The timeslice model survey - please help to evaluate a new visual model

[gillian andrews]

Hi,

This is my first post, and I have put it here in ATM, because although I don't think there is any controversial science in the new model, the model itself is very different to existing visual models and may be controversial. I will move it if moderators think it is in the wrong place.


Please could you help me with a survey I am running as part of my master’s thesis? It is to evaluate a new visual model which aims to help people understand expansion and the evolution of the universe. There are only 20 questions, and it should take less than 5 minutes of your time.

It would also be great if you could pass the link to some of your friends and family. All ages and all backgrounds are good. THANKS!

The link to the English version of the survey is http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/556128...e-Model-Survey

The link to the Spanish version of the survey ishttp://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/563830/La-Encuesta-Modelo-Timeslice

I would also appreciate any comments you have about the model.

Regards,

Gillian

[tusenfem]

Dear gilian andrews, welcome to BAUT.
I just looked through your questionaire, and I think most of the answers should be "I don't know", you are asking questions that no-one can answer from the short 3 point introduction you are giving, and the three figures are not helping either, I must say (sorry to be so blunt).
I will move this message from ATM (where I do not think it belongs) to S&T, where some of our members may make your questionaire more useful.

[NEOWatcher]

...the short 3 point introduction you are giving, and the three figures...

Where?
The only link I see is the english version, and it starts off with the survey. Am I not seeing some other link somewhere? Is it held in the moderation queue maybe?

[amazeofdeath]

Where?
The only link I see is the english version, and it starts off with the survey. Am I not seeing some other link somewhere? Is it held in the moderation queue maybe?

Second page in the survey shows the model, in the English link too.

[gillian andrews]

Sorry, the model is explained on the second page of the survey, but you can also take a look at it without finding yourself in the survey at the small website I started (see below).

Ouch tusenfem! I hope I don't just get a string of don't knows. I suppose I have got so used to the figures that I see them as clear. But that is the whole point of the survey, to find out how good the model is, and I know many of the comments I get will be critical. Thank you for moving the thread to S&T, appreciate your help.

Gillian Andrews
www.timeslicemodel.info

[NEOWatcher]

Ah; thanks. I didn't want to start a survey without knowing something I might need to know first.

ETA:
I find some of the questions rather vague. For instance, I see quite a few "do you think 'a'" instead of "do you think the graph represents 'a'".
I'm not sure if it's the latter.
Also; q 14, you told us the answer up front, so I'm not sure if I should answer what you told us, or whether I should infer an answer based on the diagram.

And; yes, a more thorough explaination of the model would help. I'm not sure what the shading or the colors represent (if anything).

[Strange]

'Fraid I had to answer "don't know" to most questions as the brief explanation (and diagrams) were largely incomprehensible to me. Although I thought there might be the germ of a good idea there if explained properly.

[tusenfem]

Well, my Salmon with Mango is in the oven, so I have some time.

In Figure 1 to the left the universe is very young. We can see that some galaxies have formed and that these are in turn grouping together to form clusters of galaxies, represented by little patches of dots. Expansion is also going on, but its effect is still small, and it is difficult to see so far back in time.

10 billion years ago. Now the figure shows a plane with groups of dots in it. Those are the clusters of galaxies I assume. Some of the clusters are connected by a blue-red dashed line, which probably is important, because they are also in the next two figures. But what it is supposed to be ... ? Then also, is this figure a plane in the universe, or a 2D representation of the universe?

7 bilion years ago. In Figure 2 the clusters of galaxies can be seen to have formed small bags, lightly warping their local space. However, now it is expansion which can be seen most. The space between the clusters has inflated notably because of expansion. It turns out that the strong gravity acting in each cluster of galaxies won't permit expansion inside that zone. Where there are clusters gravity blocks expansion. Only the space between clusters remains free to expand.

What we see is something like a rising cake in an oven, with some heavy stuff in some places. The heavy stuff are the clusters, which are not expanding according to the text. Now the question is, why is this plane rising like a cake in the oven? Why are the different "bubbles" that are created of differnt size? What is the blue-red dashed line running diagonally across the figure.

Universe now. In Figure 3 you can see the universe just as it is nowadays, today. Everything, including light, has to go all the way along each curve to travel from one cluster to another. Unfortunately nobody has found any short-cuts yet! If you wanted to go from one cluster to another it would take you four times longer now than it would have in the first figure. Distances have quadrupled.

What one gets from these comments is, that you indeed use a 2D view of the univers and that the expansion is modeled by the bubbles that rise up. Would have been good to have known that before. Why have distances quadrupled in the 10 billion years? Should not every line from cluster to cluster then be equally long? Maybe I am just nitpicking, but the big bubble in the middle seems to have a much greater distance than other bubbles in the plane for almost equally distant other clusters.

So the answer to the initial question about what expands and what contracts is that gravity doesn't let clusters of galaxies, or anything inside them, participate in universal expansion. It is only the space between clusters which expands.

I guess we can agree on this point.

But then with just this info I find that I cannot answer (with respect to the model that you present here) questions: 4, 7, (8), 9, (10 is stated in the Figs.), 11, 12 (because it is a 2D projection), 15, 16, 17, (18 I answered here in this post). Mainly the problem is that for the questions marked I would have to make assumptions about your model, things that you may or may not have meant (are there galaxies outside the clusters that you have drawn?)

However, don't be dissuaded, but please do enhance your introduction of your model and you will get much better answers than "I don't know."

[Strange]

Thanks for doing that more detailed breakdown, tusenfem; those were pretty much the problems I had with the description as well.

[tusenfem]

Thanks for doing that more detailed breakdown, tusenfem; those were pretty much the problems I had with the description as well.

You're welcome, and the salmon with mango was great!

[Jeff Root]

I have not taken the survey yet, and I have only read the first
two posts in this thread. But I want to comment on the very
first sentence at the beginning of the survey:

The timeslice model is a new visual model which aims to help
people understand the expansion and evolution of the universe.
This survey is designed to measure how well it does that.

I am starting out knowing absolutely nothing about this
"timeslice model". So when you say "The timeslice model is a
new visual model ..." the very next words need to say what the
model models. Is it a model of the expansion and evolution of
the Universe? Is it a model of a teaching method? What is it
a model *of*? Not being explicit there is off-putting, making
me possibly lose interest at the very start.

Now I'll go find out what your model models.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Jeff Root]

Another preliminary comment. On figure 1 you say:

Expansion is also going on, but its effect is still small,
and it is difficult to see so far back in time.

Maybe this will be explained further on, but the remark
that it is difficult to see so far back in time seems not to
be immediately relevant. It raises the question of why
you say it. Are you saying that the previously-given info
might be incorrect, because we can't see well what was
going on at that time? Or what? You have me wondering,
and one of the things I'm wondering is whether I'm
wondering about the right thing!

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Jeff Root]

In Figure 2 the clusters of galaxies can be seen to have
formed small bags, lightly warping their local space.

I think I'd say it is the combination of the expansion and the
gravity of the clusters of galaxies which formed the "bags".
Also, the warping looks pretty drastic to me, not "light".
Maybe because of the scales typically used in embedding
diagrams and the like that I've seen. There is a huge
difference between figures 1 and 2, but a rather small
difference between figures 2 and 3. Figure 3 didn't display
properly. I saw it for a moment so I knew it was there, but
had to look at the page source and find the link to view it.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Jeff Root]

I clicked on the Next button to go to the next page, and all three
figures displayed correctly. Then I clicked my browser's Back
button to see why the first question was #4. I had forgotten that
there were 3 preliminary questions #1-3. Then I clicked the Next
button again, and the numbers on the questions incremented, to
#7-9, although the questions appear not to have changed. In other
words, it appears that the numbering gets fouled up when I use my
browser's Back button instead of the Back button you provide.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Jeff Root]

Question 4: Yes, but not from what I can see in the diagram,
only from what I've learned elsewhere.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Jeff Root]

I completed the survey. Many "I don't knows".
Sometimes I separated what I learned there from what I
already knew, and sometimes I didn't.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[gillian andrews]

Thanks so much for all this feedback. Jeff - I am sorry you have had such a lot of problems getting the survey to display correctly. That is very disappointing news, as I took some time to make sure the figures would display each time. It may be because the figures are too "heavy". Unfortunately I had to leave them in to make the survey at all intelligible. I will investigate.

Tusenfem: The red and blue lines are meant to show the scale factor of expansion. In figure one there are, say, two blue and two red lines separating two separate clusters. You will find the same two blue and two red lines separating the same clusters in figure three, just that the lines themselves will be 4 times longer. This represents the metric expansion of space. It is much clearer on the bigger figures on the website, but of course it was not possible to include such large diagrams in the survey. Because of the metric expansion the clusters separated by more lines in figure 1 will "balloon out" more in figure three. (Hope I have explained this well).

All this seems very complicated, but all the model is meant to be is an alternative to the "blowing up a balloon" analogy. There are a lot of concepts which the "balloon" model either can't address, or simply doesn't allow. The timeslice model tries to offer an alternative where voids are possible and the model shows that expansion doesn't affect our solar system, for example. I found I had loads of misconceptions about expansion and this model helped.

Some of the questions ARE difficult to answer from the information given, they are to see if the model is creating misconceptions of its own or not. THANK YOU ALL - for doing the survey, for your comments, for taking the time to help evaluate it. Your support is really appreciated!

Gillian Andrews
www.timeslicemodel.info

[Andrew D]

Gillian, I thought the images were clearer than the questions, but I would recommend using computer generated over hand-drawn images, the quality of the images will surely skew your results.

[Solfe]

I take it the blue and red dashed lines represented expansion towards (blue) or away (red) from the viewer?

[Andrew D]

I take it the blue and red dashed lines represented expansion towards (blue) or away (red) from the viewer?

No, you're making assumptions.

The red and blue lines are meant to show the scale factor of expansion. In figure one there are, say, two blue and two red lines separating two separate clusters. You will find the same two blue and two red lines separating the same clusters in figure three, just that the lines themselves will be 4 times longer. This represents the metric expansion of space.

[gillian andrews]

Solfe - yes, I realized later that choosing red and blue as "measuring sticks" wasn't the best choice! There is no correlation of this red and blue to the redshift red and blue. These are just colours to mark off distances.
Roobydo - Thanks .. phew ... I'm glad SOMEONE thought the images were reasonably clear. Yes, I probably should have used the line model for the survey, as it is much clearer. I couldn't find a program which would generate the scale factor in the figures.
Everybody - Quite a lot of people have filled in the survey so THANK YOU ....

(More would be better!)

[Solfe]

No, you're making assumptions.

Yes. Yes, I did. Sorry.

[Andrew D]

...I couldn't find a program which would generate the scale factor in the figures.

I don't mean images generated by the computer, but using some sort of imaging program, (photoshop, etc.), like these:



I could tell what you were visualizing, but I think you had trouble putting the image in your head onto paper. If you want to use actual computer generated images, you may want to try Matlab or maple; they can both do pretty much anything you want them to.

[HenrikOlsen]

How are those not computer generated?

[gillian andrews]

Wow! I will certainly play about with matlab and maple, thanks for the tip. If you have done those with photoshop you know a lot more than me. I tried sketchUp 8, and a couple of others, but couldn't get the right results.

I think I should have used the line version of the model for the survey
line version timeslice (original).jpg
as this is much clearer and more intuitive.

I used the other figures because they seemed more "complete", and more interesting, but I had to leave them hand-drawn as I just couldn't find any program that would exactly double and quadruple a given segment, and make the whole segment visible as a "mountain" although I have no expertise in that area. Now I will try to find a better solution- it obviously is possible.

[Andrew D]

How are those not computer generated?

By computer generated I meant given as a function for a computer program to plot, as opposed to drawn using computer illustration tools.