Posted on 05/19/2013 10:59:00 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Scientists believe they have found the first evidence of the existence of other universes beyond our own, following analysis of the radiation left behind by the Big Bang.
Data gathered by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft enabled researchers to map the "cosmic microwave" of background radiation left behind when the universe began 13.8 billion years ago.
The findings imply the universe could be just one of billions, or even an infinite number, they say.
The map showed anomalies that cosmologists believe could only have been caused by the gravitational pull of other universes outside our own.
"These anomalies were caused by other universes pulling on our universe as it formed during the Big Bang," said Laura Mersini-Houghton, of the University of North Carolina.
"They are the first hard evidence for the existence of other universes that we have seen."
With her colleague Professor Richard Holman of Carnegie Mellon University, Mersini-Houghton published a series of papers from 2005 predicting that pictures from Planck would show our universe to be subject to a "pull" from other universes.
"It may be that the statistical anomalies described in this paper are a hint of more profound physical phenomena that are yet to be revealed," they wrote in a recent paper.
Planck gathered radiation from the universe when it was just 370,000 years old - and still glowing from the Big Bang.
Faint traces of radiation that has travelled across space for 13.8bn years is still detectable, but shows up far stronger in one half of the sky than the other. A large "cold" spot shows where the temperature is below average.
Mersini-Houghton will set out her findings at the How The Light Gets In festival in Hay-on-Wye in Herefordshire this week, and at a cosmology conference in Oxford.
George Efstathiou, professor of astrophysics at Cambridge and co-author of the research, said the findings "may sound wacky now, just like the Big Bang theory did three generations ago. But then we got evidence and now it has changed the whole way we think about the universe".
Malcolm Perry, professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge, said the idea was "very exciting", but would require further research.
"It is exactly right to say that this could be the first evidence for other universes," he said.
It means that...somewhere out there is a universe where systems administrators get five-figure signing bonuses and supermodel girlfriends, and the Mariners have won a World Series. Pity it isn’t this one.
until we invent some way of crossing light years of space in seconds
Once we figure out a way to control mass, it will
be a snap.
Losimg count...
“It’s M-Theory.” and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry too if it happened to you,,!
I noticed :).
As I understand it, the current thinking in physics is that space itself is expanding at the speed of light in all directions since the big bang. That the common sense idea of space as something that goes on forever and is just there is actually not correct. (disclaimer, I majored in mathematics not physics—I am not an authority on it, but this is what I have understood the majority view to be among those who are).
Why?
How much of your life have you dedicated to this question or have you rejected it out of hand with no actual scholarly study of the matter?
Space and energy were what the big bang created, matter evolved later from energy. Matter and energy, as Einstein indicated, different forms of the same thing.
I think this is kind of like when people with schizophrenia think there are other copies of themselves wandering around somewhere.
Not if you have MultiPass.
“You would cry too if it happened to you,”
Well, in one of the other universes, it never happened, in one of the other universes, you were glad that it happened, and in one of the other universes, you weren’t there to see it happen.
THAT is where obama’s original long form birth certificate is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LLS
Nah... DC came first with “Flash of Two Worlds” ;)
Your answers are not logical nor do they make sense. Let's just forget it.
Can I have a grant? Can I, can I? Please, please, please, please. Gimme a grant! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Yup. Science is just a commie, muzzie, Nazi, hippy plot to take your guns away.
A question:
The universe we live in is roughly 14 billion years old, give or take a billion. This device looks back to when the universe was 370,000 years old, and does so by looking way, way out to the outer reaches of the universe.
But if the universe expanded out from a single point at the moment of the big bang, and as I have been told, nothing can move faster than the speed of light, then when the universe was 370,000 years old it wasn’t way, way out there where they are looking now, it was a much smaller universe at that time having not yet expanded for 14 billion extra years.
The question is: if we look farther and farther out to see farther and farther back in time, at what point to do we see everything condensed into the tiny space before the big bang? How is it even possible to consider that the farthest things away from us are the earliest in time when the earliest in time was one singular infinitesimally small point?
In GR theory the speed of light and gravity are about the same. So how can we see the effects of gravity by large bodies on galaxies in our universe and not observe the light from these large bodies?
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