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21st Century Astronomy
- Thread starter Leongsam
- Start date
Gravitational waves: have US scientists heard echoes of the big bang?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/14/gravitational-waves-big-bang-universe-bicep
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/14/gravitational-waves-big-bang-universe-bicep
Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.
Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being.
It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes.
A team led by a Harvard astronomer announced Monday that it had detected a pattern in the distant cosmos that reveals what happened in the first known moments after the Big Bang 13 billion years ago: a hyper-expansion of our universe known as inflation.
The scientists have also for the first time directly detected gravitational waves, which have been long predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity but never directly observed.
Gravitational Waves Finding Confirms Early Universe's Exponential Growth
Detection confirms "inflation" of early universe to cosmological sizes in early instant
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This is not the place for smart alec remarks. Keep your wit and wisdom for the courtyard cafe section.
I have always been deeply fascinated by the Big Bang, since I was a young child. I remember reading all the books written by popular science authors about the subject. Somehow the birth of the universe held the epitome of scientific knowledge and I was drawn to it.
Now there are so many competing string theories and no one seems closer to the truth, if there is a truth. The Standard Model has evolved into something extremely complicated with a whole host of particles. The mathematics that goes into these theories is mind boggling and no one knows which path is the right one. New theories seem to be invented all the time, each one seemingly requiring more dazzling mathematics to describe.
I have resolved to learn quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory. That will only lead me a tiny fraction of the way toward understanding what these scientists are talking about, but at least, I will know the kind of vocabulary they speak. It is a very daunting.
Now there are so many competing string theories and no one seems closer to the truth, if there is a truth. The Standard Model has evolved into something extremely complicated with a whole host of particles. The mathematics that goes into these theories is mind boggling and no one knows which path is the right one. New theories seem to be invented all the time, each one seemingly requiring more dazzling mathematics to describe.
I have resolved to learn quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory. That will only lead me a tiny fraction of the way toward understanding what these scientists are talking about, but at least, I will know the kind of vocabulary they speak. It is a very daunting.
As so cut and paste by me earlier
You Should Care Big Time About the Big Bang News
Science doesn't have to be practical—or even entirely fathomable—to be breathtaking
Exactly why do you have to give a hoot about Monday’s landmark announcement that, in a single observation, physicists have given a big boost to the Big Bang? You don’t, actually. It will not change a single thing about your life, the life of anyone you care about or the state of the world. So in some respects, we’re done here.
Science has, in some ways, always been measured by its payoff. Polio vaccine? Hundreds of thousands of children per year spared paralysis or death. Eradication of smallpox? Hundreds of millions of lives saved over the arc of time. The invention of the telegraph, the telephone, the airplane, the personal computer? World-changers.
But what about the invention of the telescope? It landed Galileo—he of the heliocentric heresy—in a world of hurt, as well it would have by the thinking of the time. Yes, he found the moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn, but by showing other worlds in all their non-Earthly complexity, he also blew up the notion of cosmic specialness that had been at the center of our species’ overweening ego for so long. Later generations of telescopes gave us more information we could make no practical use of and that only served to shrink us further, revealing that we are crazily small organisms on a crazily small world and that, on a cosmic scale, our species’ entire time on the stage amounts to little more than the trillionths of a second it took the Higgs Boson to flash out of existence after its celebrated creation in 2012.
And what about that Boson? A couple of years ago we were all aflutter about it, so quick, what did we learn from it? Um, something about mass and particles and energy and blah, blah, blah Einstein (half of these discoveries end up with blah, blah Einstein).
But there was something about the boson that got to us, too. Even if you didn’t pay much attention, you knew that it involved a huge machine creating an unfathomably tiny particle, one that somehow reached all the way back to the Big Bang and helped explain something deeply fundamental. That something had to do with why there is matter in the universe at all. But even if you never got that far, you sensed—just sensed—that this was something that made us, the whole species, better, smarter, just faintly immortal, if only by having transcended our multiple limitations to figure out something very hard.
And so it is with Monday’s announcement, that gravitational waves which, yes, Einstein again, first posited 99 years ago, actually exist—and that they send ripples out across all of spacetime. That, in turn, confirmed that in the first billionth of a trillionth of a quadrillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe briefly expanded faster than the speed of light—a speed that’s supposed to be impossible, but in this exceptional case wasn’t. And while it would be nice to understand even more, even that little bit has to leave you feeling gobsmacked.
It’s that way with all thrilling things that make no sense: scaling Mount Everest, breaking the four-minute mile, landing the first man on the moon. Hell, back in 1962, we fiercely defended the greatness of the failed Ranger 4 mission after it crash-landed on the lunar surface but was unable to take even a single picture. Why? Because we had finally put metal on the moon—dead metal to be sure—but we had gotten there and that was enough for the moment.
It’s fine—and vital—to do science that changes lives. But it’s great to also do science that just gets you drunk on the idea that you’re doing it at all, that refracts the universe in a different way, that shows you yourself from the other side of the mirror. You are precisely the same person you were before you had that perspective—and you’re entirely different too.
Very wise. Wiser if you forget that one day prior as thats gone already
Use KY for yourself and that tiew from Boss sam might even be enjoyable.
Learn more about the birth of the universe
7:16 PM Tuesday May 27, 2014
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</figure><figcaption class="caption" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 10px 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); line-height: 17px; width: 300px; background: transparent;">The afterglow of the Big Bang is being studied in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the birth of the universe. File photo / NZ Herald</figcaption>
People curious about the universe will be able to hear directly from one of the scientists claiming to have discovered lingering evidence from its birth 13.7 billion years ago.
The University of Auckland will this Saturday live-stream an event from the World Science Festival in New York, where leading cosmologists are gathering to discuss a recently announced development in ongoing research to understand the moment our universe was created.
In New York, Harvard University's Professor John Kovac, Amber Miller from Columbia University, Alan Guth from MIT, Andrei Linde from Stanford University and Paul Steinhardt from Princeton will speak about the newly claimed discovery of "gravitational waves".
Professor Kovac is one of the leaders of team of scientists that built BICEP2, a dedicated telescope at the South Pole which scans the sky in microwave frequencies, studying the "afterglow" of the Big Bang.
Recently, the BICEP2 team announced it had found evidence that the universe was bathed in gravitational waves, ripples in space itself, generated moments after the Big Bang.
This claim is proving to be controversial but, if true, it would prove the Big Bang was followed by a phase of ultra-rapid growth known as inflation.
"If the BICEP2 claims hold up, we will have to write a new chapter in textbooks about the Big Bang," said Auckland University's head of physics, Professor Richard Easther.
"It's hard to over-state how big the stakes are for Kovac and his team -- they are really asking how the universe began," he said.
"If theories of inflation are proved, then this has huge implications for our understanding of both the origin of the universe and fundamental particle physics."
Following the panel discussion, Professor Easther will host a question and answer session.
The World Science Festival produced some of the world's most exciting programmes that connect the general public with science, so it was exciting for the university to be able to partner with them to live-stream the event, he said.
"It's great to be able to bring this to Auckland."
The Auckland event is open to the public and will be held at the university's Fisher and Paykel Auditorium at the Owen G Glenn Business School at 5 Grafton Rd from noon.
Refreshments will be available from the Business School's Excel cafe both before and after the event.
People keen to attend can register now at wsf2014.eventbrite.co.nz
- NZ Herald
7:16 PM Tuesday May 27, 2014
<figure style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; transition: color 0.2s, background-color, border-color, opacity; background: transparent;">
People curious about the universe will be able to hear directly from one of the scientists claiming to have discovered lingering evidence from its birth 13.7 billion years ago.
The University of Auckland will this Saturday live-stream an event from the World Science Festival in New York, where leading cosmologists are gathering to discuss a recently announced development in ongoing research to understand the moment our universe was created.
In New York, Harvard University's Professor John Kovac, Amber Miller from Columbia University, Alan Guth from MIT, Andrei Linde from Stanford University and Paul Steinhardt from Princeton will speak about the newly claimed discovery of "gravitational waves".
Professor Kovac is one of the leaders of team of scientists that built BICEP2, a dedicated telescope at the South Pole which scans the sky in microwave frequencies, studying the "afterglow" of the Big Bang.
Recently, the BICEP2 team announced it had found evidence that the universe was bathed in gravitational waves, ripples in space itself, generated moments after the Big Bang.
This claim is proving to be controversial but, if true, it would prove the Big Bang was followed by a phase of ultra-rapid growth known as inflation.
"If the BICEP2 claims hold up, we will have to write a new chapter in textbooks about the Big Bang," said Auckland University's head of physics, Professor Richard Easther.
"It's hard to over-state how big the stakes are for Kovac and his team -- they are really asking how the universe began," he said.
"If theories of inflation are proved, then this has huge implications for our understanding of both the origin of the universe and fundamental particle physics."
Following the panel discussion, Professor Easther will host a question and answer session.
The World Science Festival produced some of the world's most exciting programmes that connect the general public with science, so it was exciting for the university to be able to partner with them to live-stream the event, he said.
"It's great to be able to bring this to Auckland."
The Auckland event is open to the public and will be held at the university's Fisher and Paykel Auditorium at the Owen G Glenn Business School at 5 Grafton Rd from noon.
Refreshments will be available from the Business School's Excel cafe both before and after the event.
People keen to attend can register now at wsf2014.eventbrite.co.nz
- NZ Herald
