, in that case, we could 'arrive at the station'. Or alternatively, would the gravity pulling on us to accelerate be joined by an opposite gravity that pushes on us, and squeezes, like pressure at the bottom of the sea? In that case, we might act like the golf ball - and maybe be about the same size as well!
This particular article puts the answer this way “You would oscillate back and forth sinusoidally; you would be a human yo-yo”. And, as I said, we have no extra gravity of our own so it is nothing to do with the interaction of Gravities. It is purely the understanding of gravity in theory when no experiment is feasible.
So which is it, and why? We’ll come back to this question.
THE SHAPE OF SATURN
The latest thinking, based on data from the Cassini mission, suggests that Saturns rings were formed
between
10
and
100
million
years
ago.
(https://www.universetoday.com/141272/saturns-rings-are-only-10-to-100-million-years-old/). This same reference goes on to say “The problem of how the rings formed still remains.” Were they a moon that broke up, or a comet that wandered too close, the article asks?
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We, however, now have a model for how the rings could have formed.
In both of the scenarios above they don’t start off as rings, that is how they end up. In the diagram above, Gravity #3 of #3, we saw how, from a particular starting position, a body that is in unstable orbit would stabilise over time by changing its orbit over many oscillations. Such an unstable orbit would not be created by a moon that broke up or by a comet passing through, I suggest. What would create rings would be a body entering Saturns Orbit at an angle to the Gravitic plane, which then broke up, I argue. The chunks of rock which want to orbit the planet cannot do it, because they can't come outside of the pocket of Saturns gravity. So, as they try to go around the planet they are going to be drawn into the only orbit they can take that is stable - across the centre. They are all going to be drawn into the same orbit (at different distances) and out of irregular orbits at different times. This is going to make the problem of smashing into each other much, much worse than it would otherwise be.
Because these shortened circles are not proper Orbits, and because the large lumps of rock cannot leave (the curve of) the pocket, eventually what you will have is these rocks will pulverise each other over hundreds - thousands - millions of years into a fine dust and the fine dust will form a stable orbit, the only stable orbit being the one across the centre of the planet.
I do not think that a body entering the Solar System at an angle to the Gravitic plane is the most likely suggestion though. This is because it is hard to see where something would have come from so recently yet be outside of the plane of gravity. So few things are anywhere near us. Is there a better possibility? Well, there is one I would prefer.
Around 65 million years ago, something very big smashed into the Earth. What if, at the same time, something smashed into Saturn? All that requires is for whatever it was, there needs to be, not a single body, but more than one of them. That seems to me more likely rather than less!
Imagine something smashing into Saturn and ejecting some of the physical body of the planet out into space. (I understand the rings are mainly ice, so this might be mostly water, rather than mostly rock) It is not hard to see how this would put that mass into the same position as if it had arrived from outside the Gravitic plane – with the same end effect!
The rings of Saturn - indeed the rings of any planet with rings - could have this history as the most common historical scenario. It could be quite common, one could imagine. In my opinion the best way to illustrate the likelihood of this explanation would be through computer modelling. I think computer simulation would be a very good way to set up many different starting conditions, parameterized, and then run the simulation to see what is its outcome.
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DARK ENERGY
You would think it would be impossible to know if the Universe is expanding because surely then as we are in the Universe then we would be expanding too. If the Universe expands, then
“a kilometer” expands with it. My arm remains attached to my body because they are both expanding, not because they are each expanding.
I wonder if that is really what is happening? I wonder if at the same time that things are expanding on the largest possible scale, they are also contracting on the smallest possible scale?
Since there is no centre, this would not be obvious, or easily detectable. It might mean there is not more space between things that are joined (like my arm and my body). My arm and body are not expanding, even though the Universe is.
As diagrammed at length earlier, if everything was falling to a different degree towards a centre that is not here (!) then it would look as if everything was falling away from everything else, as indeed it does. Falling away from that centre would look the same though, given no background. I favour the idea that we are falling towards a centre that is not here (because it is everywhere) but I must of course acknowledge again that we really cannot tell whether we are falling towards, or falling away.
A Universe that is both expanding and contracting might not be an unstable Universe headed for a big crunch or started by a Big Bang. It is a Universe of which the final shape might be elegant in a way the current shape does not reflect. The current shape is not symmetrical being wider than it is old, but the eventual shape could be.
DARK MATTER
Galaxies which are accelerating differently from each other could be doing so because if what has or has not happened in the past. Is this the same phenomenon as seems to need explanation by Dark Matter? It does appear likely to me. Pursuing gravity through the analogy, the motor is not part of the lift where it is very much built in as part of the motor car.
I have long believed that Dark Matter was simply the mis-perception of the need for a source of acceleration.
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INFLATION
The easiest way to generate gravity in space is through rotation. Initially this was visualized as a large wheel as, for instance, in the film ‘2001’. It is more likely in reality to be done using a tether with the space station at one end since this has a number of advantages in flexibility and efficiency.
Acceleration is not velocity so, to achieve the equivalent of Earth’s gravity (one gee) by accelerating in a straight line, would over the course of one year, bring the traveller close to the speed of light in velocity. There is no fundamental substance of space; what used to be called aether or quintessence, so there is no background to measure speed against. We’ve no way of knowing whether underlying acceleration is ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ by our metrics, if there is indeed underlying, original acceleration continuing from the Big Bang.
Could it even be possible that acceleration continuing from the Big Bang, where it is not mitigated by collision, could cause matter to exceed the speed of light? As we know, moving a torch has no effect on the speed of the light traveling away from the torch. The light is not being captured or stopped as it is in a black hole, the light would merely be red-shifted. It would be outside of the visible spectrum but if the acceleration is later mitigated by other matter then so would be the red shift. We might then see something which seems further away from us than it has had time to get.
There is certainly an anomaly in what scientists see. As already mentioned, the Universe is younger in years than the light-years distance it is across. The Universe is nearly 14 billion years old, we are told, but it is 46 billion light years across.
Some scientists have hypothesized that the Universe expanded very fast, very early on in its history and it is this ‘inflation’ which created the inconsistency we see now. But, as different physicists have noted, there is no reason given to cause the inflation. It is not part of the starting condition of the Universe; it is missing its own ‘power source’.
If inflation is just the logical outcome of the interaction between unlike objects over time given their initial acceleration then there is no need for another cause. It would just be another natural part of the ongoing ‘Long Bang’ (see next).
THE BIG BANG
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The firework is an obvious 'naive' visualisation of the Big Bang, but it creates the questions that are so difficult to solve of ‘missing’ gravity and inexplicable phenomena. As hinted at however, if we apply infinitesimality to the dimension of time on the largest scale (i.e. at the beginning) just as we have already applied it to space on the largest scale, then we must infer that the Big Bang did not 'fizzle out' or come to a stop, but is still going on. Instead of a firework, the Big Bang is more like a star which continues to shine from birth to death.
Like the impossible light in Bryce, which needs no power source, the Big Bang did not start and has not ended - as it has no power source (or the power source is hidden like the roots of the tree). For the Bryce software, they would have had to do extra programming to ‘model’ a power source – it was both simpler and cheaper to omit it. In the same way, it is logically simpler to assume the Big Bang is more like a star than a firework, even though that makes it more difficult to imagine. And when this is done, many of the biggest most recent problems in physics are explained, such as Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and Inflation.
I don't see this as a denial of reality, but an acceptance of it. For years, we have been talking of 'after the Big Bang' as in ‘a few tenths of a second after the Big Bang’. That sounds plausible until we rephrase it as 'a few tenths of a second after the start of time' which has the same problem as ‘a few tenths of a centimeter from the edge of the Universe’. These infer an edge which is infinitely hard, where the reality is it is infinitely soft.
We can no longer meaningfully conceive of infinity as per se 'big'. It is time to recapture the truth in the original idea of a Universe without end. No longer ‘the (infinitely) Big Bang’, but instead ‘the (infinitely) Long Bang’.
THE SHAPE OF THE GALAXY
The lesson so far, the cursory reader might think, is of movement we cannot see. But that is not the case, we can see the movement in that the Universe is too big; in that it is ‘expanding’; in that gravity is ‘missing’. The lesson is not of movement we cannot see; it is of movement we can see, but cannot measure.
If movement is the norm, rather than stillness, we can unpick certain behaviors in a new light.
For instance, it is well known that there are three types of Galaxy, characterized by a particular shape. There is the spiral galaxy like our Milky Way, with its flat disk circling a globular centre, then there is the completely globular, spherical galaxy, and finally the irregular galaxy.
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It is difficult for scientists to explain how these shapes arise from the formation of the Galaxy.
They do not arise, for instance through different phases of the life of a Galaxy. They are not related to time. Those Galaxies whose shape is strongly influenced by, say, a black hole at the centre, are generally assumed to have formed that way.
But if you consider that movement is more common than stasis, then it makes more sense to assume that Galaxies form from merger rather than in situ, and in that case there are three possibilities we should consider. Let me name these as being that of ‘no capture’; that of
‘partial capture’ and that of ‘full capture’.
‘No capture’ is the easiest to visualize. A group of stars becomes gravitationally linked which means they are stable in relation to each others’ movement. Let us consider another group of stars – or rather, let’s say, a black hole, because it is more convenient to visualize one than many – which is moving. Let us imagine it moving close to, and then on past the first group of stars. They will be pulled in by its gravitational field, like a jelly is pulled if you tip the plate it is on, and they in turn, will pull on the black hole, pulling it back; but the black hole’s momentum pushes it beyond the reach of the first group of stars and they are left behind, uncaptured. In this case, the Galaxy remains irregular in shape. So, the irregular Galaxy is the first of the three types, described as ‘no capture’.
Now what if the black hole is much heavier this time? It may form within the group from local matter. Or approach from outside the group – some stars might be destroyed in this change –
the bulk of the stars will fall into rotation around the great mass of the black hole. Gradually they should become centred upon it, even if it did not approach through the centre, that being the most stable configuration. We recognize this ‘full capture’ as the third type of Galaxy, the even, spherical cluster. (With no black hole present it remains an irregular shape) Most interesting of all though is the only other case possible, the in-between state of ‘partial capture’.
Again, a large mass like a black hole approaches a group of stars perhaps of equally large mass. In this case, the stars begin to get pulled into the gravitational field of the moving black hole, but they are too heavy to complete an orbit across the front of the black hole. Instead they get pulled into an irregular orbit behind the black hole which gradually settles into one around the equator, so to speak.
In this case, the equator is not formed by the sun, it is the plane at 90 degrees to the axis of movement along which the black hole is moving forwards. By Einstein’s theory of gravity warping space, these stars are merely behaving like the roulette ball which ricochets around the bowl of the spinning wheel until eventually falling to rest in one of the numbered slots as Page 56
it loses momentum. Some of the stars would be fully captured since the black hole ends up more massive, but the majority that are left would form a flattened rotating disc – it is the
‘fried egg’ shape of our own Milky Way.
MILKY WAY
Notice also that the black hole is slowed by the mass of the suns it has fully and partially
captured, in both types of galaxy formation. Einstein’s Mexican Hat – the gravity well at
which the black hole is at the bottom –
1
0 g
3e
ts
w
o p
r a
d r
s t ia
R l
e ly
d
a fcla
t t
e t
de
ned. In point of fact, like trying to
press flat a jelly, it will not deform evenly but will split under the stress. You won’t get a single flat (rotating) jelly, you will get one with several (spirally rotated) arms as the edge tears. It is for just this reason that the fried egg Galaxy forms its several spiral arms.
Scientists do not know what causes the spiral arms of the Galaxy and have suggested complicated reasons for why it happens, as you may see from Googling for it. For that reason, we need to model this behaviour by computer to confirm that the mathematics behind it is correct. Even so, it is such a simple and clear reason to explain what is so common that it would be more surprising if we find it is wrong.
I cannot help hoping that those Galaxies that are more than about 14 billion years away are mostly Type 1 Galaxies, because they would be the ones least slowed down to sub-light accelerations. (A quick Google in June 2015 reveals that the oldest spiral Galaxy discovered to date is well within such a rule of thumb, being a relative youngster of just ten billion years).
BARRED GALAXY
The Milky Way is not just a Galaxy with Spiral Arms, it turns out, it is a barred spiral Galaxy.
We knew for certain about the Spiral Arms a hundred years ago but the discovery of a bar through the middle of the disc is more recent, being only confirmed this century.
Barred Galaxies are not uncommon. It therefore ought to be possible to explain the formation of the bar through the same basic physics that is used above. Note this is a separate question (and answer) to the formation of the spiral. My theory of the spiral arms was part of my first talks about the Shape of the Universe in 2014. The barred Galaxy formation was the very final question I asked myself about in the last stages of the final version of this essay.
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In principle, it is straight forward to visualise how the bar arises. Of course that does not mean it is right, but it does indicate it would be worthwhile to explore further, mathematically and if that seems possible, through simulation.
We have discussed already how one body entering into orbit around another body would
'swivel' into a stable orbit around the equator of that second body over time. If the first body were a galaxy rather than a single solid body, then the 'soft' connections between the stars would mean each of them was pulled towards the equator just as the whole was. I assume they would settle into orbit in line, thus arranging themselves around the equator into what would look like a bar from outside.
Of course this bar would be curved. It would also go across the whole galaxy, but only in the case where the gravitation of the second body were larger than that of the first, ie where acceleration makes the second pin 'sharper'. But what if the gravity is not as great? The orthogonal directions of acceleration might still keep the orbits stable, but now the bar goes across the center of the galaxy only to the extent of the weaker pull, and the rest of the galaxy is held in place by its local gravity. It still rotates but without its shape being affected, like the Earth rotates during a day within the larger rotation that makes up the year.
The 'day' of the Milky Way Galaxy is then two hundred million Earth-years (if Monty Python's
'Galaxy Song' is still correct!) but maybe its 'year' is 'only' one hundred million Earth-years long.
Of course, this would require that the Milky Way is rotating around a vast black hole that we cannot see. Let’s clarify this diagrammatically as we did earlier.
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The Shape of the Universe
The effect of the gravitationally linked stars within the disc of the Milky way can be understood visually as creating a thicker ‘shaft’ for the pin than previously. This means that the same overall gravity can be created by two centres as we see when we consider a single centre, whilst still resulting in a disc + bar style Galaxy; and also, even when the gravitational centres themselves are equal, neither one having greater gravity than the other, we would still expect to see this resulting disc + bar structure.
I’m not sure that is a problem for me since I think that black holes can be formed other than at the centre of a galaxy. A diagrammatic confirmation means that once again we await mathematical confirmation or disabuse.
PICTURING THE GALAXY
The “picture” of the Galaxy presented here cannot easily be compared with actual pictures of our Milky Way Galaxy for the obvious reason that we are inside the picture itself. This isn’t true of other Galaxies. We are outside of them all. So, what do those pictures tell us? Do they have anything to say?
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The Shape of the Universe
Let’s refer back to “Top View” in the Diagram above “Galaxy #2 of #3...”
What I have done is to make my own grid so that I can graphically represent the twisting of 3D space for my own purposes similar to the superior and far more beautiful representations we have seen on the Net. I did this by applying a 3D filter in standard photo editing software.
The feature is called pinch\punch in my version of Corel PhotoPaint.
The pinch\punch dialog in the software allows you to apply a geometry to an area of an image. If you “punch” then you are creating a “pocket” like that in Diagram “Galaxy #1” above.
If you apply a “pinch” then you are inverting the “pocket”; creating the same pocket, but viewing it as if from below, looking up. So, a single pinch followed by a punch would reverse each other , and vice versa. The pair would cancel out to give you what you started with: a flat grid.
Can we then “un-punch” the pictures of other Galaxies? Well, let’s try it.
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I have been to the NASA website to download some high-quality images which they provide free of charge:
You can see from the table that there is a very nice transformation as a result of applying a
“pinch” rather than a “punch” to the first image, Galaxy NGC 1300.
I would like to do the same to the next Galaxy NGC 1672 but actually it’s most important feature is that it looks stretched, to me. As a result I’ve applied a much simpler transform, a
“squeeze” in the axis that looks stretched. Now I am not sure it would be improved by a further transform.
And in the third case of the Rose Galaxy, it is a change of perspective that is the first change I wanted to apply. I have exaggerated it as much as I can but actually I would have liked to do even more. The quality of the image was simply too degraded at that extreme. At the moment, it looks like it needs a further “pinch” transform as well, but I’d want to complete the perspective shift fully, first.
What does this tell us? For example, what does it mean that we have “pinched” rather than
“punched” the first image? What these pictures are clearly telling us in my judgement is that even though we are not inside these Galaxies, we are still gravitationally linked to each, in a different way.
Imagine you have a back garden. You are looking out at it from the house. You know logically that the shape is an even rectangle yet your eyes are actually seeing a trapezium because of foreshortening. The nearer part looks bigger. One way to see it better would be to ‘tilt’ the garden up in one axis from back to front. That is what we have done with NGC 1672. We have tilted across the diagonal, but in a single axis. It tells us something about where we are as observers, as well as something about the observed.
Imagine now you are looking along a street, outside your house. Again, logically you know that the houses are of equivalent size but because of perspective it appears they diminish to nothing. One way to see this would to ‘un-apply’ perspective, or apply reverse perspective by an expansion from the vanishing point. This is what we have done with the Rose Galaxy. It is just the same thing as earlier, but in two dimensions.
In both of these cases you are alongside the Garden or the Street. The third case is different.
Our relationship to NGC 1300 is that we are underneath it in the overall gravitational well we both inhabit. If we are not alongside then we must be either above or beneath, and if we had Page 61
applied a “punch” then we would be above similar to my “Top View” above. (Note that “above
“ or “below” are arbitrary choices – there is no objective distinction available.) Purely by luck, I seem to have downloaded three images which represent the three possible relations one could have: gravitationally linked in one or other axis; gravitationally linked in both axes, or gravitationally linked by movement, where there is no objective third axis.
Finally, it is worth observing as well that the first Galaxy NGC 1300 would, I feel confident, have been improved still further if I had been able to apply the true geometry, of a “pin”
rather than a “pocket”. The whole picture looks “magnified” from the centre outwards to me. I imagine a pin would have exactly the effect I want, of shrinking it slightly into the centre.
PICTURING THE UNIVERSE
There are a hundred billion Galaxies, it is said, which often-times themselves contain a hundred billion stars. The number of possible worlds seems to be greater than the number of grains of sand on, not just the nearest beach, but all the beaches of all the world combined, it is also said. Even if some of this multiplicity turns out to be part of a fractal illusion, the abundance is so great as to beggar the imagination. It is a sobering vista.
At sub-light speeds, we have to work out a way to travel a distance of one light year, but unluckily for us – nowhere useful is within that year. We'll need to be able to travel the next level up, around ten light years, before we can actually go anywhere. That is going to take skills and abilities we haven't even dreamed of yet. It is going to take our childrens' children's children. That is why the current focus on technological and scientific achievement - instead of, say, ecological and political problems – is, I think, somewhat beneath us. Physicists are victims of this infantilisation as much as anyone. They are encouraged to live as if we were one good experiment away from warp drive. Of course they are not.
Yet the implications should also be clear. For instance, it is very obvious why we have not been visited by aliens. How would they know where to go? If you live in, so to speak, John O
Groats and I live in the equivalent of Land's End, then why would we ever visit each other? If we want to meet up, we'll do it by both going to London, or some such convenient middle.
Fermat's paradox is not only resolved, it never arises.
Take the aspiration of 'Star Trek', spread the 'five year mission' over five hundred centuries and expand the cast from ten to tens of thousands, can we then start to imagine our future? It is one with apparently insoluble hurdles, yet the objective is clear, and so is what we need to do. We can only survive as a species if we look after the planet, but to thrive as a species we Page 62
must spread out from this planet, and make for the centre of the Galaxy. That is where everyone else will be going.
Whereas the ‘warp drive’ of space opera may appear to be a dream equivalent to the land of milk and honey – of endless sweets and treats, or an endless continuation of childhood –
what seems much better to me is the prospect of an end to childhood; more specifically, an end to the infantilisation of adults. Rather than a new Einstein, I prefer to see whole new industries, of robotics; of psychology; of ecology, employing entirely new categories of worker. Rather than my own personal starship, ‘Jetsons’ style, I envisage a return to a much earlier era, even before it took six months to get to Australia by ship; back to when the journey was both once in a lifetime, and one way; back to the era of pilgrimage.
As is obvious to anyone, physicist or otherwise, whether they admit it or not, we are drunk on easy money, cheap sex and hard alcohol at the moment, all children to a lesser or greater degree. It will be an era longer than anyone can imagine now, when we finally meet and come to get to know the alien brothers in our family. I view that as the most interesting period of the future that I can imagine – it will be so strange and mundane both at once. It may even be that’s when our adolescence begins.
That’s a direction for us all, but a direction also needs a starting point. So, more interesting even than the Death Star is to know where we really are in space. Anyone who remembers the lyrics of Monty Python's 'The Galaxy Song' will know that the Earth rotates around the Sun, at about 60 thousand miles an hour, and the Sun rotates around the centre of the Galaxy, rather faster. But the Galaxy is 30,000 light years across, and we are right at the edge of it, the equivalent of at Land’s End, in Cornwall. In our orders of magnitude, 10 light years might find a world, but it is less likely to find a species of our peers. We’ll likely need to go to 100
light years. If ‘their’ timing is equivalent to ours, we might then find they have made it to the Centre from their far advantageous geographical position. We still might have our work cut out to catch up.
DARK FLOW
Wikipedia tells us that the Universe is assumed to be isotropic, which is to say that it is assumed to be the same in every direction. Without knowing the true shape experts see you and me as within a ball shape for this reason: the Universe extends out uniformly in all directions, like a ball. It is a default for something that otherwise does not have a shape.
Our address in the Universe continues beyond the Milky Way into the Local Group, then the Local Cluster and ultimately Laniakea. The table below gives the relative scales of these: Page 63
Local Cosmology
Region
Scale
Milky Way + satellite galaxies
100,000 light years
Local Group (includes Andromeda)
10 million light years
Local Supercluster (includes Virgo)
110 million light years
Laniakea Supercluster (focal point is Gt 520 million light-years Attractor)
There is a region in the sky, somewhere between the constellations of Centaurus and Bela, which is 'falling outward' at a rate which cannot be explained by a uniform Universe – it is too fast. This has been dubbed ‘Dark Flow’. The name conjures up certain connotations, for instance could it possibly be that the ‘Long Bang’ has a source, not at a point in time, billions of years ago, but from a point in space, at all times? It seems unbearably exotic, but if there is such a place then our position in relation to that place may tell us more even than my shape for the Universe does.
Is it the edge or the centre? That remains to be seen.
