Yes, but I never claimed that this was 100% certain, I'm just presenting it as food for thought. What's up with these reactions here? I'm perplexed.
What's up with the insinuation that this is "theological physics"? I don't have a strong opinion on this paper either way, and I'm weirded out by the highly defensive reactions I'm getting to posting it. I'm interested in the new kinds of singularities being postulated here, that's the main thing.
What's up with the insinuation that this is "theological physics"?
It considers a time scale so long that the possibility of it ever being empirically tested is vanishingly small.
I'm interested in the new kinds of singularities being postulated here, that's the main thing.
There's really no relevance to LW to be found here.
No, not the kind of Singularity usually discussed here... I'm referring to the possibility of phantom energy-driven rips in the cosmos caused by accelerating expansion, or "sudden future singularities of pressure". (Technically: "a momentary infinite peak in the tidal forces of the universe.") A recent paper by Ghodsi & Hendri shows that cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), and type 1a supernovae data is consistent with the possibility of a sudden future singularity as soon as 8.7 million years from now.
"Cosmological tests of sudden future singularities"
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.6661v1.pdf
As I understand it, the authors are not saying that a SFS is likely 8.7 million years from now, just possible. This puts a dampener on the notion that the only plausible scenario of cosmological breakdown is Heat Death.
Here's another paper that outlines other exotic cosmological singularities which have been under discussion in the cosmology community for the past decade, and the behavior of pointlike particles and strings as they approach such singularities.