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Questions and Answers

Combined, the musicbanter intellectual mindscape contains a lot of knowledge and expertise. Some of us are rich with life experiences and interests while others have more specialized knowledge in areas such as philosophy, art, design, law and of course biology.

This is a thread simply for asking questions. This could be anything - a question about greek mythology, the evolution of languages, what is the golden ratio, how does a car engine work or maybe you need some help with your math homework.

Astronomy : I have a question for someone who might know some astronomy. Does anyone know theoretically what should happen to the universe billions of years down the line? I think I read once that black holes will swallow all matter and then the black holes will melt together to form one super-black hole .. but that even this one will "evaporate", eventually leaving a universe with nothing but a kind of "background radiation" somewhere down the line.

Is this really a likely course of events or does popular scientific theory predict a different scenario?

I don't know anything about astronomy really but i read a similar theory to the one you mentioned i think the theory you're talking about is called "the big crunch". I also remember the article discussing another theory called the "big freeze" where the unviverse expands to such a size that it becomes to cold to sustain life or something like that. Hope someone can help you out on this, i'd like to see the answer to that question as well lol. Awesome idea for a thread btw.

From what I've gathered ... there'll be something called "Big Crunch" which is the opposite of a Big Bang [a bit of what you described above]. And after that, another Big Bang ... and the cycle continues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by toretorden (Post 750841)

Astronomy : I have a question for someone who might know some astronomy. Does anyone know theoretically what should happen to the universe billions of years down the line? I think I read once that black holes will swallow all matter and then the black holes will melt together to form one super-black hole .. but that even this one will "evaporate", eventually leaving a universe with nothing but a kind of "background radiation" somewhere down the line.

Is this really a likely course of events or does popular scientific theory predict a different scenario?

The universe has been described as being like a gigantic (or at least extremely big) expanding elastic band because the universe has been constantly expanding since the 'big bang'.
What would happen when the universe reached it's furthest possible extent?
Would it tear and disintegrate, or more interestingly, would it begin to retract causing the universe to reverse in direction and return to it's original state?
And if this was the case, then would time travel backwards and how would it effect us as humans?
Would we be born old and gradually get younger (as in the curious case of Benjamin whatsisname) until we were born, thus ending our life?
Or, if that wasn't the case and it only effected those who were around at the time, would we remember what had happened, say 5 years previously?
And would we be able to apply our knowledge of that to benefit us personally?
Or, would time continue in a straight line (if it does at all) and we live out our lives normally as the universe slowly gets smaller?

I thought the most popular theory at this point in time is an extension of the Big Bang theory; that the universe is still expanding from the 'bang' and that when it is done expanding is will retract, reversing back into a small amount of space meaning everything will get crushed into a dense area... and then a 'Big Bang' will happen again and the universe will expand again etc.

This is of course in layman's terms and chances are I'm not correct but I remember hearing all about this at an astronomy talk I went to about a month ago.

Didn't they discover that the universe was expanding quicker too?

Oh well, seems my thread didn't work out as well as I hoped. I had to go out there and have a look. I quickly came across an article by Michael D. Lemonick from Times magazine.

TIME.com - End of the Universe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Times Article

That means that the 100 billion or so galaxies we can now see though our telescopes will zip out of range, one by one. Tens of billions of years from now, the Milky Way will be the only galaxy we're directly aware of (other nearby galaxies, including the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Andromeda galaxy, will have drifted into, and merged with, the Milky Way).

By then the sun will have shrunk to a white dwarf, giving little light and even less heat to whatever is left of Earth, and entered a long, lingering death that could last 100 trillion years—or a thousand times longer than the cosmos has existed to date. The same will happen to most other stars, although a few will end their lives as blazing supernovas. Finally, though, all that will be left in the cosmos will be black holes, the burnt-out cinders of stars and the dead husks of planets. The universe will be cold and black.

But that's not the end, according to University of Michigan astrophysicist Fred Adams. An expert on the fate of the cosmos and co-author with Greg Laughlin of The Five Ages of the Universe (Touchstone Books; 2000), Adams predicts that all this dead matter will eventually collapse into black holes. By the time the universe is 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years old, the black holes themselves will disintegrate into stray particles, which will bind loosely to form individual "atoms" larger than the size of today's universe. Eventually, even these will decay, leaving a featureless, infinitely large void. And that will be that—unless, of course, whatever inconceivable event that launched the original Big Bang should recur, and the ultimate free lunch is served once more.

There was also a link to the universe's timeline there which was interesting.

>> http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101.../timeline.html

These events are undoubtedly disputed, so if some astronomer or phycisist should drop by, some more input would be appreciated.

Oh well, I have another question and this time, it's about football :p: (soccer to you crazy americans)

Football clubs "buy" players from other parts of the world. But if there's a world championship, what proportion of the players on the national team have to be from that country? Is it simply all of them or some kind of number?

Yeah, I'm a football newb :(

Quote:

Originally Posted by toretorden (Post 751572)

The short answer is all of them. It can get a bit more complicated than that though.

For instance, there's a bloke called Shola Ameobi who's played in the English youth teams, but is just as qualified to play for Nigeria because of his ancestry. American goalkeeper Brad Friedel plays for the US but, I think, can also play for Germany if he wants. Famously, half of the first, internationally successful Irish team were actually born in England and Scotland - players like John Aldridge, Paul McGrath, Ray Houghton and so on - but qualified for Ireland caps through having Irish parents or whatever.

A player only gets to choose one team to play for though. So, basically, all of a nation's representatives in a world cup have to be from the nation they're representing, in some form or another.

^Wow, super! Thanks for the answer :D

By the way, aside from world championships, in theory - could a team like Manchester United be comprised entirely of foreign players? :p: