On 8 Nov 2003 at 20:35, Brent Meeker wrote: … > A balloon model neglects inhomogeneties that allow gravity to dominate > locally. … > at short range the weak, electromagnetic, and > strong force dominate. … > Of course almost anything is possible at the Planck scale. What you > are proposing are effects of Einsteinian gravity, including a > cosmological 'constant', at the level of strings or whatever the most > fundamental particles are. But current theories would say that the > cosmological constant can't pull apart things that are more strongly > bound than some threshold. Since it never starts to pull them apart, > its negative pressure on them never increases and they remain bound by > the other forces. > > Brent Meeker
Well stated, Brent! I would be forced to agree, but there might be an omission in that very strong counter argument. There was a peer reviewed article published many years ago (I think in Scientific American magazine) that basically said that given enough time EVERY particle will spontaneously emit energy until, eventually, there is no energy left to emit. If I remember correctly that argument was making claim that not only radioactive particles are unstable, and that all particles with no exception follow the same emission rules but that some are just almost unimaginably unlikely to do so but that they will do so. The point being that in some near infinite but still within a finite time every particle in the universe will have evaporated, so to speak. Since having read that article I've never seen a disapproval of the hypothesis presented in that article. Perhaps I've missed a peer reviewed disapproval of the premise. But the question in my mind at the time I read that article was: why would a particle considered to be stable eventually decay to a point of complete self destruction? I now believe that the answer to that question is localized inflation of space/time being expressed at the subatomic level. Although the nuclear binding forces are so very strong that the consequences are that inflation is very drastically slowed relative to a particle, inflation itself is a factor of space/time and not of matter but matter does exert a resistive effect against inflation. But only a resistive effect, however large that might be, and not a total inhibiting effect. Over time, inflation marches on regardless. It seems to me that it is true that one reason behind a decay of any particle (radioactive or not) is because of inflation rather than because of fuzzy quantum chance. The argument I put forth is that any atomic arrangement is actually 100% stable until it is acted upon by an external force, which does include inflation but could also include interaction with other energy sources. Barring any possibility of interaction, eventually inflation will lead to decay and be expressed by way of spontanious emmision of energy. Inflation is a component of space and time, it is not granular (it is smooth) and is not itself subject to Planck's constant. The constant is a measure of the smallest size of an energy packet at the quantum level, something like 6.26 x 10^-34 J-sec, and it is the only reason why the affect upon matter by inflation occurs in discrete levels of energy instead of linearly. It is the very drastic localized slowing (but not the entire elimination) of inflation that makes it appear that inflation is not occuring at a subatomic level because of some binding force such as gravity or [insert choice here]. But inflation is still occuring regardless, and at some finite point in time it gets expressed in Planck terms. Ron McFarland