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by vlovich123 1648 days ago
Amateur so I’m sure this is a stupid idea. What if they’re not accelerating away from us but space time itself is growing (because of the original Big Bang) and taking everything else along for the ride on top of the original exploding outward, resulting in acceleration of acceleration? Probably it’s growth rate would be decreasing which might be observable in the derivative of the derivative of acceleration? If that were happening, I wonder if virtual particles have some link to that process.

My reasoning here is that everything is accelerating from everything else since our position in the galaxy isn’t particularly special right? Then the only way for that really to be true would be for space time itself to be growing.

3 comments

That's sort of what's happening. If you imagine space as a rubber sheet with the galaxies pinned to certain places, something is pulling the sheet apart, making it seem like the galaxies are accelerating away from each other. We know the math behind this mechanism thanks to general relativity (it only needs a certain energy density for empty space), but we don't know what causes it. So we just call it "dark energy." Without it, the original expansion of the universe caused by the big bang should be slowing down due to gravity. Dark energy causes it to accelerate instead.
Another amateur, but I think it's more likely the reverse. As we travel through time, us, and the atoms we are made of, shrink(or another way to look at it is 'being consumed', or using up its energy). And we shrink according to how fast we travel through time, and we move through time based on mass. The relative shrinking causes gravity. This would result in that same change in 'acceleration' that we observe, but really it's not that anything is moving, everything is simply changing sizes.

This must be wrong because it feels obvious and testable, simply make 2 satellites, send one to space, then confirm they are the same size when it gets back. And yet I can't find evidence either way.

>acceleration of acceleration

maybe this is where the c² in the famous equation comes from

>everything is accelerating from everything else

but what about galactic collisions? we are told the big bang did not happen from one single point but instead everywhere at once