 Thank you all very much!! Woo hoo!! And now less than $1.9k to go!! We can do this. Let's put this baby to bed!! |
Posted on 11/30/2012 11:27:15 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A group of Penn State physicists says the universe we now see could have arisen from a "Big Bounce" rather than a Big Bang.
The new work by Penn State, led by professor Abhay Ashtekar, director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, proposes ways to apply quantum physics "further back in time than ever before – right back to the beginning," the university says in a release.
We have a pretty good idea of the large-scale structures of the universe when it was only a few hundred thousand years old. That comes from studying the fingerprint of the ancient universe that's visible in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which has been intensely mapped and studied since its discovery in 1964.
However, the CMB – which marked the "inflationary" period of the universe – poses its own much-argued mystery: why isn't it smooth? How did the "lumps" emerge? (And it's a good thing they did, by the way, since galaxies, stars, planets, and people are all a consequence of those lumps).
The nutshell of Ashtekar's proposal is this: if you can apply quantum physics to the structures of the very early universe, it could explain the structures we now see. And that's what Ashtekar's group believes it has done – it's created a paradigm that uses the emerging field of "quantum loop cosmology" to explain how quantum fluctuations might have created the pre-inflationary structures which, after the universe's inflationary phase, formed the kernels for the universe we know see.
In the period Penn State is looking at, the universe was dense. Very, very dense: where an atomic nucleus has a density of 1014 grams per cubic centimetre, the density of the ancient universe was a staggering 1094 grams per cubic centimetre.
That kind of "stuff" can't be described by the Einsteinian theories that now describe cosmology so well. As one of Ashtekar's collaborators, post-doctoral fellow Ivan Agullo, explains:
The inflationary paradigm enjoys remarkable success in explaining the observed features of the cosmic background radiation. Yet this model is incomplete. It retains the idea that the universe burst forth from nothing in a Big Bang, which naturally results from the inability of the paradigm's general-relativity physics to describe extreme quantum-mechanical situations.One needs a quantum theory of gravity, like loop quantum cosmology, to go beyond Einstein in order to capture the true physics near the origin of the universe.
In fact, the early universe was so strange that even time would appear different if you could go there and survive the experience. Instead of the strict causality that rules the classical macro universe, the "quantum loop universe" would have been ruled by probabilities. It may even point to a "Big Bounce", in which the universe arises not from "nothing", but from that super-compressed mass that had a distinct history of its own.
It seems almost unimaginable, but those probabilities – the mere chance that in the transition from ultra-dense matter to the inflationary universe, a few quantum particles happened to be clustered rather than uniformly distributed – can, Ashtekar's group claims, explain today's universe.
The combination of the new "loop-quantum-origins" paradigm with quantum cosmology equations, they say, show that "fundamental fluctuations in the very nature of space at the moment of the Big Bounce evolve to become the seed-like structures seen in the cosmic microwave background."
Even better, they assert, their theories demonstrate good agreement with what's observed in the CMB.
Before the Big Bang ping!
When God said, “Let there be light!”, I’m sure there WAS A HELLUVA BANG!............
It seems almost unimaginable,...
That’s because it is.
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The combination of the new "loop-quantum-origins" paradigm with quantum cosmology equations, they say, show that "fundamental fluctuations in the very nature of space at the moment of the Big Bounce evolve to become the seed-like structures seen in the cosmic microwave background."or CMB
I’ve been around awhile and I don’t remember any of this. Then again, I coulda been napping.
“big bounce” heh? So the Earth could very well have been formed in literally 6 days then after all?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
A day as it is now,....or a day as it was THEN?
We just need ONE example!
Thank you all very much!! Woo hoo!! And now less than $1.9k to go!! We can do this. Let's put this baby to bed!! |
No good. “Cause and effect” has always been the rule. Probability won’t hack it.
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The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a key prediction of the hot Big Bang model, and the most important observation that discriminates between the Big Bang and the Steady State models. So it is an interesting historical anomaly that this prediction was not put forward and tested by the inventors of either theory, and that the first observers of the CMB were completely unaware of its cosmological significance.
Move down, move down, move down. Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Imagine an observation post which is a stasis bubble in which our laws and time flows exist. We can sit in that Bubble and watch as the universe flashes into existence and time that exists out side of that bubble flows incredibly fast....centuries are mere micro seconds, millenia mere seconds....stars form, burn briefly then flare up and go nova in a minute....geologic processes on various planets progress rapidly, mountains rising falling, oceans receding then progressing...almost like one views a film or dvd going at high speed then slowing, slowing, slowing,..... while you watch the Earth start to form day 1, then day two, you watch as the genesis pattern occurs; from your perspective and experience in stasis, you live literally 6 days while centuries flash by in a blink...but still slowing, slowing, slowing.....7th day God rests and the space/time flows around your stasis bubble have slowed to match that of your stasis bubble....you can step out now! Adam?!
That is what they are talking about with this “big bounce” theory... and if there is any truth to it then it solves the issue of how the Earth was created in 6 days, while appearing older than its apparent history.
Take a first level quantum course, and you’ll find out.
Don’t try to tell God how to do things...he’s done a pretty good job of on his own.
How did the dense atoms come to be? Something that was and then changes cannot be the beginning.
First there was a grapefruit...
And then it exploded. Er, bounced.
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