(July 23, 2010 at 12:38 am)tackattack Wrote: @ Welsh the universe, I believe, isn't an isolated system. I'm sure Void will chime in if I got this wrong.
The universe was/is believed by many to be an isolated system, though you have to be careful, because some still use the term universe to include a mutliverse or extraverse as well as our universe... If you are talking about the post inflationary universe then i honestly don't think it is an isolated system, the dark energy problem seems to suggest that something may be coming into the system, but there are other proposed causes for dark energy that posit the conversion of antimatter into dark energy at points of high density, like black holes, as if the destruction of antimatter spawns the dark matter - then it would be the case that our observations are not an entry of matter, but a proportional transition, like the universe being turned inside out from the middle (for lack of a better picture)... Though honestly you can't really hold favor with either explanation.
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