That's not true.
Posted on 03/16/2006 6:35:03 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Scientists announced today new evidence supporting the theory that the infant universe expanded from subatomic to astronomical size in a fraction of a second after its birth.
The finding is based on new results from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, launched in 2001 to measure the temperature of radiant heat left over from the Big Bang, which is the theoretical beginning to the universe.
This radiation is known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), and it is the oldest light in the universe.
Using WMAP data, researchers announced in 2003 that they had pieced together a very detailed snapshot of the universe as it was about 400,000 years ago, and that they had determined things like its age, composition and development.
The previous data showed that the universe was about 13.7 billion years old. It also revealed that it wasn't until about 200 million years after the Big Bang that conditions were cool enough for the first stars to form. Scientists were also able to conclude that the universe is composed of about 4 percent real matter, about 23 percent dark matter, and about 73 percent dark energy. Nobody actually nows what dark matter or dark energy are, however.
The new WMAP observations, announced at a NASA press conference today, reveal what the universe was like in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. From the microwave background, researchers teased out a new signal called the "polarization signal."
"This new signal is roughly 100 times weaker than the signal we analyzed three years ago and about a billion times less than the radiant warmth we feel from the Sun," said Lyman Page, a WMAP team member from Princeton University.
The researchers collected observations of this polarization signal to create a map of the early universe, allowing them to test a sub-theory within the Big Bang theory, called "inflation."
Inflation theory states that the universe underwent a rapid expansion immediately following the Big Bang.
"During this growth spurt, a tiny region, likely no larger than a marble, grew in a trillionth of a second to become larger than the visible universe," said WMAP researcher David Spergel, also from Princeton University.
The new observations reveal that the early expansion wasn't smooth, with some regions expanding faster than others.
"We find that density fluctuations on the 1- to 10-billion-light-year scale are larger than density fluctuations on the hundred-million-light-year scale," Spergel said. "That is just what inflation theory predicts."
These fluctuations are thought to have led to clumping of matter that allowed the formation of galaxies.
Brian Greene, a physicist from Columbia University who wasn't involved in the research, called the new findings "spectacular" and "stunning."
"A major question that people have asked for decades is where do stars and galaxies come from? The answer coming from WMAP data supports the idea that quantum fluctuations are the answer," Greene said. "WMAP's data supports the notion that galaxies are nothing but quantum mechanism writ large across the sky."
The new findings brings humanity closer to answering one of its oldest questions, that of where we come from, Greene said.
"WMAP certainly doesn't answer this question, but its data is taking us one giant step closer to the answer by giving us a precise quantitative look at the universe's earliest fraction of a second," Greene said. "It's a tiny window of time, but it's a critical one in our quest to learn what happened at time zero itself."
.. a tiny region, likely no larger than a marble, grew in a trillionth of a second to become larger than the visible universe ..
wow
Cool - so everything got pushed around a few billion times faster then the speed of light.
Warp Drive here we come !
> .. a tiny region, likely no larger than a marble,
> grew in a trillionth of a second to become larger
> than the visible universe ..
Which implies that the speed of light speed limit is a
property of the evolved universe, and not the nothingness
that preceded it. A fairly startling postulation. Gotta
wonder how much energy went out of sight forever at the
time.
Assuming any of this hypothesis is correct, of course,
and considering that base cosomology has changed radically
just during my lifetime, I give this theory about 7 years.
The important question is: What happened in the second BEFORE the Big Bang?
This is what is known in the business as a S.W.A.G.
Let me try that one "Joe, the leader of the pseudoscience faction, reached out and gently pushed the button.".
Based on the extent the universe expanded 'in a trillionth of a second' as per the article, the light would have taken years to catch up.
That's not true.
That being said, it is refreshing to see excellent results from WMAP and the promise of even better.
Actually, no. The speed of light is a limitation on how quickly things can travel *through* space (which is almost every kind of motion we work with for all practical purposes), but it's not a limitation on how fast space itself can *expand*, carrying things with it. The "motion" described in the passage you quoted is of the latter type, not the former.
As in, "Let there be light?"
Actually, light as we know it wasn't possible for the first N seconds (I'm too lazy to look it up right now) of the Universe's life, that only became possible after the Universe had expanded far enough that it was no longer opaque.
Where did the marble come from?
"The important question is: What happened in the second BEFORE the big bang?"
Elementary Dr Watson: A match was struck and a very short fuse was ignited.
From toys R US of course.
Science believes that the entire universe evolved from the size of a marble to bigger than the universe in a trillionth of a second, yet they have a tough time believing that the Genesis account took 6 days.
Light travels @ 186+ thousand miles per second.
So, the explosion generated a sphere whose radius was
thousands of times larger than 186,214 miles at the
end of T+one second.
Poor Albert E. What about Mc squared???
There was no second before the BB.
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