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State of the Cosmos Address Offered    02/21/2005 Alan Guth, the father of inflationary cosmology, with colleague David I. Kaiser of MIT, took stock of cosmological theories in the Feb. 11 issue of Science,1 being that it is the centennial of Einstein’s theory of relativity.  How has inflation fared since its controversial but hopeful proposal in 1981?     “Inflation was invented a quarter of a century ago,” Guth begins (emphasis added in all quotes), “and has become a central ingredient of current cosmological research.”  Advances in particle physics have led to a theory, the standard model, that can...

Gamma-ray bursts could be the signature of ultradense stars. This X-ray image shows the 3C58 pulsar, the remnant of a supernova noted on Earth in AD 1181, which astronomers suspect may be a quark star. It lies about 10,000 light years from Earth.© NASA/SAO/CXC/P.Slane et al. Intense flashes of gamma rays in far-off galaxies might be produced by a bizarre kind of star, consisting of phenomenally dense material in which the particles that make up atomic nuclei have fallen apart. Two astrophysicists have proposed that gamma-ray (gamma-ray) bursts, whose origins have foxed astronomers for decades, might be the signatures of...

Baffled by the expansion of the universe? You're not alone. Even astronomers frequently get it wrong. The expansion of the universe may be the most important fact we have ever discovered about our origins. You would not be reading this article if the universe had not expanded. Human beings would not exist. Cold molecular things such as life-forms and terrestrial planets could not have come into existence unless the universe, starting from a hot big bang, had expanded and cooled. The formation of all the structures in the universe, from galaxies and stars to planets and Scientific American articles, has...

Astronomers have discovered an invisible galaxy that could be the first of many that will help unravel one of the universe's greatest mysteries.The object appears to be made mostly of "dark matter," material of an unknown nature that can't be seen.    Images The ellipse shows the region of sky where the dark galaxy was found. Credit: Cardiff University/Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma NGC 7479 is the type of galaxy astronomers would have expected to see based on the measurements taken. Credit: Nik Szymanek/Faulkes Telescope North, Maui, copyright FTLLC    More Stories Dark Matter Exposed: Animation Offers Clues to Cosmic Mystery...

Parallel Universes exist in other Circuits, Indian Cosmo Theorist - MIL, Feb 15, 2005. Chun Seoul - Dr. Raj Baldev, Cosmo Theorist from India, replied in my interview " As the scientists have found more than 1000 planets covered with ice beyond Neptune last week, similarly they will one day confirm that there are many Universes in other Circuits." When asked why scientists are puzzled as a result of getting more and more peculiar revelations and they are obviously not matching with the single Big Bang Theory, Dr. Raj Baldev replied: " It is just because the scientists erroneously picked...

Plans to trace the Moon's orbit with extraordinary new accuracy could reveal kinks in Einstein's theory of gravity and help explain the mysterious accelerating expansion of the universe, says a US researcher. The acceleration cannot be explained by known forces in the Universe. To account for the behaviour, cosmologists have introduced the concept of a new, as yet unseen, force - dark energy. But Gia Dvali, of New York University, US, believes there could be another explanation. He thinks the accelerating expansion might be caused by unexpected properties of gravity, which are only seen over very large distances. Taking inspiration...

Found: 7 percent of the mass of the universe. Missing since: 10 billion years ago. Consider one more astronomical mystery solved. Scientists have located a sizeable chunk of the universe that seemed to be missing since back when the stars first formed. It’s floating in super-hot rivers of gas, invisible to the naked eye, surrounding galaxies like our own. And a completely different kind of mystery matter -- dark matter -- may have put it there. The results appear in the current issue of the journal Nature. To make this latest discovery, astronomers at Ohio State University and their colleagues...

Flew's Flawed Science by Victor J. Stenger The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 25, Number 2. The late-in-life “conversion” of philosopher Antony Flew from atheism to belief in God has been widely reported in the media.1 In a recent interview with Gary Habermas, misleadingly titled “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism,” Flew explains his new position, which he identifies as deism rather than theism.2 Richard Carrier has also conducted a correspondence with Flew, which clarifies some of the issues.3Flew has not changed his mind on the inadequacy of the various philosophical arguments for God, which he...

A new analysis of the "echo" of the Big Bang has left cosmologists scratching their heads and could throw a monkey wrench into efforts to understand how the universe began. U.S. and European scientists analyzed the distribution of "hot" and "cold" regions -- areas that are putting out greater or less amounts of energy than the average -- of the cosmic microwave background radiation (the so-called echo). What they found was unexpected: an apparent correlation between those hot and cold spots and the orientation and motion of our solar system.

When people discuss religion and science, they refer to the two has opposites that do not attract. More like oil and water than Yin and Yang. The opinion seems to prevail that the two should never mix. Since it often comes down to a big argument about where the universe came from, I thought it was only fair to provide a religious perspective. That of Belgian Priest Georges Lemaitre. Lemaitre, like many religious figures, went against the prevailing science of his day. He argued, in accordance with the Book of Genesis, that the Universe was created from "a primeival atom"...

WASHINGTON – The White House has eliminated funding for a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request and directed NASA to focus solely on de-orbiting the popular spacecraft at the end of its life, according to government and industry sources. NASA is debating when and how to announce the change of plans. Sources told Space News that outgoing NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe likely will make the announcement Feb. 7 during the public presentation of the U.S. space agency’s 2006 budget request. That budget request, according to government and industry sources, will not include any money...

Issue 107 / February 2005 Escape from the universe The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a "wormhole" into a parallel universe? The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it Michio KakuThe author is professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York. This article is adapted from his book "Parallel Worlds" (Allen Lane) The universe is out of control, in a runaway acceleration. Eventually all intelligent life will face the final doom—the big freeze. An advanced...

Going Beyond Einstein: Spacetime Wave Orbits Black Hole San Diego, CA--Astronomers Jon Miller (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Jeroen Homan (MIT) have seen evidence of hot iron gas riding a ripple in spacetime around a black hole. This spacetime wave, if confirmed, would represent a new phenomenon that goes beyond Einstein's general relativity. These observations confirm one important theory about how a black hole's extreme gravity can stretch light. The data also paint an intriguing image of how a spinning black hole can drag the very fabric of space around with it, creating a choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything...

Big bang sound waves explain galaxy clustering 13:32 12 January 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee, San Diego Sound waves that roared through space after the big bang left behind a subtle imprint in the way galaxies are clustered today, reveal two major studies. The results bolster the standard theory that the universe is flat, and measuring the distance between the sound ripples may provide a new cosmic yardstick to probe the past. Two independent teams mapping the universe have found that galaxies are currently huddled together slightly more often at distances of 500 million light years as a...

An international team of astronomers has discovered within the heart of a nearby spiral galaxy a quasar whose light spectrum indicates that it is billions of light years away. The finding poses a cosmic puzzle: How could a galaxy 300 million light years away contain a stellar object several billion light years away? The team’s findings, which were presented today in San Diego at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society and which will appear in the February 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, raise a fundamental problem for astronomers who had long assumed that the “high redshifts” in...

Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees describes how for the first time, humans as a species may start to change in observable ways within single lifetimes and under some loose control of our own influence. If this future plays out, the future itself becomes more difficult to forecast. Helen Matsos: Earlier this year our magazine interviewed the Vatican Astronomer, Brother Guy Consolmagno [link in original article]. He discussed how the possible finding of alien life would impact world religions. Do you have any views on that? Martin Rees: I admire what the Vatican is doing in astronomy. The search for extraterrestrial...

A special universe? A second question of this deeper kind arises from thinking about the character of the laws of nature themselves. Science just takes them for granted, as the basis from which it derives its understanding of the events that are happening. I do not think, however, that we should do so, for we should press on to ask the question, Why is the universe so special? Why are the laws of nature so ‘finely-tuned’ to make life possible? Behind this question lies a very surprising realization that scientists only reached in the last forty years or so....

In part 2 of the interview, Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees discusses the limits to our knowledge of what might have preceded the big bang. Everyone asks the question: what was 'there' the instant before everything came to be?, but the question may not go as deep as the answers it spawns. Helen Matsos: Last year the big "science event" was measuring the cosmic microwave background and dating the big bang to 13.8 billion years ago, within an 8 to 10 percent margin of error. Can you give us some idea of the boundaries of the big bang -- what...

The SETI Institute predicts that we'll detect an extraterrestrial transmission within twenty years. If that turns out to be true, it'll probably be the folks at UC Berkeley's Hat Creek radio observatory who will have heard the call. Right now, the Allen Telescope Array of more than three-hundred dishes is under construction at Hat Creek five hours north of San Francisco. Within a year, the first thirty dishes will be operational, forming the basis of a giant ear that listens for intelligent beings in space while simultaneously gathering data for groundbreaking astronomy research. William "Jack" Welch, UC Berkeley professor of...

Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees talks about the conditions for life. How unique is our world? Is the universe itself just the byproduct of many failed, sterile or stillborn universes that might have preceded it? Helen Matsos: I was recently at a gathering of scientists, including notables such as Mitchell Feigenbaum, Oliver Sacks, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and discovered you are much admired among this group. For instance, Neil referred to you as one of the last great gentleman astronomers of our time. Martin Rees: (laughs) Does he mean it as compliment or not? Mastos: Maybe he was referring to...