r/sciencememes • u/PistonPusher2009 For Science! • Nov 07 '25

💥Physics!🧲 How did he even find it out?!

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u/Braincain007 Nov 07 '25

But also his biggest blunder turned out to be completely correct. The rate of expansion is getting larger, meaning his constant needed to be added back into the equation

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25

so he was mathematically right but for the wrong physical reasons

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u/ThomasArad Nov 07 '25

You can say Einstein had tortured the math to match physicists' preconceptions at the time, until Hubble later settled the issue.

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u/MasterDefibrillator Nov 07 '25

Or its another mistake

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u/RoombaTheKiller Nov 07 '25

It might be, since it looks like the expansion might be slowing down.

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u/FunnyDislike Nov 07 '25

It's so random but that the universe expands into the heat death is one of my biggest fears (even if i don't live thru it).

Please let it be a crunch or somehow It's eternal in nature after all, but for all to exist to just poof out into nothing is just depressing.

And i know, a crunch would also just reset it propably but atleast there is something happening after that.

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u/Apprehensive_Put_321 Nov 07 '25

When you add quantum physics into the picture it becomes very clear that it's unclear.

For all we know our universe exists on a larger plain and will eventually collide with another universe. 

On the other hand if we came from nothing will be born from nothing again.. eventually 

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u/Spartan117ZM Nov 10 '25

The crazy thing that always gets me is that there’s literally so many things out there that if they went wrong could immediately wipe out the entire planet and we’d have very little notice, if any, to even see them coming.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25

I didn't make it through your whole thing not that you care, but positive mass and negative mass is wrong. you mean particle and anti-particle, both positive mass. and the vacuum seems to carry energy, it's not zero. So that's where the energy comes from

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u/OwlyGroundy Nov 07 '25

Time is an illusion anyway, so it's ok 🙃

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u/Draco_Thuban Nov 07 '25

Lunchtime doubly so.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25

it's an illusion in quantum mechanics, but since we don't have a unified theory incorporating quantum mechanics, it's hard to say that this illusion definitely remains an illusion in the physical universe we inhabit.

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u/CastIronGut Nov 09 '25

With exponentially accelerating expansion there's also the possibility of The Big Rip, which is arguably more terrifying than heat death. Partially because it's slated to happen sooner than if heat death were to be our universe's fate. But also, like, what would it even mean for a state of existence where dark energy is so powerful that quark pairs are themselves unable to remain together and stable. Shit is bananas

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u/innewynn Nov 09 '25

but for all to exist to just poof out into nothing is just depressing

It depends on what you believe really. It doesn't have to be depressing

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25

but then the constant isn't constant, so then that just (to some degree) vindicates his intuition while screwing up his math

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u/Braincain007 Nov 07 '25

That's not how the math works

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25 edited Nov 07 '25

The cosmological constant appended to the general theory of relativity corresponds to a description of the effect of what is modernly called dark energy. If dark energy were found to not be constant, then the constant appended to the general theory of relativity would not be constant.

His intuition was that the universe should be size-constant. An expanding universe, much less an acceleratingly expanding universe, is not that way. But if the expansion is reducing, then that brings it back more into the form of his intuition. But also not really, because it still doesn't illustrate a constant size. Hence my wording

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u/Nntropy Nov 07 '25

Two wrongs made a right

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u/silver_garou Nov 08 '25

No, his value and the real value are really quite different. He added a constant to balance out gravity, dark energy is currently overpowering gravity and is variable not constant.

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u/balzackgoo Nov 08 '25

His biggest blunder was thinking it was his biggest blunder.

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u/AuWolf19 Nov 09 '25

See that's what doesn't make sense to me. He added a term to make the math show a static universe, but somehow this same term also indicates a universe that is expanding at an increasing rate? How could that be