The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart

Medium ^ | 1/20/15

[Pelham]

” When I was a scientist I was a Condensed Matter Theorist”

Ok, I’ll bite. What the heck is that?

[Pelham]

“Sorry for an overlong explanation. Sometimes I miss teaching physics... “

Don’t be sorry, that was great. I feel smarter already.

[Yardstick]

Eh, make that clumpiness.

(Sometimes spell check can be paradoxical.)

[FredZarguna]

The truth is, it's not a paradox, because we don't really know quite what to expect at large distances. Very early in the life of the universe, there was probably an FTL inflation. The period when that occurred is believed to be from 10^-36 to 10^-32 seconds after creation. That is an unbelievably brief period, of unspeakably high energy, and how much clumpiness would propagate during that time depends very crucially on the specific masses of particles that have never been seen.

So, as I said in a post elsewhere, this is in an area where there are probably not so much "paradoxes" as simply "unknowns."

The Wikipedia article, and how Inflation accounts for the [mostly] large scale uniformity, some other things, and where it has problems, is decent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)

[FredZarguna]

Condensed matter physics is just the physics of liquids and solids, usually between a few kelvins and ordinary terrestrial temperatures. Solid state physics is a smaller subset of it. As opposed to plasma physics, cosmology, particle physics, ... I would venture a guess that about 80% of the physicists in the world are working in condensed matter. Maybe higher. I couldn't find any numbers from APS.

It seems mundane, but there is a lot of interesting work in it: Bose condensates like liquid Helium, superconductivity, phonons. Phase transitions. Sometimes it's called "low-energy physics."

Not many people know it because the high energy guys [particle physicists and cosmologists] get all the girls [not really, but they do capture the public imagination] but a number of very important concepts were first developed by low-energy physicists and the particle guys stole the credit. For example, fractal dimensions and the renormalization group, which explain away some problems that the particles guys were seeing for decades originated in condensed matter theory. Another one that all low-energy guys know is Philip Anderson. He's the person who actually came up with the "Higgs Mechanism" [in a completely different area from particle physics] which really should be called the "Anderson Mechanism." He has a Noble Prize, so he probably doesn't mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Warren_Anderson.

[The Cajun]

Sorry for an overlong explanation. Sometimes I miss teaching physics...

Thanks for the education there in your post #33, very understandable to boot.

[ckilmer]

I went to the Einstein Planetarium at the Air & Space Museum in Washington DC for a star & galaxy show. The show was called the Dark Universe. Only by dark they meant unknown. That is they tried to show that we don’t actually know what 95% of the matter and energy is out there. And what our telescopes can “see” of the universe is only a tiny fraction of what’s out there.

It was pretty wild.

About like an updated version of 14h century maps which showed europe and asia and oceans in which dragons dwelled.

[SunkenCiv]

That graphic just shows the domination of astronomy and astrophysics by the White Patriarchy. /s

[SunkenCiv]

heh... yeah, that’s been my prod and poke the last few years as well.

[Skooz]

bfl

[SunkenCiv]

Sheldon Gives Up On String Theory
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6819

[SunkenCiv]

Halton Arp keyword:

• Spooky Alignment of Quasars Across Billions of Light-years -- Science Release -- ESO1438
• Not So Far
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- No X-rays from SN 2014J
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Blue Bridge of Stars between Cluster Galaxies
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- M51: X-Rays from the Whirlpool
• Missing Light Crisis: 'Something is Amiss in the Universe'
• Astronomy: Planets in chaos. Standard ideas of Planet formation are being demolished
• Was Einstein wrong all along? Controversial theory suggests the speed of light is SLOWER...
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Arp 81: 100 Million Years Later
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Polar Ring Galaxy NGC 2685
• Closing the 'free will' loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell's theorem
• The Mystery of the North Star: Astronomers baffled to find Polaris is getting BRIGHTER
• Big Pic: An Ultramassive Black Hole
• Big-bang-defying giant of astronomy passes away (article)
• Scientists witness massive gamma-ray burst, don't understand it
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Arp 94
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- All the Colors of the Sun
• Hubble Finds Source of Magellanic Stream
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Colliding Spiral Galaxies of Arp 271
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Magellanic Stream
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Grand Spiral Galaxy M81 and Arp's Loop
• New Research Shows the Speed of Light is Variable in Real Space
• Thirteen little galaxies all in a row: Configuration deviates from the expected...
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Einstein Cross Gravitational Lens
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Plasma Jets from Radio Galaxy Hercules A
• MONSTER QUASAR BLAST blows stunned astro boffins' WIGS OFF
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Merging NGC 2623
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Elliptical M60, Spiral NGC 4647
• How Big is the Entire Universe?
• Hubble spots spiral galaxy that shouldn't exist
• Revealed at last: Universe's intergalactic dark matter skeleton
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Tidal Tail of NGC 3628
• Sun Is Moving Slower Than Thought
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Arp 272
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Jet from Galaxy M87
• Astronomers Find Largest, Oldest Mass of Water in Universe
• Possibly the most distant object known
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Arp 78: Peculiar Galaxy in Aries
• Integral challenges physics beyond Einstein
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Universe Nearby
• "Vampire" Stars Found in Heart of Our Galaxy -- A First
• 'Blue Stragglers' in the Galactic Bulge (a sign of ETI, as in SETI?)
• Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Mileage of Light
• New candidate for most distant object in universe
• Hubble Views the Star That Changed the Universe
• Doppler effect found even at molecular level -- 169 years after its discovery
• Star-Eating Black Hole May Be Producing Universe's Biggest Blast
• Astronomers Discover Oldest Ever Galaxy
• Hyperfast Star Was Booted from Milky Way
• 'Superscope' yields first glimpse of Double Quasar
• Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang?
• Allan Sandage, Astronomer, Dies at 84; Charted Cosmos's Age and Expansion
• Scientists witness the apparent birth of a black hole
• New *Supernova* Lights Up Leo...
• Spectacular spiral galaxies more than 60million light years away
• Cool gas answers riddle of galaxy growth (possibly solving the mystery of galactic proportions)
• Fate of Universe revealed by galactic lens
• Cosmic accelerators discovered in our galaxy by UCLA physicists, Japanese colleague
• Spiral galaxies and homopolar motors
• Astronomers find cause of "dicky tickers"
• Dark energy may not exist in space, scientists claim
• Mysterious New Object Discovered in Space
• Mysterious radio waves emitted from nearby galaxy
• Discovery that quasars don't show time dilation mystifies astronomers
• Yearlong Star Eclipse May Help Solve Space Mystery...
• Astronomers detect earliest galaxies
• Youthful Appearance of Stars Known as Blue Stragglers Explained
• Space Explosion Is Farthest Thing Ever Seen (gamma-ray burst about 13 billion light-years away)
• A Brief History of Intolerance in Modern Cosmology
• Cosmic-ray hot spots puzzle researchers -- Proton discovery may cast doubt on dark-matter...
• Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says [ Dark Flow ]
• Mysterious Dark Matter Might Actually Glow
• No Naked Singularity After Black Hole Collision
• High-Speed Crash Makes Hot, 'Sterile' Galaxies
• New findings reveal that the shape of the Universe is a Dodecahedron based on Phi
• Hubble Finds a Mystery Object (something that astronomers cannot make any sense of)
• Amateur astronomer spies gassy "cosmic ghost" ("Hanny's Voorwerp")
• Galaxy Zoo's blue mystery (part I)
• Predictions, Falsifiability and the Standard Model of Stellar Evolution
• is Hoag's Object a Dense Plasma Focus?
• Colossal Flare Erupts from EV Lacertae
• Mira: The Tale of a Giant Star... with a tail
• Rapidly Whirling Black Holes Revealed
• Biggest black hole in the cosmos discovered (18 billion suns)
• Milky Way could hold hundreds of rogue black holes: study
• Caught on tape: Death star galaxy
• Have we sealed the universe's fate by looking at it?
• Hoard of supermassive black holes found
• Orion Gets a Bit Closer
• Hubble uncovers truth about distant galaxy [I Zwicky 18]
• No Stars Shine in This Dark Galaxy
• NASA funds Florida Tech associate professor for extragalactic research
• Ancient Star Nearly as Old as the Universe
• Biggest stellar explosion detected (bigger than a supernova)
• Most Massive Planet [ extrasolar discovery ]
• Black Holes Exhale Enormous Gas Cloud
• Expanding Uncertainty about the Hubble Constant
• The First Triple Quasar
• Hubble telescope makes new discovery
• General relativity survives gruelling pulsar test -- Einstein at least 99.95 percent right
• Astronomers find distant, fluffy planet -- dubbed HAT-P-1
• Dark matter 'proof' called into doubt
• Big Bang Afterglow Fails An Intergalactic Shadow Test
• Big Bang's afterglow fails intergalactic 'shadow' test
• Gamma-Ray Burst Leads Scientists to See Supernova in Action
• NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter
• ET type IV civilization moves a pulsar from our Galaxy to another
• Universe Might be Bigger and Older than Expected
• Questioning the Big Bang
• Mysterious quasar casts doubt on black holes
• What if Black Holes Didn't Exist?
• Scientists Question Nature's Fundamental Laws
• Enigmatic object baffles supernova team
• Crisis In The Cosmos?
• New cosmic look may cast doubts on big bang theory [Who Woulda Thunk It]
• Astronomical surprise: Massive old galaxies starve to death in the infant universe
• Misconceptions about the Big Bang
• Can A 'Distant' Quasar Lie Within A Nearby Galaxy?
• Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered
• How the Early Universe Got Dusty Remains a Mystery
• Brightest supernova in a decade captured by Hubble Space Telescope
• Is strange space signal a sign that ET's mother has called back?
• Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away
• A Stroll Through the Lyman-Alpha Forest!
• Chandra Discovers "Rivers Of Gravity" That Define Cosmic Landscape
• Is the Universe older than expected?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks henkster for the ping, and thanks P.O.E. and FredZarguna for the posts in the thread.

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[samtheman]

Then there is the cosmological red-shift itself, which is another mystery. Physicists often talk about the red-shift as a kind of Doppler effect, like the change in frequency of a police siren as it passes by.

The Doppler effect arises from the relative movement of different objects. But the cosmological red-shift is different because galaxies are stationary in space. Instead, it is space itself that cosmologists think is expanding.

The mathematics that describes these effects is correspondingly different as well, not least because any relative velocity must always be less than the speed of light in conventional physics. And yet the velocity of expanding space can take any value.

Interestingly, the nature of the cosmological red-shift leads to the possibility of observational tests in the next few years. One interesting idea is that the red-shifts of distant objects must increase as they get further away. For a distant quasar, this change may be as much as one centimetre per second per year, something that may be observable with the next generation of extremely large telescopes.

It is early. I have just started drinking my coffee.

But I don't see the paradox here.

I don't even see where the author is saying there is a paradox here.

[MHGinTN]

"These calculations suggest that the energy density of the vacuum is huge, of the order of 10⁹⁴ g/cm^3. This energy, being equivalent to mass, ought to have a gravitational effect on the universe.

Cosmologists have looked for this gravitational effect and calculated its value from their observations (they call it the cosmological constant). These calculations suggest that the energy density of the vacuum is about 10^-29 g/cm3.

Those numbers are difficult to reconcile."

IF the calculations were adjusted to reflect different coordinates for the zero point field as different from the coordinate system of the Universe volumetrically (local is different from whole volume due to the presence of mass congealed out of the background field in the early Universe, as dimension Time expressed variables greater than moment and dimension Space greater than point), then the difference in values might disappear.

[angryoldfatman]

I’m even more lost than I was before you started.

I can’t reconcile these two statements, I guess because I’m not familiar with the terminology being used:

“The speed of light is the same for all observers in uniform reference frames.”

“There is no requirement that objects in relative motion must be moving slower than the speed of light.”

[FredZarguna]

Uniform means "moving at constant velocity." Reference frame means "the observer's environment." Two observers in uniform reference frames are moving at all times with the same velocity with respect to each other. Neither observer can see the other as changing velocity for this to be true. That means, no slowing down, no speeding up, and no changes in direction.

Because Special Relativity only applies to uniform reference frames [including reference frames where an observer is measuring the speed of light] when the motion of an observer relative to what he is observing is no longer uniform, the rules of Special Relativity can be broken.

[BwanaNdege]

And since we calculate distance based solely on red shift for objects beyond a limited window where we can measure angles from our own orbit around the sun...

Actually, there are a number of intermediate methodologies between Parallax and Red Shift.

Distance Measurement in Astronomy

Since all stars appear as points of light, even with the largest telescopes, and since geometrical distance measurement by parallax is possible only for the closest stars, an overlapping chain of distance measurement techniques has been developed. The distance indicators include:

Parallax
Cepheid Variables
Planetary Nebulae
Most luminous supergiants
Most luminous globular clusters
Most luminous H II regions
Supernovae
Hubble constant and red shifts

A supporting idea for distance measurement is that if a specific kind of light source is known to have a constant and dependable absolute luminosity, then the measured intensity at the detector can be used to calculate its distance. Light from a point source diminishes according to the purely geometrical inverse square law, so the number of photons into a standard area detector can be used as a distance measurement. This is often referred to as the "standard candle" approach.

[wideminded]

The best way to understand it is: if you look down the road and the guy in front of you seems to be pulling away from you 5 miles per hour faster than you're driving, and he looks down the road and sees the guy ahead of him pulling away -- also at five miles an hour faster than he's driving -- you cannot really come to any logical conclusion other than that the guy two cars ahead of you is pulling away at TEN miles an hour faster than you're driving.

Suppose you have a long highway with mile markers. The driver of Car A notices that every hour Car B passes 5 more mile markers than he does. The driver of Car B notices the same thing about Car C.

It does not follow logically that Car A will observe Car C passing ten more mile markers per hour unless the clock used by Car B goes at the same speed as that of Car A.

[FredZarguna]

The proper time of all observers is the same.