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To: PatrickHenry
OK, so instead of a cosmological constant, we have a cosmological variable.

Seriously, if this result holds up, it could be a sign of the relaxation of the compactification scale for an extra dimension. I doubt they can calibrate the absolute brightness, though.

8 posted on 01/13/2006 4:24:28 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Physicist
...a sign of the relaxation of the compactification scale for an extra dimension....

The extra dimensions are usually described for nonspecialists as being "rolled up", like every point in normal space has a little (**Very** little) n-sphere attached to it.

If this is basically the idea, do you mean that the radius of the n-sphere is increasing or decreasing? As we look at things further and further away, the radius is larger or smaller?

I guess at the big Bang itself, all dimensions were restricted to the same size, whatever that could mean?

I doubt they can calibrate the absolute brightness, though.

The article didn't say how they estimated the distance to these bursts. Are they correlated with visible galaxies?

18 posted on 01/13/2006 10:46:38 AM PST by Virginia-American
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