Posted on 08/31/2005 8:19:37 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
In what is widely regarded as the most important scientific discovery of 1998, researchers turned their telescopes to measure the rate at which cosmic expansion was decelerating and instead saw that it was accelerating. They have been gripping the steering wheel very tightly ever since.
As deeply mysterious as acceleration is, if you just accept it without trying to fathom its cause, it solves all kinds of problems. Before 1998, cosmologists had been troubled by discrepancies in the age, density and clumpiness of the universe. Acceleration made everything click together. It is one of the conceptual keys, along with other high-precision observations and innovative theories, that have unlocked the next level of the big bang theory.
The big bang is often described as an event that occurred long ago, a great explosion that created the universe. In actuality, the theory says nothing about the moment of creation, which is a job for quantum physics (or metaphysics). It simply states that as far back as we can extrapolate, the cosmos has been expanding, thinning out and cooling down. The big bang is best thought of not as a singular event but as an ongoing process, a gradual molding of order out of chaos. The recent observations have given this picture a coherence it never had before.
From the perspective of life on Earth, cosmic history started with inflation -- a celestial reboot that wiped out whatever came before and left the cosmos a featureless place. The universe was without form, and void. Inflation then filled it with an almost completely uniform brew of radiation. The radiation varied from place to place in an utterly random way; mathematically, it was as random as random could be.
Gradually the universe imposed order on itself. The familiar particles of matter, such as electrons and protons, condensed out of the radiation like water droplets in a cloud of steam. Sound waves coursed through the amorphous mix, giving it shape. Matter steadily wrested control of the cosmos away from radiation. Several hundred thousand years after inflation, matter declared final victory and cut itself loose from radiation. This era and its dramatic coda have now been probed by high-precision observations of the fossil radiation [see "The Cosmic Symphony"].
Over the ensuing eons, matter organized itself into bodies of increasingly large size: subgalactic scraps, majestic galaxies, galactic clusters, great walls of galaxies. The universe we know -- a set of distinct bodies separated by vast expanses of essentially empty space -- is a fairly recent development, cosmologically speaking. This arrangement has now been systematically mapped [see " Reading the Blueprints of Creation"]. Starting several billion years ago, matter has been losing control to cosmic acceleration. Evidently the big bang has gotten a second wind, which is good for it but will be bad for us. The ever faster expansion has already arrested the formation of large structures and, if it continues, could rip apart galaxies and even our planet [see "From Slowdown to Speedup"].
In developing a cohesive and experimentally successful account of cosmic history, cosmologists have settled the disputes that once animated their field, such as the old debates between the big bang theory and the steady state theory and between inflation and its alternatives. Nothing in science is absolutely certain, but researchers now feel that their time is best spent on deeper questions, beginning with the cause of the cosmic acceleration.
Although the discovery of acceleration was revolutionary, cosmologists' initial response was fairly conservative. They dusted off an idea of Einstein's, the so-called cosmological constant, which represents a new type of energy -- an example of what is more generally known as dark energy. But many physicists are thinking that a revolutionary discovery calls for a revolutionary response. Maybe the law of gravity works differently on gigantic scales than it does on humble, everyday ones [see "Out of the Darkness"].
Just as a nuclear missile cannot be fired unless two keys are turned simultaneously, the explosive progress in cosmology has depended on multiple observational and theoretical keys being turned at once. Will the rush of new ideas lead to chaos? Will order reemerge? Must the cosmos be "preposterous," as one of the authors of this special report once put it? Or will it start to make sense again?
Prime? :)
For later reading...
The article is bullcrap - - just somebody using a thesaurus and taking bong hits - - then shazam! They had an immaculate conception to write something...
The “Big Bang” theory is really an admission the universe is an immaculate conception... (in more ways than one).
That's a reasonable question, and I think the science is concerned with explaining how things work. Not why. To me it is clear why there was a big bang singularity that resulted in everything we see, from strings and membrances and quarks and leptons to Quasars and Galaxies to amoebae that evolved to homo sapiens. Because God wanted it that way.
Thanks.
I would only add one thing to what you have said.
And that is to say that God not only wanted it that way, but that God had a plan -- a plan that includes me.
And you, too.
"Membrances"??? What the heck is a membrance? I meant membranes. Sheesh.
I need to go arrest some development now.
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