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The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at UAH found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by...

TIME BEFORE TIME An event like the Big Bang is about as likely as billions of coin tosses all coming up heads. Explaining why that is might take us from empty space to other universes--and through the mirror of time. by Sean Carroll • Posted August 28, 2006 11:53 AM From the SEPTEMBER issue of Seed:    The nature of time is such that the influence of the very beginning of the universe stretches all the way into your kitchen—you can make an omelet out of an egg, but you can't make an egg out of an omelet. Time, unlike...

The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is to receive the Royal Society's most prestigious prize for scientific achievement. The Copley medal is the oldest scientific award in the world and has been won by such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Captain James Cook. The Cambridge don, most famous for his book A Brief History of Time, will be honoured in a ceremony on November 30 for his contribution to theoretical physics and theoretical cosmology. "This is a very distinguished medal," Professor Hawking said. "It was awarded to Darwin, Einstein and [Francis] Crick. I am honoured to be...

That's the Extremely Large Telescope, not just the Very Large one. ACCORDING to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is the answer to life, the Universe and everything. Now scientists have turned to Douglas Adams’s magic number — 42 — to help them to answer that question for real. Not satisfied with the spectacular views afforded by the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which is kept at Paranal Observatory in Chile, astronomers plan to build a bigger version, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), with a mirror measuring 42m in diameter. The project, to be undertaken by the European Southern Observatory...

The question of what happened before the Big Bang long has frustrated cosmologists, both amateur and professional. Though Einstein's theory of general relativity does an excellent job of describing the universe almost back to its beginning, near the Big Bang matter becomes so dense that relativity breaks down, says Penn State physicist Abhay Ashtekar. "Beyond that point, we need to apply quantum tools that were not available to Einstein." Now Ashtekar and two of his post-doctoral researchers, Tomasz Pawlowski and Parmpreet Singh, have done just that. Using a theory called loop quantum gravity, they have developed a mathematical model that...

That intergalactic road trip to Triangulum is going to take a little longer than you had planned. An Ohio State University astronomer and his colleagues have determined that the Triangulum Galaxy, otherwise known as M33, is actually about 15 percent farther away from our galaxy than previously measured.This finding implies that the Hubble constant, a number that astronomers rely on to calculate a host of factors -- including the size and age of the universe -- could be significantly off the mark as well.That means that the universe could be 15 percent bigger and 15 percent older than any previous...

Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking and his CERN colleague Thomas Hertog have proposed a radical new approach to understanding the universe that studies it from the "top down" rather than the "bottom up" as in traditional models. The approach acknowledges that the universe did not have just one unique beginning and history but a multitude of different beginnings and histories, and that it has experienced them all. But because most of these other alternative histories disappeared very early after the Big Bang to leave behind the universe we observe today, the best way to understand the past, they say, is to...

University of California, Berkeley, physicist Saul Perlmutter has been awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his role in discovering that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought. Perlmutter is a UC Berkeley physics professor, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leader of the international Supernova Cosmology Project. He shares the $1 million prize with Adam Riess of NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute and Brian Schmidt of Australia's Mount Stromlo Observatory, all recognized for their leadership of two teams, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search. In 1998, the teams reported the acceleration...

David Thomson and Jim Bourassa of the Quantum AetherDynamics Institute (QADI) released a new theory which mathematically predicts and explains the measured values of physics with striking precision. Their Aether Physics Model includes the "Holy Grail" of physics sought by Albert Einstein; the Unified Force Theory. "Our model shows the forces are unified by a simple set of general laws explainable as the fabric of space-time itself, which is a dynamic, quantum-scale Aether," said Bourassa. In February 2002, Thomson was observing a peculiar setup of a Tesla coil and noticed what appeared to be two distinctly different manifestations of charges....

Scientists at Duke and Rutgers universities have developed a mathematical framework they say will enable astronomers to test a new five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Charles R. Keeton of Rutgers and Arlie O. Petters of Duke base their work on a recent theory called the type II Randall-Sundrum braneworld gravity model. The theory holds that the visible universe is a membrane (hence "braneworld") embedded within a larger universe, much like a strand of filmy seaweed floating in the ocean. The "braneworld universe" has five dimensions -- four spatial dimensions plus time -- compared...

Scientists use quantum gravity to describe the universe before the Big Bang.Scientists may finally have an answer to a "big" question: If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what could have caused it to happen? Using a theory called "loop quantum gravity," a group led by Penn State professor Abhay Ashtekar has shown that just before the Big Bang occurred, another universe very similar to ours may have been contracting. According to the group's findings, this previous universe eventually became so dense that a normally negligible repulsive component of the gravitational force overpowered the attractive component, causing...

Using a quasar located 12.3 billion light-years away as a beacon, a team of astronomers detected the presence of molecular hydrogen in the farthest system ever, an otherwise invisible galaxy that we observe when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old, that is, about 10% of its present age. The astronomers find that there is about one hydrogen molecule for 250 hydrogen atoms. A similar set of observations for two other quasars, together with the most precise laboratory measurements, allows scientists to infer that the ratio of the proton to electron masses may have changed with time. If...

A cyclic universe, which bounces through a series of big bangs and "big crunches", could solve the puzzle of our cosmological constant, physicists suggest. The cosmological constant represents the energy of empty space, and is thought to be the most likely explanation for the observed speeding up of the expansion of the universe. But its measured value is a googol (1 followed by 100 zeroes) times smaller than that predicted by particle physics theories. It is a discrepancy that gives cosmologists a real headache. In the 1980s, physicists considered the possibility that an initially large cosmological constant could decay down...

Big bounces may make the Universe able to support stars and life. A bouncing universe that expands and then shrinks every trillion years or so could explain one of the most puzzling problems in cosmology: how we can exist at all. If this explanation, proposed in Science1 by Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University, New Jersey, and Neil Turok at the University of Cambridge, UK, seems slightly preposterous, that can't really be held against it. Astronomical observations over the past decade have shown that "we live in a preposterous universe", says cosmologist Sean Carroll of the University of Chicago. "It's our...

In a lively lecture on big questions about science, faith and the evolution of the cosmos, the director of the Vatican Observatory told a packed auditorium at the AAAS [the American Association for the Advancement of Science] on 27 March that science is quite capable of explaining the remarkable complexity of the natural world without reference to an intelligent designer. The Rev. George V. Coyne said modern science has revealed a cosmos shaped by the interplay of randomness and necessity over the nearly 14 billion years since the Big Bang, a world of such fertile chemical variety that the emergence...

Indications of a change in the proton-to-electron mass ratio have shown up in comparisons of the spectra of hydrogen gas as recorded in a lab with spectra of light coming from hydrogen clouds at the distance of quasars. This is another of those tests of so-called physical constants that might not be absolutely constant. For example, the steadiness of the fine structure constant (denoted by the letter alpha), defined as the square of the electron's charge divided by the speed of light times Planck's constant, has been in dispute (see PNU 410). Some tests say alpha is changing, others say...

One universe or many? Panel holds unusual debate March 30, 2006 Special to World Science Scientific debates are as old as science. But in science, “debate” usually means a battle of ideas in general, not an actual, politician-style duel in front of an audience. Occasionally, though, the latter also happens. And when the topic is as esoteric as the existence of multiple universes, sparks can fly. According to one proposal, new universes could sprout like bubbles off a spacetime "foam" that's not unlike soap bubbles. (Courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Such was the scene Wednesday evening at the American Museum...

String theory — the concept that all particles can be represented as strings or string-loops of incredibly minute length, oscillating at various frequencies — was initially developed to help explain why quarks, the tiny fundamental particles that make up protons and neutrons, are always confined within larger composite particles. However, string theory has evolved to allow scientists to deal with some wider issues. For example, they can use string theory to devise explanations for some grand problems in cosmology, such as the state of the universe — its shape, size, etc. — just after the Big Bang, when quarks roamed...

SEARCH RESULTS Evidence for Universe Expansion FoundEvidence for Universe Expansion FoundScientists: Find explains how universe formedCold War gamma-ray mystery solved in a flashU.S. spacecraft set to study cosmic bursts Front page March 17, 2006, 12:51AMOldest light shows universe grew fast, researchers sayFirst stars arose 400 million years after big bang, not 200 million years, as once thought By DENNIS O'BRIEN Baltimore Sun Scientists examining the oldest light in the universe say they've found clear evidence that matter expanded at an almost inconceivable rate after the big bang, creating conditions that led to the formation of the first stars.Light from...

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second. The discovery — which involves an analysis of variations in the brightness of microwave radiation — is the first direct evidence to support the two-decade-old theory that the universe went through what is called inflation.It also helps explain how matter eventually clumped together into planets, stars and galaxies in a...