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.
It is not called expansion. It is called inflation. That is not observed, it is implied. Mutations are observed. The model is implied from the data observed and that model does not apparently fit very well into a random mutation, natural selection paradigm. The mutations do not appear to be random and the fitnesses are equivalent. What is there to select?
Thanks, I would if it were free, but I can't subscribe to every Tom, Dick, and Hairy :) publication that wants my money. "Spontaneous beneficial mutations" and "in which all favorable mutations confer the same fitness advantage" sure looks like something Shapiro would write.
These examples make it clear that natural genetic engineering occurs episodically and non-randomly in response to stress events that range from DNA damage to the inability to find a suitable mating partner. One important consequence of such episodic activation is that multiple connected genetic changes can occur at different genome locations within a brief period of time. Studies of hybrid dysgenesis in the fruit fly (49) have documented such temporally coordinated changes within a single cell during the mitotic development of the germ line. Since these multiple changes occur several cell divisions before gametes are formed, multiple sperm or eggs (and, consequently, multiple individuals) can be produced which share a constellation of related genome alterations.
In addition to temporal specificity, it turns out that many natural genetic engineering functions show intriguing degrees of selectivity in where they act within the genome. This selectivity appears to be chiefly related to interactions between natural genetic engineering systems and the cellular systems controlling transcription and chromatin formatting. The examples we have of target selection include the action of localized point mutagenesis, retrotransposons and DNA transposons (see 9, 10 for specific references):
My brain hurts.
I don't rightly know what there is to select.
I was at a loss to explain the sudden appearance of the reference to cancer cells on the thread about spatial expansion. I was struggling to see the link. You mentioned snake oil. I wasn't sure which you were referring to. It seemed like you were referring to the cancer cell article, but it appears I was mistaken and you were referring to the expansion article.
Which makes me wonder what the cancer cell article was a reference to.
But it's late and I'm getting old, so perhaps I should just leave it be.
Actually, it is. Hubble's constant is about 71(km/s)/Mpc so the distance is growing very slowly. You can do the math yourself.
He might indeed. Of course they don't like to give it to theoretical physicists, which leaves cosmologists kind of hanging.
"Big Bang" was coined by one of the early detractors of the theory, IIRC, in a snide attempt to denigrate it. However, the name stuck in common usage, even though its not quite accurate.
There may be some inflation still going on, it may be accelerating again. Expansion is just the flight of distant galaxies from our galaxy, which not all galaxies are participating in. M31 is approaching--blue shift and will probably hit us amidships. But the moon is receding from earth like a big dog from a skunk.
Fred Hoyle
There wasn't, other than that I know someone interested in these type threads would probably respond politely and give me more information. I'm sorry I confused you and I really did not want to discuss the Science paper at this time. I was hoping someone would have more information on the paper and eventually start a thread on it. At the moment the paper is just a tantalizing hint.
But the three-dimensional space is unnecessary. Gauss pointed out that the surface of a sphere is two-dimensional; all properties of the surface can be obtained without any reference to a third dimension.
The heavy elements, that is heavier than helium, were most likely built up proton by proton inside a star, which then exploded--supernova--distributing its contents sort of uniformly over a volume of several lightyears. That material, mostly gas and dust, would have condensed by gravity into the sun and what would become the rest of the planets and other bodies orbiting the sun. Since the gas remaining would have been blown by the force of the suns burning outward faster than the dust, the portion of dust remaining near the sun and becoming Mercury, Venus, earth, and Mars would have collected and condensed more or less uniformly. Later the materials would stratify to a degree as the planets settled down, with the heavy portion--iron and nickel-- at the bottom and the light materials on top. It is possible gold settled to the very core, although some think uranium has concentrated enough down there enough to start reacting. The gold in the crust is what did not settle into the core, and that it is concentrated in placer deposits is kind of interesting.
It's an illusion. Everywhere is the center. There is no "distinguished point" on the circumference of a circle (weak analogy).
A bit voyeuristic on the old man's part it would seem.
Ptolemy demonstrated that earth is round. So far, so good.
The effects that must have gone on for millennia are staggering. The macro and micro effects would blow the mind. Just the formation of our little backwater is impressive.
FWIW have they settled on a "correct" Hubble constant yet or is there still areas that doesn't fit?
Seems like (for this case), one can describe the results in terms of averages rather than having to analyze each individual bacterium. In stochastic® terms, the weak solution is sufficient.
Does this mean that there are now 2 more missing transitional microwave patterns???
I once drove one of those. More reliabile than a Yugo, but not by much.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.