Stick to the debate (you've got enough unanswered questions that you don't need distractions, anyway).
Posted on 03/16/2006 11:31:54 AM PST by The_Victor
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 universe that began as a remarkably smooth, superhot soup.
"It's giving us our first clues about how inflation took place," said Michael Turner, assistant director for mathematics and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. "This is absolutely amazing."
Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist, said: "The observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning."
Researchers found the evidence for inflation by looking at a faint glow that permeates the universe. That glow, known as the cosmic microwave background, was produced when the universe was about 300,000 years old — long after inflation had done its work.
But just as a fossil tells a paleontologist about long-extinct life, the pattern of light in the cosmic microwave background offers clues about what came before it. Of specific interest to physicists are subtle brightness variations that give images of the microwave background a lumpy appearance.
Physicists presented new measurements of those variations during a news conference at Princeton University. The measurements were made by a spaceborne instrument called the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe, or WMAP, launched by NASA in 2001.
Earlier studies of WMAP data have determined that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few hundred thousand years. WMAP also measured variations in the cosmic microwave background so huge that they stretch across the entire sky. Those earlier observations are strong indicators of inflation, but no smoking gun, said Turner, who was not involved in the research.
The new analysis looked at variations in the microwave background over smaller patches of sky — only billions of light-years across, instead of hundreds of billions.
Without inflation, the brightness variations over small patches of the sky would be the same as those observed over larger areas of the heavens. But the researchers found considerable differences in the brightness variations.
"The data favors inflation," said Charles Bennett, a Johns Hopkins University physicist who announced the discovery. He was joined by two Princeton colleagues, Lyman Page and David Spergel, who also contributed to the research.
Bennett added: "It amazes me that we can say anything at all about what transpired in the first trillionth of a second of the universe."
The physicists said small lumps in the microwave background began during inflation. Those lumps eventually coalesced into stars, galaxies and planets.
The measurements are scheduled to be published in a future issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Stick to the debate (you've got enough unanswered questions that you don't need distractions, anyway).
whatever makes you happy; just don't forget reality is an independent variable :)
Based on that explanation, would you expect a second radiometer made with vanes having the same area and mass of those in some first reference radiometer, but having crenellated edges such that the total length of the vane edge in the second radiometer would exceed that of the first radiometer, to show greater force on the vanes for a given amount of incoming sunlight, and therefore the vanes would turn more quickly? I suppose that a perforated vane would be similar in some respects to a crenellated-edge vane (assuming that the scale of the perforations or crenellations is not comparable to the scale of the gas molecules). Or maybe not. I'm probably neglecting something important (such as the possibility that a faster-rotating vane might tend to counteract the effect of the tangentially-applied forces by reducing the effective temperature differential between the hot and cold sides). Whew, my brain hurts...
The stuff would have to have travelled much faster than light. Einstein says that's impossible.
"Expanding" implies that there is some room to expand into. What is that room? Empty space?
Impossible. The universe is all that there is, was and ever will be. The "empty space" that the universe is allegedly expanding into is part of the universe! so the universe can't expand at all.
The theory that there was a "big bang", although commonly accepted as dogma, is flawed. The theory doesn't give any answer about the source of the matter and/or energy that constituted the "big bang". The theory simply shifts the question of the origin of this matter to another time and/or place. If that time and/or place actually exists, it is part of the universe, and we are left with the same question as before.
My understanding is that the Lorentz/Einstein speed limit law only applies to masses that are moving through the same strong field(s). So, two distant galaxies on opposite sides of the universe, can actually move faster than c with respect to one another. But they can't move faster than c with respect to other galaxies that are near to them.
Also note that the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is approaching the Milky Way, thus the reference to galactic clusters. The solar system can be ignored on this scale.
We don't know much about gravity, besides that it is different from the other basic forces of nature, but it can exert both positive and negative force; gravity is not a pure force of attraction.
Isn't God amazing? :)
The Inflationary Model works backwards from current observations, so one is hardly impressed that it matches what we observe today.
Rather, it's problems reside in explaining expansion rates increasing massively, slowing, then still increasing at ever faster rates in between galaxies...while seeing no expansion inside our solar system or between atoms in any stone on Earth.
Out for a bit. The old body needs exercise.
I'm so glad you cleared that up for us.
"The stuff would have to have travelled much faster than light."
Space is not stuff. It's non-material.
"Expanding" implies that there is some room to expand into. What is that room? Empty space?"
Space is not expanding into anything. It is expanding into nothing at all.
You see, you don't actually have enough information to refute any of these theories. You don't understand the nomenclature, so you can't really discuss the theory in any real way.
The galactic clusters are precipitations within former random quantum variations and fluctuations that were made permanent and large by the cosmological inspiration of inflation.
As a matter of fact, he did not say that.
"So what does this do to the speed of light being a constant and an absolute limit?"
NOthing at all.
Nothing can move through space at >c, but space itself can expand at any speed. In fact there are many distant galaxies that will will never see because they are already receding from us faster than the speed of light. The galaxies can be not moving, or moving relatively slowly in relation to the local space the exist in, but the vast amount of space between them and us is expanding.
Because you're a biased source.
In contrast, I gave you a more simple, non-mathematical analogy to arrive at the same point. Yet if you can't understand that textual explanation, then there is no chance that you could understand the more complicated math behind it.
And if you do understand that all-text explanation, then the math is unnecessary...which is after all your point, as you want to put up a road block that just gets me to shut up (i.e. your goal).
The simple truth is that you wouldn't know what to do with the math; your hope resides in that I have no response to your demands. Well, your hope is misplaced.
All the way down to what?..
Then how do you account for the "a universe that began as a remarkably smooth, superhot soup".
Soup has mass - and mass is supposed to be subject to the speed limit.
That's part of it. Sort of. The inflationary phase was over long ago. The expansion of the universe, a completely different mechanism, continues even now, and may be speeding up.
...or so goes the theory. Yet galactic clusters move away from each other at ever increasing rates...hardly a mark of permanence...all while our solar system remains about the same size...hardly the mark of "universal" expansion.
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