I've heard so many people intuit out loud that a truly fundamental physics ought to be based on finite and discrete quantities that I tend to think it has to be based on infinite and continuous ones, just to be contrary.
Well, think of it this way. We now think that most of the content of the universe is dark energy, which always has the same density no matter how much the universe expands, much as if it were continuously created; and which tends to cause the universe to expand exponentially in a steady-state-like manner. So as the universe expands and everything other than dark energy spreads thinner and thinner, the simplest dark-energy models turn into something resembling a de Sitter universe, which is not that different from the steady-state model (except it's got nothing but dark energy instead of galaxies).
So our universe starts with a Big Bang, but gradually yields over many billions of years to a strange, dark version of the steady state model...
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Date: 2004-09-06 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-06 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-07 07:14 pm (UTC)So our universe starts with a Big Bang, but gradually yields over many billions of years to a strange, dark version of the steady state model...