Friday, January 15, 2016

Told Ya So!

Just wanted to take this opportunity demonstrate how much smarter I am than everybody else.

This morning (Friday, January 15, 2016) I was perusing the news stories on my home page so thoughtfully, albeit slowly, provided by ATT.net.  It is my wont to read anything I find about cosmology (the study of the origins of the Universe, not hair styling) and physics.  Today I hit a treasure trove of personal validation!


If you tried to read the article to which you were directed by following the link above but found it just a bit too esoteric, welcome to the club.  So, in my humble fashion, I will paraphrase and get to the meat of the matter (meat of the matter, that’s a physics joke… which just goes to show you I am not a humorless nerd).  The article quotes Harry Cliff (no, I don’t know who he is either), “It's the idea that we are reaching the absolute limit of what we can understand about the world around us through science.”  I think he is just being a whiner; probably got turned down for that last grant proposal.  Every time science stalls a bit, someone says, “That’s it, we’ve learned everything it is possible to know.  The rest will remain a mystery!”  Horse Hockey!  But that is not the point of this special blog entry.  The point is for me to brag.

In the article the author references the phenomenon of dark energy.  This is the mysterious force to which cosmologists assign responsibility for the accelerating expansion of the Universe.  While scientists have been able to measure the force, they cannot identify the source or cause.  It is a mystery.  “Still, we don't know what dark energy is," Cliff admits. "But the best idea is that it's the energy of empty space itself — the energy of the vacuum."

I now refer you to my blog posting of April 16, 2014, The Big Suck! in which I wrote:

I will propose that perhaps there is nothing out there; just a big vacuum.  And that our universe is expanding into the void.  That would explain how the expansion is accelerating.  As the stuff in our universe is expanding in all directions, the gravitational attraction of galaxies is weakened by the increasing distance between them, therefore allowing the expansion to accelerate.  The universe is not being pushed from within, but pulled from without!

Huzzah!  Yes, I’m tooting my horn.  Basking in my own self-generated spotlight.  You are so lucky to know me.  Nobel nominations should be submitted by September one.  Now, if only I could do the math.

1 comment:

  1. As a very wise man was wont to say, "I don't understand everything I know about that."

    ReplyDelete