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.
>>Well it was before our Time....<<
True. And everything had to come from somewhere. Right? But Bang or Bounce.... does it really make any difference?
“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?”
Well, it’s not that hard to figure out, if you actually look at the effect of ALL the fundamental forces and stop looking myopically at gravity when you get to big scales.
We know that most gravitational bodies also emit electromagnetic fields. We know that the universe is filled with gases, which can be easily transformed into plasmas under the right conditions, which will then interact with electromagnetic fields. We know that the interaction of plasmas and magnetic fields can exhibit, in our laboratories on a smaller scale, most of the puzzling phenomena of gaseous bodies in space, include drastic compression of matter to the point of causing fusion (*cough* stellar formation *cough*).
Now, physicists know all these facts, but they don’t want to have to be bothered to examine the obvious conclusions and investigate whether they can explain “mysteries” like the structures in the CMB. They’ve invested a century or more in gravity-only cosmological models, and they aren’t about to abandon them now.
“Does something ever come from nothing?
We just need ONE example!”
Obamacare came from Zero?
Neils Bohr to Albert Einstein
“Albert! Stop telling God what to do!”
The difference between Quantum Physics is identical to the difference between Political Correctness and simply being correct.
First law of Quantum Physics
Second law of Quantum Physics is once a theory is proven by physics, the question is not Quantum, its just Physics.
Third law stems from the above law, Nothing in Quatum Physics is proven.
What are the basic premises ,,...definitons and Axioms...??
According to Big Bang theory God likes to play with IEDs.
If Big Bounce theory is right God just has a bassaball jones.
That is why I always get a kick out of Creationists and Evolutionists arguing. It doesn't take much consideration to find that each theory proves the other.
Neither is completely understood yet but when we get the total answers we will find what Dr. Harry Wolper in the movie "Creator" knew all along: "I tell you Sid, that one of these days we'll look in to our microscope and find ourselves staring right into God's eyes..."
But all three wanted a mechanism to deliver votes.
The cosmologists have been telling us for decades now that the universe sprang forth from ‘nothing’, a miniscule point called a ‘A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity’.
Well, that’s exactly what we’ve been saying for thousands of years, only in religious terms. The entire universe sprang from the mind of God, in an instant that is incomprehensible to the mind of man..........
The entire history of German metaphysics since Kant is one long voluminous groping about in the dark trying to figure out that example. They spilled a lot of ink. But they couldn’t figure out why something can’t come from nothing. They could have saved a lot of time by simply recognizing: Something (er, Someone...) has always existed.
And after that, lots of lesser things existed and still exist even today....
The dense atoms (heavier than iron) are much younger. They are formed in the interference patterns resulting from a supernova.
My question was philosophical rather than scientific. Seems to me that something that comes from something else cannot be the beginning.
you were meant to be here
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