The size of the universe

And about some persons who attempted to find that out.

If interested people read this page, I would be very happy to receive comments, and add it here!

Jac van de Walle 1, June 2007

The world out there was always larger as we thought, and totally different.

A hypothesis is something you assume, just guessing it may be right, and you hope it may be useful. A theory puts observations into a formula, which then can predict things, we would not be able to predict without the formula. As soon as predictions are contradicted by new observations, the theory is proven wrong.

Quote by Professor Stoney, professor of physics at Queen's College Galway. Here pictured with his family.


Here is something remarkably consistent in our metaverse of changing opinions and breakthrough discoveries. We always seem to know why previous generations were totally WRONG in their understanding the universe. We say, this was caused by their lack of information, and not by their lack of intelligence. Just like today, 1000, or 100.000 years ago, intelligent creatures have been gazing at the sky and stars above us, and have tried to explain it. Their thinking was not different from yours or mine. Be it the ancient Greeks, old African cultures, Vikings, and those many others not mentioned here. The consistency has thee elements.

  1. Condition. They all said, and still say today, what we see in the night sky, is the gods, or magic, or just something beyond our scientific understanding.
  2. Condition. People living at some moment in history always say they have the better explanation. Then, what they said, was always proven wrong afterwards, it was just a matter of time.
  3. Condition. After each revision of the explanation, things appeared always even MORE complex, and with LARGER dimensions, and it was OLDER as we thought. There was never a revision saying it was simpler and smaller scale. And once that as said, it jumps immediately to the second condition, saying NOW we know it better.

These three elements, have accompanied us in times of religious explanations, and have stayed with us in the times of scientific explanations just as well. So what does this mean? From the above (second) point, it means the probability that things we are saying now, will be regarded true in the future, is not very high. From the third point, we can say, the revision to come will say, things are much more complex., and much larger scale. This small philosophic conclusion, I use for myself. So my expectation is, the universe is probably unbelievably more complex in it's structure, and of size beyond today's imagination. So to say, we must do away with the arrogance, as if we understood things in the right way, and the right dimensions, just because we live now and here.

Flat Earth

Here is how wrong theory can be useful. When the coastal lines of Europe, Africa an Asia became charted by the sailors, anyone could see, the land masses were surrounded by water, and this lead to the flat earth theory. You can have a laugh about it, but this theory was regarded valid and proven too. They just looked around, and upwards, and put their observations into a working model.

Just look at this theory open minded, and you will see it is helpful and served it's purpose so well. That is: It could explained the things scientists were seeing, and it helped the sailors to return safely home. By this theory, the water falls off the edges, and pores down into the eternal fire of hell below us, where it gets boiled, and rises at the horizon as steam clouds. Once these clouds cool down, they can not hold the water any more, and it begins to rain. They knew that about steam clouds. The flat earth theory also explains, why a ship seems to disappear under the horizon when it sails out very far. Simply because the water falls off the edges, the water surface is lower out there, for this logical reason. This theory helped them also to make predictions, because when a ship sails out too far, at some point it can not sail back, up against the stream any more. Then it falls off the edge, into hell, where it burns to ashes. Which seems true, as ships which sailed out too far, never returned. This theory was considered valid for thousands of years.

Here comes the point: After that theory was found invalided, it appeared, as always: Things were much more complex, and much larger dimensions.

The beginning of a new understanding is always given by errors in the current theory. Which problems then will be solved in the new theory. So did we really occur from a big bang? Does space really expand? Do we know really know the size and the age of the universe? The big bang theory for me, sounds as curious as the expanding universe. I regard this just another theory like so many before, like trying to put "what we see" into a model. I think it is just a matter of time, until new discoveries will make this theory invalid. The theories always changed, but one thing never changed: The universe was always larger as we thought.

What makes you sure, what you say is true?

Einstein loved this saying, but as so many things he proudly decorated himself with, it was not his own. 500 years before Christ, a man living in Athens was in dangerous discussions with the priests, asking them only this one thing: "What makes you sure, what you say is true".

The greek philosopher Socrates, said about himself, he knows for sure he knows nothing. And then if somebody had some visions, he wanted proof why this is true. Or in reverse, if this person, can not prove what he says is true, he must admit he knows nothing about it. Same as Socrates himself. This became too difficult for the priests, not being able to prove their religious statements, and having to admit logically, they do now know it. So not uncommon for religions, even today it is normal is many countries, such as Iran, for instance. When you disagree with religion, you habe the choice to shut up, or die. With Socrates, it went just that way.

The ancient Athens was a center of philosophy. The modern way to deal with questions about heavens and earth we have today, originate from this man. What he did, was dangerous. He found himself trapped into a religious system, with priests who had to the legal power to trial citizens for not respecting the Gods. If so, one could be convicted to death by a jury. To stay out of the claws of religious police, Socrates never questioned the religion as such. Socrates said, he wants to know the truth. For this he openly prayed to the Gods, to give him knowledge, because as he always repeated, he knows nothing.

So things came as they had to come, and the priests had him sentenced to death. Yet many of his sayings are part of modern thinking, one of them is: What makes you sure, what you say is true?

Also Einstein adopted this method, but in an arrogant way. When Isaac Newton wrote his works about gravity, these laws of physics were a major break through, yet assuming there is only one coordinate system for the whole universe. Einstein practiced Socrates's method on this, in a way which makes Newton look silly. Yet when Einstein uses this questioning method of Socrates, he does as if particularly this critical thinking gave him the idea Newton was wrong. Or, when Einstein does as if he discovered relativity, he avoids it to speak about Lorenz, who published this 20 years before Einstein. Even so, these formulas are the basics of Einstein's theories. Also Einstein never speaks one word about Stoney, who was the first man to discover relativity at all. Yet Stoney could not explain it, but Stoney's hypothesis, very high speed of particles increases their mass, was later proven right. And no, not by Einstein. Why am I speaking about him anyway. It was the French genius Poincaré. High speed of objects makes their local time tick slower, which was proven by the Dutch Professor Lorenz. When you now think, Einstein would praise those people, you will be disappointed. Newton was displayed as somebody not thinking deep enough. Stoney was simply ignored, and Lorenz's name was only worth mentioning with the smallest note ever, in the back of Einstein books, in such a way you will not notice. Even so in his first books he "forgot" to mention Lorenz at all in the reference list. He was criticized for this, and should not keep on "forgetting" this.

With this in mind, I read the book by Albert EInstein, in original German version. "About special and general relativity theory", Albert Einstein, 1916. We all know, this famous formula is E=Mc², and so I was looking for proof of that. I have to say he was extremely clever in hiding how he did that. He presents a lot of general talk, until the moment comes where he needs E=Mc², and he suddenly he derives this formula on just 2 pages in a simple way. I remember physics classes I had, where my teacher needed not two pages, but two hours of very complex calculations, using Maxwell's wave theory for this, which made the the whole class end up with a head ache. I still have the notes. The most terrible thing was, we needed to be able to replicate this. WIth that in mind, I was surprized about this easy way, Einstein used in his book. He worked with some general formulas, from which he derives the next, etc, and yes it works that simple. But then.... I looked closer at the first formula he begins with. It has a little asterix with a note number. At the back of the book is a listing, and with as little words as possible, he writes this formula was borrowed from the Dutch professor Lorenz. (Yes, the one of the Lorenz force). Without that formula, EInstein's proof can not be made. So taking the words of Socrates, which Einstein loved to quote as if it was his own saying: What makes you sure what you say is true.... the answer can only be:

.....Because I used Lorenz time dilatation (=time slowing down) formulas, and I just assumed this was true, but I can not prove it.

The Size of the universe

Electronics and math belong together, but I know more about electronics. So when speaking about math, this page is only amateur talk. All we know for sure, we have no direct way to find out the size of the universe. The only thing we CAN do, is look out as deep as we can, and we think what we see, may be the "edge" of it. What what is it, we THINK we see? We see the edges move away from us, with high speed. Not the speed of light, but VERY fast. We can only THINK so, because what we see is light that travelled to us, beginning 1000's of million years ago.

Then assuming the edges move away from us with the speed of light, this is general consense. Using this, would result in a distance. It is really only that. So do we KNOW what we say, is true? No we don't know. These are assumptions. What we think we see, is the borders of the universe moving away from us with the speed of light. The natural question would be, what is outside those borders. One possible answer is: Nothing. That means no rules of physics. No space, no gravity, no light, no force, no time, nothing. Even such thing as a number can not exist there.

Another possible answer is, what is beyond the edge of the universe, is saying, why is there nothing out there. Just the fact we have no way to receive signals from it, doesn't mean it can not exist. This of course would make the big bang theory obsolete. If so, we need to get ready for the next, new theory, which as the word says, will be another theory, just as all the others theories before. Which brings us to the next topic:

Black holes

In the universe, planets orbit around other planets or stars which by itself are part of a Galaxy. Whereas a Galaxy is a huge amount of objects, circling around something in the center. Given the mass of the Galaxy, this object in the center, should have larger mass, otherwise it can not hold the Galaxy together. Given the whole mass of a Galaxy, is concentrated in one huge mass, the gravity becomes so absurd, that molecule structures will collapse, and the whole structure begins to implode, becoming smaller and smaller, and probably very hot. The mass, concentrated on so little space, will result in absurd gravity, and light, heat, or any radiation can not escape from it. We call it a black hole. So in the center of each galaxy, is a black hole, and the amount of galaxies in the universe, is like sand corns on a beach. There are that many black holes in the universe.

What is it like, inside a black hole?

Some say you can't go in there in one piece, because you get stretched. They call it spaghettified. I would compare it with going down the Niagara waterfalls with a motorized boat. There is a point of no return, when water speed becomes faster than the maximum speed of your boat. At that moment you are going to fall down for sure. There is no way to return. When the boat tips over the edge, it doesn't get stretched, but if it was raft, an very long raft, it would get stretched indeed. The front end gets faster then the back end, and it would break into pieces.

With space, this stretching takes place when the 'grid' we exist in, gets stretched as it gets sucked up by the black hole from one end, whereas the other end is further away. A space craft is too small to see severe gravity differences over it's small length. The only thing which happens is, you become invisible at some point, the closer you get to the edge of the black hole. When a small, 1cm long fish falls down the Niagara, it will not be spagettified, but a large ship like the Titanic, will have the front dive down first, while the back by definition has to do so at a later moment. The logic result is, it breaks into pieces. By this analogy, a complete planet system, like our solar system, or even a Galaxy, can disappears into a black hole, undamaged. It would (initially) continue to exist normally, and initially the grid (the coordinates) gets stretched. From the inside, looking the the outside, the stretching appears like the edges of the universe moving away from you. (Please hold here for a few seconds.... so we see the edges moving away from us. But that is only because we move away from the edges). Then much later, everything gets compressed. Further and further. Then it gets unpleasant, when increasing of gravity begins. Temperature rises accordingly high or whatever will happen.

Nobody really knows how it continues from there. The name of Einstein of course is strongly attached to this question. I red his book about the special relativity theory, and I am far from understanding it. Some equations are difficult, but when I take enough time, I get the feeling of what it is about. The things he wrote in the special relativity theory, appeared not fully right in the end. He introduced the 'cosmological constant' for that. Which is not a constant at all, but just a number he found he needed to add, to make the results become true. By itself such an approach is bit flaky, and Einstein himself later admitted, fixing an apparent problem by introducing the 'cosmological constant' was a mistake.

I challenge you, to find a complete and valid way to derive E=Mc². Not written by Maxwell, or Poincaré, but written by Einstein. This does not exist.

There are more ways to come up with E=Mc², and the first person ever to discover the relation between energy and mass, was Joseph J. Thomson in the year 1897, when Einstein was only a first Semester student in Switzerland. Thomson was replicating the experiments of Johnstone Stoney who build already a working Cathode Ray Tube in 1874. (Yes Fleming patented the triode, but he did not invent the electron tube, when you agree with me, a Cathode Ray Tube is also a tube). Stoney knew of course that electrons which are accelerated, are harder to be deflected by the electric field of the CRT. The surprise however was, that they became not twice as hard to deflect at twice the speed, but much harder than that. Which made no sense at first to him. But there was no other conclusion to make, than the mass of heavily accelerated particles increases. This was highly unlogical at the time, and he could not explain his findings.

Yet Stoney documented it very good, and this first discovery of what we call today "relativity" was not picked up by anybody for 1/4 of a century. And no, also not be Einstein, and sure he did not discover this at all.

Then, Thomson precisely repeated it in 1896. Also Thomson could also not explain it, but he did come up with a formula, which he just derived experimentally from his experiments. It seemed to him the increase of mass is 3/4mv�. With v being the speed of the particle.

Then came Poincaré, who used Thomson's precise work, and was able to PROVE the Mass gain of an accelerated particle formula was E=mv². He did not make the link to the absolute mass of the non-moving particle, but he did bring scientific PROOF of mass increase due to high velocity.

Yet from Einstein's book, I picked up a phrase he used more often: What makes you sure, what you say is true? This is so ironical, because he stole the formulas for time dilatation (Relativity) from Lorenz, and just writes it down as "true". So if we could ask Einstein: What makes YOU sure, what YOU say is true?, he would have to answer: Because I stole it from Lorenz, myself I had no proof for it. Einstein was criticized later for hiding this, and in later books, at least he briefly mentioned LORENZ in the reference list, as information source, and that was all he did.

So with this background of Einstein being dishonest about who really discovered what, I want to put him in this shady light here. It seems he constructed this books around this thought. What makes YOU sure, what YOU say is true? He uses actually this sentence, to pick holes in Newton's gravitation theory. So with this saying of Einstein in mind, I read in articles, the border of the universe is moving away from us. So what makes it so sure this is true?

One will logically ask the question: if there is a border, could you see it, when you approach it, and what is the situation beyond? For this, we need to realize that at every place which we call part of our universe, laws of physics apply. Also to a place which is totally empty. It means to me, there is no total emptyness there, because the rules if physics apply there, at least it is filled with these laws, and beyond that border, these laws (of time, distance and mass) do not apply. That is the difference.

Aether

In Greek mythology, Aether was the higher heavens above us. In the 17th century this word was revived, and used as a physical definition. They said propagation of light, needs always a medium. It can be water, gas, or also vacuum. When light can pass though it, this something, whatever it is, is present. It was called aether. This may seem a too simple approach, but that is not what it is. The existence of aether could never be proven or denied, and as a hypothesis it still serves it's purpose.

Even in math, some unsolvable problems are just defined as such, like what is the square root of -1. They just call it J and continue from there. Though in math, this is more an exception than a rule. With Physics though, that whole science is a blanket of patchwork, where we always have new observations which we can not explain, until some formulas or rules describe it better. Such rules and formulas are good to use, and it helps to sort out the situation. From there we make the next move, until again we find something which needs another formula, or a correction or compliment to the existing. This is the situation of today, and many big questions are only patched up with experimental formulas.

In the above context we must place the word Aether. Like with many physical observations, aether was just defined to make observations match with theory. Today, we say that everywhere, also in deep space, all elementary units are present. So, these are: Length, Mass, Time, Temperature, Electrical Current, Quantity, and Light Intensity. To my opinion it even defines 'space' as such, when these elements exist there all together.

Reversing the definition, means where there is no space, the 7 elementary units do not exist all together. Also EInstein adopted the use of the word aether. (Note1). He called it 'aether', as well as many others did. This word 'aether' was picked up by the first physicists, like Huygens. Marconi used it to explain propagation of radio waves, and even today it can be used to describe particular situations. (but not explaining it).

This means, outside the borders of our universe, not all 7 elementary units exist at the same together. Assuming, this is the case indeed, the situation becomes strange. So outside the borders of our universe, if at least one of the 7 elementary units is missing, it becomes not like our known universe for that reason. (though this is a circular explanation)

For better understanding how irrational it becomes, let's just say there is no 'time' outside our universe. That would mean, where is no time, there can be no velocity, and where is no velocity, items can not move. If nothing can move, light can not propagate, so it can not exist. This becomes so irrational, I can not understand it. But it does seem to me, when one of the 7 units is missing, the others become none existent es well. So it is at least a helpful explanation, to say deep space is indeed filled with that curious property, called .... aether.

Let's go back to days of great scientific discoveries.

Pay some attention to Cavendish' extreme break through, to determine the size of the earth, and by that finally scale the universe for the first time in history. It is briefly described below how he did that. He also proved the existence of gravity. Until then, gravity was only an explanation, which Newton used, because his logic was, there must be a force to attract the earth to the sun, and the moon to the earth, etc. Cavendish achieved something else, and he devoted a part of his life to this. The distance of the moon to the earth was never exactly known, this was a similar problem, until the Appollo missions placed a mirror reflector there, and with a reflected laser beam, we could now measure the distance. Long before that, we already knew the ratio of the distance to the moon, and distance to Jupiter. So suddenly we could calculate the distance to Jupiter. And from there it's weight. But there is more in the solar system than just planets. There is also the distance to where the heliospere stops. So once you are out there, it becomes inter-stellar space. The sun radiates particles, called solar wind. This is a cloud of real particles, and they give some pressure to objects, as they are bombarded with it. But other suns (stars) in the universe do the same thing. It is said when you come to a point, where the background radiation from the universe is the same as the radiation of the sun, this is where the heliosphere ends. Here comes the thing, we had only a rough idea where that is. The Voyager 2, send in 1977, to leave the solar system's heliosphere, was expected to get at that point, somewhere in 2017. For that reason it's atomic electricity generator was designed to last until 2020 as a minimum. Well, when it arrived there in 2017, there was a surprise: The Heliosphere was still there. Oops. But you see, same as Cavendish' work corrected the understanding of the size of the earth and planets, the Appollo project helped us to scale this more precise, the Voyager2 has provided us with a much better understanding of the right size of the Heliosphere. It was larger as we calculated. So at that large distance, things seem to be expanding already. This may have some impact on our understanding of the size of the universe as well.

1) Make an assumption, to prevent you get stuck at some point

2) The assumption of Lemaitre, called the big bang theory

3) The moon moves slowly away from the earth by 3.8cm per year.

4) Scaling the universe, by Cavendish.

5) Something else Cavendish did

6) How far away are the stars, and where is the end of the universe?


7) The AGE of the universe

Consider to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoW8Tf7hTGA

Is it coincidence, we live here and now?

1) Make an assumption, to prevent you get stuck at some point

Most people think in mathematics everything can be calculated, but this is not always so. Like the square root of -1, or the number Pi can not be calculated, but it is valid in electronics, and we need those everywhere. To deal with that, you can let an non-solvable problem for what it is, and give it a name or a letter. This allows you to continue, and find indeed some new conclusions, which you would NOT have found if you stopped, at the non-solvable problem.

2) The assumption of Lemaître, or the big bang theory.

The father of the Big Bang theory, was a Belgium priest, Lemaître. You can google for him. When he posted his theory, and Einstein heard about it, he called it wrong and absurd. After a few years However, Einstein realized, Lemaître was right. So typical for Einstein, he began to use the theory of Lemaître without mentioning him.

My assumption is another one. For the reasoning here, I am just assuming the big bang theory is true. (Though it is only a theory, meaning it may as well be wrong). With this, so just at assumption, I calculated the size and the age of the universe based on some NASA measurements, and based on the observation, we see everything expanding away from earth into deep space. At least, we think we see this.

Now, this method I used, is very simple, and I was ready for a wrong outcome. However, the outcome is in line with numbers calculated by the Hubble method, which method is far more versatile, and uses the Doppler effect of light, emitted by specific stars of which we have some idea of their distance to the earth. All of that I do not even know in detail.

3) The moon moves slowly away from the earth by 3.8cm per year.

During the first moonwalks, on 21 July 1969, a first laser mirror was placed in the Sea of Tranquility by Aldrin and Armstrong. It was placed there, to measure the distance of moon to earth with an accuracy of 3cm, based on the run time of a reflected laser beam that was send from earth. A total of six of such mirrors were placed by mankind, five by the Americans and one by the Russians. Those mirrors are the only functional items left on the moon so far, and we still use them. They will remain operational for many more years, until they get too dusty. (that is beginning to happen now). This will give information about the distance of the moon to the earth, and also about the distance from each mirror to the other. In fact you can see of this a mega sized GPS System, with the sole function of measuring the size and the position of the moon, with a precision that was never possible before. Also, laser measurements can be made from satellites, to add to the precision, and derive even more information. Same as with any (earth) GPS system, the factors are included in the calculation to do justice to Einstein's general relativity theory. (Time on the moon ticks indeed slower as on earth). Also information about a change of gravity can be derived from long term measurements. Since they are placed on different corners of the moon, we can even repeat land measurements, and find out if the moon is changing it's size. So a really magnificent job can be done, just by the help of those five mirrors, and the result is flawless, and fully accepted.

Relativity comes in the picture.

It is not just believed, time slows down at high speed. This was actually proven. The moon has quite some velocity. So the laser beam comes into a zone, near the moon, where time runs a fraction slower. The beam runs a little too long, and by that it seems, the moon is further away as it really is. As seen on the moon, time ticks there with normal speed, just it seems as if on earth, clocks are ticking a tiny little fraction too fast. However, this is all corrected for, same as has to be done with signals coming from GPS satellites. But whatever error the measurement has, it shows us a contradiction, for which we have no good explanation.

The expectation was, the moon is approaching earth, due to tidal energy being generated on earth, by the moon, which is nothing but friction. The only source for this energy, is the movement energy of the moon. This slow process of absorbing little bits of the energy, would inevitably lead a smaller radius of the moon eclipse. Right? You can understand the excitement, as scientists got their first numbers. They were all dreaming about being the first with an article in the New York Times, saying: 'The moon will crash on the earth in 500 Billion years'.

Well, after a year or so, came the big surprise. The distance INCREASED 38mm per year. This changed everything. You may say, 38mm per year, it not much, but the thing is, it is in the opposite direction as it should be. This is so weird, the moon looses continuously some of it's movement energy, we know this for sure, and yet describes a larger circle every year. This is a total contradiction. There is something elementary going on here, unexplained. I am not going to calculate this, but what energy is needed, to move such a massive object away from earth 38mm? Yet we do receive the complete tide energy on earth from this.

It gets even more strange, when I look at this not on a yearly scale. There is no reason for a yearly scale at all. Is it not better to ask, what was the movement ever since the moon existed? When we say the moon is 4.5 Billion years old, the total distance change was 17000 km. What energy does it take to move the moon 17000 km away from the earth. That is a massive number! We can easily see such a distance of the moon just with the naked eye. Because.... the moon has only a diameter of 3500km. So imagine the energy it takes, to move the moon away from the earth's gravity field, for as much as 5x it's own diameter. So go outside, look at the moon, and draw a line in the sky, 5x as long as the diammeter of the moon. And yes, it is that much distance the moon has moved away from earth. Since there is no source, adding such incredible amount of energy to this system, the remaining assumption, space has expanded, doesn't look bad.

Einstein once described the general relativity effect like this: 'Relativity will change time and distance, in order to allow the speed of light to be the same number 'c' no matter from what coordinate system we observe it'. This sentence may seem easy to read quickly, but it is rather extremely difficult in fact, and it describes the whole essence of relativity theory.

However, we observe this from within ONE coordinate system only, so from this we can make the conclusion, the 'moving away' of the moon, is not a relativity effect. Therefore, It must be something else. But what....? I don't know!

4) Scaling the universe.

Doing these ultra precise measurements on one very large object, gives the possibility, to determine the size of the universe. First astrologist knew this very well, because they had only relative information, but not one single absolute distance. Even today, very precise references are rare. So that was one of the ideas behind putting these mirrors on the moon, and also part of the Voyager2 mission.

A few hundred years ago, scientists were able to calculate the ratio of the distance of the earth to the sun, and the diameter of the earth, just based on the length of shadows, the sun drops on earth. many more observations could be made, always scaling one object against the other. The problem with this has always been, the RATIO is all they know. The diameter of the earth was not known precisely, and with orbits of planets you are more interested in their weight as in their diameter. They had a rough idea, but no method would give something accurate. Getting this precise number though, would give what you need to scale the whole solar system. So that would be VERY important break through. Believe it or not, an obsessed British scientist CAVENDISH spend a very long time, measuring a part of the earth with his own hands, using a long piece of rope that he laid on the ground, and rolled it up again, etc. Like that he measured a very long piece of land in England, that he knew the coordinates from. Well it was worth it! Now he knew the diameter of the earth relatively precise. WIth that he could calculate the distance to the sun. With the diameter of the earth, he could also calculate diameter of the sun, and from that estimate it's weight. Actually he was the first to scale the solar system. All pieces of information could be brought in relation to each other. For instance there is the relation between the distance of Mars to the Sun, the weight of the sun, and the length of one Mars Year. The whole solar system could be charted now, but the solar system was where his calculations ended.

5) Something else Cavendish did, long before Einstein.

Mastermind Cavendish with a Gravity scale. He measured the gravity force between two objects.

The difficulty with doing measurements on gravity force, it is almost unmeasurable small. If you take a weight of 100kilogram, the gravity of the whole planet earth, gives a force of only 100 kilogram, which is lot if you want to lift it, but on the other hand thus results from the planet earth which has a weight of 6x10^24kg. A second metal ball of 100kg, hanging near by on a rope, will give a gravity force on the first one, of almost nothing. It is a miracle Cavendish could build a reliable instrument for that. Here is a link to an article of him, from the year 1798. On the last page you see the instrument he used. The thing was sealed into a building without doors, so inside it was dead silent, no air movement. From the outside, he could look through a lens system, and see the microscopic small movements of the small weights, while he turned the big weights with a handle. He was the first to measure the earths's gravitational constant, and the number he found had an error of only 1%. Such a break through!

Yet, something interesting remains. His experiment was officially repeated by very great scientists approximately 300 times. Every time some slightly different value of the gravity constant was measured. There is no explanation for that. Differences are totally random, and are in in the 0,1% range. Very curious, because it is believed the instruments are better than 0.1%.

6) How far away are the stars, and where is the end of the universe?

They still did not know. The problem is the same as described above. They could calculate ratios, like the distance of star A to Star B is 1000 times more than from C to D. However, they had no reference to scale the universe. Interesting is, if you just have some small beginning somewhere, and you know this number is very precise, you can start to make good estimations though. So suppose you know the distance from A to B, you can derive from that the distance from C to D. etc, and scale parts of the universe. In science, there was never a break through, giving an exact number.

Today, we think we have a reasonable knowledge about what the size of the universe could be. Although the final words about this come only from very few persons, considered to be genius. Nobody can verify what they say. All I can see, the number is estimation, and as always based on the latest discovery which changed the result once more.

Fact is, nobody ever was able to verify the numbers, and even if we could, it would breaks it's own record every second, as the universe appears to expand with the speed of light. This was a discovery by Hubble, a friend of Einstein. Hubble calculated the distance of certain stars, which were known to emit white light. Yet because they move away from us their light color shifted into the red, due to the Doppler effect. We know the Doppler effect rather from sound, but laser guns the police uses, work the same way. Hubble used it on stars, using the visible emitted light, which made him famous as the man who proved the expansion of the universe by this observation. (I would like to point out, this is in contradiction with what is called 'the prediction of Poincaré', which prediction was however proven by Dr. Grigori Perelman in 2010 - a most curious situation).

With the observation of Hubble we could go further and calculate the size of the universe finally. So what is the size? If we know the size the universe has today, then one year later it has grown a tremendous distance, with the speed of light. You may know the speed of light in vacuum is very high. It is 299.000 kilometers per second. A year has very many seconds. So it expands a tremendous distance every year. Yet given it's age, the total size in percent changes only very little. So even though it expands with the speed of light, it's size changing in one year is very little in relation to it's total size, but by itself it is a very high number.

In one year, the universe will grow 9,43·1015 meters. This number is large, but it is within human imagination. Let me try to explain what human imagination can understand, and what is beyond that. In the following example, 9,43·1015 meters means you need to drive in a car 235 millions times around the earth. Suppose you take the total distance driven by all cars that were build ever since the invention of the automobile, you get the dimension of this number. This requires some imagination, but it is possible to think that way. Anyway, the precise real number is 9,43·1015 meters per year.

So we know now, at the edges the universe moves away from us with 9,43·1015 meter per year. Now here comes a question. Do only the edges move away from us indeed, so to say growing 'additional space'? Or does it rather expand as a whole. The observation by Hubble indicate,space also expands at places which are not the edges. So rather it expands everywhere, and not just growing the edges. What does this mean? The smaller part of the universe you look at, the lower the expansion speed gets. (So the moon doesn't move 9,43·1015 meters per year away from us, but the edge of the universe does). Hubble could see, the further away galaxies we look at, the faster we see them move away from us. This has a lot of meaning to how we must see the universe, and from this we can derive its age and dimensions.

Here is a simple way to demonstrate this. Suppose an ant stands on the left end a centimeter stick of 100cm, which expands with 10% per minute. Looking to the right, the ant would see the marks: 1cm, 2cm, 3cm, etc, and at the end of the stick he sees 100cm. Now he sees the mark '1cm' move away from him with 10% per minute, so 0,1mm per minute. The mark '2cm' he sees move away from him with twice that speed. and the end of the stick moves away from him with full 10cm per minute (and we already knew that). Now, suppose we take a much longer stick, and it's expanding with the same ratio. The longer the stick gets, the faster the ant will see the end move away. Suppose it is not 1 meter long, but 10km long, and expands 10% per minute, the ant would see the end move away with 1km per minute. That is as fast as a leopard at full speed. Far beyond the ant's imagination, and he would never be able to get there. Still the 1cm mark would only move 0,1 mm per minute away from the ant, and the ant sees nothing special. Suppose our '10% per minute expanding stick' would be 10000 kilometer long, or a lot more. You come to a point where it's end expands with the speed of light. Given you can't exceed the speed of light, this would determine either the maximum length of that stick or the maximum expansion speed. So you already see there is a relation between expansion speed, total size, and how long has this been going on. These relations could be used to calculate the size of the universe, IF you have a certain kind of beginning of the kind Cavendish was looking for.

Mr. Hubble applied his method not on a stick, but on the whole universe. He calculated, when you know the distance to a certain galaxy and when you know how fast it moves away from us, we can calculate the size of the universe, by assuming the edge of the universe moves away with the speed of light. (and there are many observations saying it really does so). Also we can calculate the age of the universe by this. It takes about 20 lines with difficult calculations, and there is a limitation to the precision, but the result is:

The universe is somewhere between 9,3·1025 and 1,9·1026 Meter wide, by Hubble's method, according to Wikipedia.

I found another way to calculate the size of the universe, which is my own. I do not say nobody had that idea before, it's just that I haven't seen it before, but probably I have not looked well enough. The idea works very simple. The moon circles around the earth, and creates tide energy on earth, so the water of the see is moved by the moon. This is a considerable amount of energy, as it moves all water on the entire earth. It is evident, this energy is taken from the kinetic energy of the moon, or the speed of the moon. Because this is something similar like friction the moon slowly looses this kinetic energy, eventually slow down, and collapse on the earth. Before that happens, it would approach the earth. Like a few meters or microns each year. Now, the NASA was interested in a calculation about this, and put reflectors on the moon to measure this, and some other things. The distance to each mirror can be measured very precise with the help of a laser beam. (These mirrors are still there, and can be used by anyone who likes it)

Interesting the results are unexpected. The moon did not move to the earth! Fully unexpected, it moves away from the earth , and not just a little bit. It moves away 3.8 cm per year. I found that number 3.8cm per year on the NASA web site. From this I calculated, the moon moves away from us with a speed of 1.2 nanometer per second. The 'Cavendish' effect now is, this speed is there, and we know it extremely exact. According to Buzz Aldrin, the first man on the moon, this was the only scientific discovery, resulting from this mission.

This phenomena cannot be explained very good. Suppose, this is the expansion of the universe....?! Just suppose we see the moon move away because of that. This expansion speed will be larger when we take a larger distance than 'just' moon to earth. At it's largest, this speed is the speed of light, and the point where this happens, is where we reached the end of the universe. We cannot expand beyond that, because light speed cannot be exceeded. The ratio for the size of the universe to the distance moon-earth can be found by the ratio of the expansion speed. For that we divide the speed of light by 1.2·10-9 M/sec which gives a ratio of 2.48.1017 .This ratio we multiply by the distance moon-earth and we get: 9.5.1025. It works as simple as that, and as you see, this fits inside the window, calculated by Hubble.

It must be said, if the result was outside the Hubble window, this means the assumption is wrong. This is important, because the window is actually quite narrow.

If there is anyone with some useful comment on this, I would be interesting to hear about it!

7) The AGE of the universe.

With this number 9.5.1025, I calculated how long it takes to expand that far, with the speed of light, and the result would be the age of the universe. From what I initially tried, it seems to give a realistic number. So divide 9.5.1025 by the speed of light and you get the age of the universe. The result is 9.5.1025 / 3.108 = 3.16.1017 seconds, or 10 billion years. I find in the internet variations ranging from 10...20 Billion years. So my calculations are within that window, and it only depend on this mysterious increase of the distance of the moon to the earth and nothing else.

Is it coincidence, we live here and now?

Specially with things like time and position, it makes me realize on what a truly unique place and moment we live here and now, in our corner of the universe and time. This requires such a fabulous coincidence, that it makes me wonder if such a coincidence is possible at all. Mathematically speaking, there is a limit with probability, saying that something with a chance smaller than 1: 10^50 could never have happened during the time the universe existed. It is just not old enough for that. (10^50 is a one with 50 zeroes behind it). That is because the time the universe has been expanding, was only 10 Billion years, or at the upmost 20 Billion years. When looking into the future, an occurrence with a probability of 1:10^50 will take place, you just if you wait long enough. However, for looking BACK, time is limited to the age of the universe. So there it seems valid to say, something with a probability of 10^50 rather not happened, than it happened.


21.7.2009 / A small addendum

We have a new space hype, by president George Bush trying to create another 'Kennedy moment' by announcing the first men to Mars and a moon lab. Actually flying to Mars, was an original idea of Hitler's SS Top scientist and NAZI criminal, Wernher von Braun. I read his original book about this in German, which is extremely impressing literature in many ways. He explains in this book clearly how and when space projects can be realized, and how speed of development can be increased if more government money is used for this. Needless to say he 'forgot' in his book about the Jewish slaves at his site in Peenemuende, who he requested for, and Hitler send those to him. Particularly with this approach he convinced Hitler to let him develop V1 and V2, to defeat England, but detailed plans and calculations were already on the table for Moon and Mars missions, and there was no big difference between von Braun's ideas, and the way the Americans carried that out.

After WWII, while Wernher von Braun didn't change one word to his intentions. This NAZI was officially declared an American hero by president Kennedy. It was a clever idea of the Americans to hire him, but it I fail to see the heroic aspects of his behavior. He never received a punishment for employing Jewish slaves in his factories. A fire man who saves a cat from a fire is more like a hero to me.

We all need to realize, this mad scientist, who made the cold war possible, by getting the money from of Adolf Hitler, to developed the first rockets. He discovered a breakthrough technology, in the 1930's already, and ever since nothing better was invented. This man has changed the world. Some say, the good part was, this project absorbed so much money, it weakened the German army considerable. So his inventions did not change the 2nd world war very much, but in the 1960's, Wernher von Braun's days would come. The moon landing was just the vehicle for his rocket developments, and then the cold war was started with that.

We were so close to a third world war. With this I mean not the Cuba crisis, but the sick arsenal of nuclear rockets at each side of the iron curtain. There was this incident of an EMP resistant Russian jet fighter being emergency landed on West territory, that created sudden awareness the Russians were dead serious preparing a nuclear war. (EMP= Electro Magnetic Impulse). Anyway.... Wernher von Braun already briefed Hitler about the possibility to fly to Mars, and a moon lab was his necessarily bridge on that way to mars. And Space lab is a better way to get all the equipment to the moon first. Some years ago, I read the book, Wernher von Braun wrote about this. Hitler was not stupid, and he let Wernher von Braun do his thing. When I was a kid I thought to be looking at modern technology, and I watched the American astronauts on the moon, and I thought America was doing great things. I was so naive. What I was looking at, was just the first chapter of Wernher von Braun's book, that he wrote with Hitler, and finished under president Kennedy.

When looking at Wernher von Braun's letters to president Kennedy, as published now by the NASA, you can assume he communicated to Hitler in the same analytic way, with his amazingly well calculated precision.

Hitler saw in this rocket science, the possibility of his 'super' weapon, and invested all his available money in rocket technology. He took that away from the jet engine technology and Helicopter technology. I found some very good internal information about this, in a book written by Richard Perlia, ex WWII test pilot, who is 104 years old as I write this, and still has a healthy mind. (Just look in youtube for Richard Perlia). Hitler's top man for 'flying objects' (Mr. UDET ) was so much against this, that he committed suicide. You wouldn't want to know how WWII would have developed if Hitler would had supersonic jet fighter airplanes, and helicopters. They actually had excellent working prototypes, long before others, and then stopped all research on those, to put all money in the 'secret weapon' by Wernher von Braun. His V2 was an intercontinental rocket, which was shot into space under an angle, within the gravity field of the earth, and then fall back on earth with a hyperbolic move. Like that it could be shot 1000km away, and aimed on a target by radio control during it's flight. Made in 1944. A multiple stage version was already on paper (Called A4) 'A' for Antrieb (=Engine). In almost unchanged form, this part of Hitler's secret weapon was used for constructing the mighty carrier rocket (Saturn) for the Apollo program.

Let's resume Wernher von Braun did a very good job by burning a substantial part of Hitler's research money, weakening him a lot by that. He continued later, burning Kennedy's money. It is so crazy, but now his ideas are burning money, for the next three presidents to come. (Landing on Mars is due in 2025 - they say) .


Wernher von Braun with a group of NAZI criminals.
He official Rank was: SS Sturmbahnfuehrer 

Wernher von Braun, whose NAZI rank was 'SS Obersturmbahnfuehrer', was later ranked 'National hero', by President Kennedy. This man who served Hitler until the game was over, and who was said to be employing 100's of holocaust victims as slaves in Peenemuende, was not put in jail by President Kennedy, but was now National hero. It is a disgrace for the real American heroes, to have this NAZI in their ranks. He just changed sides like turning his under pants inside out. The question is not if that was right or wrong, but I fail to see the heroic aspect of that.

Well, and now George Bush announces to land a man on Mars and bringing him safely back to earth. What's so new about that? It is all in Wernher von Braun's books, that he prepared during his Nazi's days, and published in the 1950's. He calculated exactly how much fuel that needs, and how many rocket stages, and he already presented the moon landing plans and Mars Landing plans to Hitler. This was not on the Simpson's level. This was extremely well engineered, feasible, and precisely calculated in detail. I don't need to rely on what others write about this, I have the original book of Wernher von Braun on my book shelf. That's where I quote this from.

Personally I see no practical use in landing on Mars. I mean it's sure interesting, but I think with that tax money, you can do far more interesting things, like give free internet to everybody. We even HAVE already 10 officially classified Mars satellites, and close up pictures, which is all they will return. The only thing worthwhile would be to set free some earth life on Mars: I means not mice or monkeys, but rather living fossil bacteria as can be found in the deep sea, or inside volcanoes, living at most hostile environments ever since earth exists. Some fungus can live on almost anything, So if some micro organisms would survive in the Mars equipment, they would find no enemies, and could spread. These could prepare the set free of a gas atmosphere, by using the soil as source of minerals, and set free gas, probably lots of CO2. Once that exists, other micro organisms could be set free on Mars, and who knows what else. But that takes hundreds of thousands of years, if it works at all. Probably the many landed objects already infected Mars anyway, so we will see what is the result of that after 500.000 years.

Is this worth it al all?



Here is a small quote from an interview with 'SPIEGEL-Reporter' Klaus Brinkbaeumer from Germany who met Buzz Aldrin, in Minnesota, at that moment 79 years old. Aldrin was asked what he thinks was the most important thing scientists learned from his trip to the moon? His answer was: The moon moves 3.8cm per year away from the earth, and there was no other way to find that out than by going there. He said scientifically we learned nothing at all, from all of those Appollo trips, with exception of this 3.8 cm/year move, and even for that, we don't have a good answer.


27.03.10 Another small addendum

This is a nice one. The thing is, our three dimensional world is not as it appears. This has now been proven mathematically in 2010 by a crazy scientist called Dr. Grigori Perelman, and predicted by Poincaré. It was not just something he put on paper on his own initiative. Actually it was something that the Clay-Institut in Cambridge (Massachusetts) thought nobody could prove ever, so they put a prize of one million dollar on it. 30 scientists so far have send in their calculations, and none of them made it past the committee of Clay-Institut scientists, who found something incorrect in each of the works. However, in March 2010, after checking and re-checking Dr. Grigori Perelman theory for four years, they could find no mistake in it, and they had no other choice then to give him 1 million $.

Here is what Poincaré said. Suppose an ant walks on an orange. He will never find the edge of this surface. Yet, the object he walks on, is not endless size. That is clear to us, but not to the ant. Although the ant at some point recognizes he is lost, he will only panic, but he can not understand the problem, and he can not solve it. You may not expect this, but also hamsters live in a two dimensional world in nature, under the ground. They have no understanding for 'height'. They will avoid edges where they dropped off before, but only after painful repeats, and not understand the problem cause is height.



With this perception of a world being not having just only 3 dimensions, Poincaré, was the greatest mathematicians ever, and he was a great help to Einstein. He made his famous assumption in 1904, later called the Poincaré assumption. With that he could at least explain some things that cannot be explained otherwise. He said, in the universe, we can travel in any direction, but we will never find the edge. Look how long ago he said that. Before EInstein, and much before Hubble.

He said, when things appear be endless large, there is still an end, but just we can't see it from our view. To understand this, look at the orange (fruit) example once more. So it is perfectly clear, when traveling along it's surface the ant will never find the edge. His assumption is, that this applies for the universe too. This is not a little story. It's a thesis from 1904, and it was proven mathematically in 2010. This is not a joke! There was a bonus set on this, of 1.000.000$ by the Clay institute. This amount was probably set so high, thinking nobody could ever prove it anyway. Too bad for them, Dr. Grigori Perelman solved it in 2010.

Interesting in this aspect is, that Poincaré again proved Thomson's expectation of the relation between mass and energy, and corrected Thomson's experimental formula E=3/4 mc² to E=mc² by proving it scientifically for the first time. Einstein gratefully used Poincarés formula in his books, and write it on the black board for his students, not mentioning it's inventor, but also he never claimed this as his own. Just much later, when he was already famous, he began to credit Poincaré for it.

Poincaré, who knew Einstein, called him a not very talented mathematician. Yes a brilliant thinker, who can combine many subjects with amazing speed. Therefore, he said Einstein would probably discover something new, one day. Not knowing, it would be Poincaré's own formula, E=mc², combined with Lorenz' formulas about relativity and mass, which EInstein needed for this.

You can wonder what is harder, to expect something or to prove it.


Reference:

Basic Units, defined by Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM) in the latest SI-brochure of 1998.

Quantity Unit Symbol Definition
Length  meter  m  1983, 17th CGPM:  The path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 seconds. This fixes the speed of light to exactly 299792458 m/s.
Mass  kilogram  kg  1901, 3rd CGPM:  Mass of the platinum-iridium prototype at BIPM in Sevres.
Time  second  s  1968, 13th CGPM:  One second equals 9192631770 periods of the radiation due to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of Cesium 133.
Electric current  ampere  A  1948, 9th CGPM:  Given two parallel, rectilinear conductors of negligible circular cross-section positioned 1 m apart in vacuum, one ampere is the electric current which, passing through both of them, makes them attract each other by the force of 2.10-7 newtons per every meter of length. This fixes the permeability of vacuum to exactly 2π*10-7 H/m.
Temperature  kelvin  K  1968, 13th CGPM:  One degree K equals 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water.
Quantity of substance  mole  mol  1971, 14th CGPM:  The amount of a substance composed of as many specified elementary units (molecules, atoms) as there are atoms in 0.012 kg of Carbon 12.
Luminosity  candle  cd  1979, 16th CGPM:  The candle (or candela) is the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540.1012 hertz and that has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 W/sr.

 

Notes:

Albert Einstein wrote in 1920: 'We may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an aether. According to the general theory of relativity space without aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this aether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.'