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.

[Southack]

Arrrgh. I've got to take more time on these things.

The Hubble Constant gives us the increase in velocity of a distant object.

For the Earth to Sun distance (the original question) of 1 AU we first have to translate 1 AU into Mpc's.

1 Mpc = 3.08568025E22 meters
1 AU = 149,598,000,000 meters

So 1 Mpc = 206,265,000,000 AU
Thus, 1 AU = 4.84813681 × 10-12 Mpc

So the Hubble Constant of 71,000 m/s/Mpc * 4.84813681 × 10-12 Mpc will give us 3.44217714 × 10-6 m/s

3.44217714 × 10-6 m/s * 17 Billion years * 365 days/year * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute gives us 1.84539247E13 meters of space expansion in between the Earth and Sun over the life of the universe.

Which isn't 1 AU...it's 123.356761 AU per Inflationary Theory.

Since we don't see more than 123 AU in between the Earth and Sun, Inflationary Theory must be wrong. QED.

[Southack]

Interestingly enough, if you wanted to see the age of our Solar System per Earth/Sun distance (i.e. 1 AU) according to the clearly flawed Inflationary Theory, you'd just divide the 17 Billion years that I used in the above post by the 123 AU result.

17,000,000,000 years / 123.356761 AU = 137,811,660 years for Space to inflate to 1 AU.

So look for Young Earthers to give Inflationary Theory some credit.

[hosepipe]

[ It doesn't expand "into" anything. ]

Then........ is expand the right word?..

[Alamo-Girl]

Yes, it is.

[edsheppa]

What heat exchange? The universe cooled as it expanded without heat loss.

[Southack]

"What heat exchange? The universe cooled as it expanded without heat loss."

No thermal energy was lost.

[jennyp]

Math that disproves Inflationary Theory. Story at posts #374 and #365.

You guys are arguing about numbers so big only dogs can hear, but I do notice that your calculations & conclusions are very different than the paper that Ichy linked to in #317.

In that paper they do the math and (if I read it right) conclude (pp8-9) that the effect on the distance from the Sun to the Earth over 20 billion years is vanishingly small - causing effects that are "22 orders of magnitude" less than the variations of the Moon in its orbit about the Earth.

Or as they put it in their Introduction (pg. 2):

It would appear that one would be hard put to justify a particular scale for the onset of expansion. Thus, in this debate, we are in agreement with Anderson (1995) that it is most reasonable to assume that the expansion does indeed proceed at all scales. However, there is a certain ironical quality attached to the debate in the sense that even if the expansion does actually occur at all scales, we will show that the effects of the cosmological expansion on smaller spatial and temporal scales would be undetectable in general in the foreseeable future and hence one could just as comfortably hold the view that the expansion occurs strictly on the cosmological scale.

And summarizing all the math in the Discussion & conclusions (pg. 10):

The computation of the cosmological correction to the local equations of motion performed in Sec. 2 allows one to estimate numerically the magnitude of the correction to the acceleration of a particle subject to external forces. The numerical estimates obtained in Sec. 3 suggest that the correction is extremely small and unobservable for galaxy clusters, galaxies and the solar system, and negligible for smaller systems such as stars and even more so for molecules and atoms (cf. Anderson 1995). When the cosmological correction to the local equations of motion is applied to the Newtonian two–body problem, the evolution equations for the perturbation of the orbit can be solved. It is found that the cumulative effect of cosmological expansion on the radius and angular motion of the sun–earth system is also negligible. The cosmic expansion plays an increasingly important role for systems whose sizes and lifetimes become increasingly comparable to the Hubble radius and to Hubble times respectively. In this case, the approximation used in this paper becomes invalid. It is well–known that the cosmological expansion must be taken into account, for example, in the fluid dynamical treatment of the formation of structures in the universe (Weinberg 1972). As a conclusion, it is reasonable to assume that the expansion of the universe affects all scales, but the magnitude of the effect is essentially negligible for local systems, even at the scale of galactic clusters.

So I suspect one of you is wrong. :-)

[Southack]

"As a conclusion, it is reasonable to assume that the expansion of the universe affects all scales, but the magnitude of the effect is essentially negligible for local systems, even at the scale of galactic clusters. So I suspect one of you is wrong. :-)"

Indeed. They textually claim that "the magnitude of the effect is essentially negligible for local systems," whereas I do the actual Inflationary Theory math to show that the effect over 17 Billion years would be more than 123 AU between the Earth and Sun per their own theory.

Since the distance is 1 AU instead of 123, they must be wrong per the math.

Math isn't debatable. Calculations may be wrong, theories may be wrong, formulas may be wrong...but the math tells the tale.

And Inflationary Theory's math is the Pinnochio of Science.

[jennyp]

Since the distance is 1 AU instead of 123, they must be wrong per the math.

Well then, I have two questions: At which equation exactly did they go off the rails, and are you going to email them to inform them of their blunder? I'm sure if you approach them politely they'd appreciate the correction.

[jennyp]

Or for that matter, isn't arXiv.org open to submissions by non-affiliated authors? As long as you follow their guidelines, I don't see anything that says an author has to be affiliated with a university, nor even that they must have "PhD" after their name. Why don't you go ahead and submit a paper that refutes their paper? That is the accepted mechanism in the field.

Seriously, you really could become famous. Because merely posting the refutation of a scholarly journal article on FreeRepublic.com isn't going to show up on any working cosmologist's professional radar.

[Netheron]

I agree that it is unnecessary to have the embedding. I was asking if there were any candidate spaces to perform an embedding, if one was so inclined.

[Southack]

"At which equation exactly did they go off the rails, and are you going to email them to inform them of their blunder? I'm sure if you approach them politely they'd appreciate the correction."

It's not their calculations, it's their model that's wrong. Their model doesn't bother calculating out Hubble's Constant for the age of our Universe at the distance of Earth to Sun.

Their model wants to have it both ways: on the one hand to pretend that Inflation acts upon all scales, but on the other hand to pretend that Inflation is negligible on a small scale.

But running the math as I did in post #381 quickly shows that Inflation Theory is *supposed* to act upon small scales.

Pause

And here's the real rub for Inflationary Theory: if it *doesn't* act upon small scales, then someone needs to explain why massless Space expands in some places but not in others...why it is supposed to expand where there is empty space in between distant galaxies but not where there is empty space in between planets and their suns.

Which brings us to Catch-22 for Inflationary Theory (a certain sign of being a disproved theory): if Inflation acts upon all Space, then the *math* disproves it. If it only acts on some empty space but not on other empty space, then it fails to define itself properly.

Stick a fork in it, it's done.

[Netheron]

Forget it, we seem to be talking about two different types of inflation again and I don't want to go through all the past threads to sort it out.

[AntiGuv]

If I'm reading your math correctly, your first problem (which makes your equations totally meaningless) is the assumption that the Sun and the Earth have existed, and therefore been moving apart, since the dawn of the universe. Your second problem is the incorrect 17 billion year age of the universe, which should be 13.7 billion years.

[WKB]

Time to call 1-800-JENNY

[dread78645]

Is thread dead yet?

Still expanding ...

[Southack]

"But since all attempts to get you to "show your math" have been met with your usual brand of evasions and excuses and insults (in all my time watching you on these threads, that's *all* I've seen you do when asked to do any mathematical at all -- I have yet to see you produce any beyond basic arithmatic), here, let's turn it around -- feel free to explain, "textually" or otherwise, where the following might be in error (since it must be, if your "textual" ramblings are correct): The influence of the cosmological expansion on local systems. (Now *that's* math...) Feel free to explain how, why, and *specifically* where, you find a flaw in it. Because it makes sense to me."

Post #381 does the math, while posts 388 and 392 expand upon the specific, itemized flaws...all 3 of those posts combine to send the paper that you linked in Post #317 to History's trash bin alongside the discredited and disproven Inflationary Theory.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Honestly, I don't know why you're bothering - he doesn't even understand the units in play in the Hubble constant, which is why his math is so ridiculous. You might as well spend the time trying to teach your cat to play the violin - it'll be about as effective and rewarding as your efforts with that pile ;)

[Senator Bedfellow]

If I'm reading your math correctly, your first problem (which makes your equations totally meaningless) is the assumption that the Sun and the Earth have existed, and therefore been moving apart, since the dawn of the universe. Your second problem is the incorrect 17 billion year age of the universe, which should be 13.7 billion years.

And the third problem is that the distance between the sun and the earth at time t = 0 was not zero. And the fourth problem is that he doesn't understand what km/s/Mpc really means, making his numbers extra silly. And so on and so forth. My suggestion is not to bother with trying to correct him - life is much too short to take on such a herculean task.

[Southack]

"If I'm reading your math correctly, your first problem (which makes your equations totally meaningless) is the assumption that the Sun and the Earth have existed, and therefore been moving apart, since the dawn of the universe. Your second problem is the incorrect 17 billion year age of the universe, which should be 13.7 billion years."

You're saying the same thing. Those aren't two different problems.

Posts #365 (with an admitted error) mentions your 13.77 Billion year old figure while posts #381 and 382 do the correct math as well as show how a younger age for the Earth/Sun could be calculated under the clearly laughable proposition of Inflationary Theory actually being correct (which it is not).

Using your preference of 13.77 Billion years still comes up with a value greater than 1 AU for the Earth to the Sun per inflationary theory (99.9 AU's!).

You'd have to prove that the Earth/Sun was a mere 137,811,660 years old for Inflationary Theory to be correct as it stands today.