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.
Well, I still have trouble with that one.
......your attention, please.........Elvis has left the Universe..........
No. Space is expanding, but the objects (mass) in space do not move.
No, momentum is defined as equal to sqrt(E^2-m^2*c^4)/c where m is the rest mass, E is the energy and c is the speed of light. Note that you can get a momentum out of something if m equals 0 and E does not equal 0.
The visible universe is more than 1 light year large (to put it mildly). Moving more than 1 light year in less time than 1 year would put a damper on every scientist who claims day in and day out that you can't accelerate mass faster than the Speed of Light.
The correct answer is: We don't know what, if anything, and can't even begin to venture much of an educated guess. String theory, however, would seem to suggest that our universe can be imagined as one of many, like bubbles in a froth, and as each expands (or contracts) it 'merely' inflates or conflates the froth. Now, if that's true, what, if anything, the bubbly froth is expanding into is a whole 'nother topic!
It is faster than the speed of light--which is why "expansion" is controversial.
Some physicists speculate that the speed of light has been slowing down since the Big Bang.
It's pumped down to a rather lousy vacuum (about 10-100mTorr I'm guessing). The mean free path of the molecules is on the order of the bulb size, but they are still in there.
Space is the absence of gravity. Gravity is the absence of space. Time is the absence of?................vacations......
Whip inflation now!
You mean Buddhist..
It is not expanding into anything because as far as we know there is nothing other than the universe.
It is simply expanding to a bigger universe.
What was it when it was the size of a marble?
Crooke's Radiometer
Very crowded...........
That raisins in taffy theory of physics doesn't explain why "inflation" stopped (or slowed), much less why the universe is still expanding at ever-faster rates, much less why different laws of physics existed back then (e.g. accelerating large masses vastly faster than the speed of light C).
Which is to say, it's a bunch of hooey.
So this means that "C" has not always been the universal speed limit.
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