Evidence for Universe Expansion Found

Yahoo (AP) ^ | 3/16/2006 | MATT CRENSON

[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.

[RightWhale]

The core is a hot nuclear reactor. Don't want to go down there. The universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate, which is probably bad news for the Hubble constant.

[Doctor Stochastic]

But the moon is receding from earth like a big dog from a skunk.

But that's just due to the oceans splashing about.

[Southack]

"Having assumed the initial expansion, however, the answers are what I already gave you: gravity (plus cooling, to put it simply); dark energy (or whatever you want to call it);"

No, gravity is what prevented the Big Bang from happening any earlier...it was the force that originally bound all matter close together (remember that space itself exerts no force) per the inflation theory.

Nor did cooling happen. Cooling is a colloquialism. In reality, to cool an object you must move heat away from said object. This is why heat radiates away from a hot stove, i.e. the heat is moving away from said stove. Turn the stove off and eventually all excess heat will radiate away into the environment.

But the universe has no such place to move heat outside or away from it. Energy is neither lost nor made, after all.

So the universe didn't "cool" overall...all of the same heat was and is still in it (unless you can identify where it went). Note also that empty space can't hold heat (though heat could transit across it in some fashion).

And dark energy doesn't exist. We've never seen it in the wild or in the lab. It's a mathematical figment...a crutch...a tool of a mathematical model.

[Southack]

"It is, but the distance between the Sun and us is too small to show any effect."

That's incorrect. It isn't, and we know this due to the timeline of the universe (i.e. as in, such a slow pace of expansion wouldn't explain current positions of matter).

[Southack]

"If you have all matter in the inverse compressed into a tiny speck because that is all the room there is for the matter to be in, when you give the matter more space, the mattr will expand outward due to pressure to fill the additional space."

Incorrect. Your above view ascribes a Force to space.

Identify this Force or else admit your error.

[RightWhale]

The universe appears to contain a great deal of matter and energy, which may be the same thing, but the original ball of stuff at the start of the BB was about 20 pounds and hot, but not hot enough to contain a universe of energy. During inflation, both matter and energy came out of essentially nowhere. Guth calls that the actual free lunch, which contradicts the maxim TANSTAAFL.

[Southack]

"As the universe swiftly cooled, it slowed to the more liesurely pace that followed, due to gravity."

Where did the heat go?

[AndrewC]

But that's just due to the oceans splashing about.

And the deformation of the earth.

[longshadow]

Gauss pointed out ...

He did lots of that..... clever fellow, he was.

;-)

[Vicomte13]

Ah, ok, got it.
I don't know anything about the cancer paper, I'm afraid.
It does sound intriguing.

[longshadow]

It appears the "Festival of the Adiabatically Challenged" has commenced....

[Vicomte13]

"Indeed, 'Fiat lux!'"

"I once drove one of those. More reliabile than a Yugo, but not by much."

Wait. Was it a luxury-model Fiat, or did it explode?

[Southack]

So you claim...yet you can't specify any one part of my textual explanation that was in error...

"Just about all of it, actually." - Ichneumon

My whole point above was that the other poster couldn't just wave a magic wand and exclaim his dislike of my analogy with a Mozart-esque "too many notes" complaint about the opera.

...Precisely the same error that you replicated above.

If you have a specific complaint about my textual analogy, then succinctly quote the precise words that displease you, and point out in black and white your problem with said words.

But just tossing around non-specific complaints such as "all of it" won't cut it. Show the sentence or sentence fragment, then identify your precise problem with said sentence or fragment.

This is of course something that you personally fear doing because you know that I will destroy your specific complaint in my response.

You'll have to live with that cravenness.

[edsheppa]

The only people I'm aware of who speculate [that the speed of light has been slowing] are certain young-earth creationists...

Some reputable physicists also have speculated about changing physical "constants" as you can see here but the changes are minute.

[edsheppa]

Are you familiar with the concept of adiabatic heating and cooling? It is essential to the Carnot cycle - two of the four steps involve adiabatic compression/expansion to raise/lower the temperature of the working gas with no heat exchange.

[Doctor Stochastic]

It was a Lux-ury model.

[longshadow]

The latest word of the "variability" of the fine structure constant can be seen here:

Astrophysics, abstract astro-ph/0512287

From: Levshakov [view email] Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 11:43:49 GMT (16kb)

Most precise single redshift bound to the variability of the fine-structure constant Authors: S. A. Levshakov, M. Centurion, P. Molaro, S. D'Odorico, D. Reimers, R. Quast, M. Pollmann Comments: 2 pages, to appear in the Proceed. of IAU Symp.232 "The Scientific Requirements for Extremely Large Telescopes", eds. P. Whitelock, B. Leibundgut, and M. Dennefeld

Verification of theoretical predictions of an oscillating behavior of the fine-structure constant, alpha, with cosmic time requires high precision measurements at individual redshifts, while in earlier studies the mean Delta alpha/alpha values averaged over wide redshift intervals were usually reported. This requirement can be met via the Single Ion Differential alpha Measurement (SIDAM) procedure. We apply SIDAM to the FeII lines associated with the damped Ly-alpha system observed at z=1.15 in the spectrum of HE0515-4414. The weighted mean calculated on base of carefully selected 34 FeII pairs is =(-0.07+/-0.84)10^{-6}. The precision of this estimate represents the absolute improvement with respect to what has been done in the measurements of Delta alpha/alpha.

Essentially, it says the best available measurements are consistent with no variation in the fine structure constant, and thus "c," at all.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Carnot cycle? I guess it could be parked in a smaller space than a Fiat Lux.

[edsheppa]

My point was that reputable scientists, not just a few charlatans, have speculated about variability in physical constants including the speed of light.

[longshadow]

Carnot cycle? I guess it could be parked in a smaller space than a Fiat Lux.

Ahhhh; but can a Carnot Cycle be parked in a Hilbert Space?