New satellite data on universe's first trillionth second.
Scientists peering back to the oldest light in the universe have new evidence for what happened within its first trillionth of a second, when the universe suddenly grew from submicroscopic to astronomical size in far less than a wink of the eye.
Comments:
BULL CORN, <br>I'm so tired of hearing about the big pop or whatever theory someone dreams up this month. People spend countless hours and taxpayers money wondering about how it all started. There is nothing we can do about it anyway, and even if we could it would take billions and billions of years to see the result, assuming light does really speed. Right? mmmmmm? I say go out and enjoy the view and spend those dollars teaching people to turn their lights out!!!!! I've vented now, so I'm going to the classifieds to find a new to me telescope or mount. Charlie
<br>The Big Bang isn't something just thought up last month. More like 1950, and the term was actually coined by Fred Hoyle who thought the idea was ridiculous. Hoyle and other very capable physicists and astronomers have attacked it ever since but in the decades since it's won more and more converts and now is the one cosmological theory or origins that best explains the data we have. <br><br>Now, this article talks about a specific, recent development, something thay may or may not be true. But the idea that the universe started out in a very hot, dense state something like 13-14 billion years ago seems inescapable if you're trying to explain the data we have. <br><br>You may not like it, but science is not about creating an explanation based on what appeals to you.<br><br>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang<br><br>http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm<br><br><blockquote class="blockquote"><div class="italic"><i>Charlie Liggett said:</i><br><br>BULL CORN, <br>I'm so tired of hearing about the big pop or whatever theory someone dreams up this month.... </div></blockquote>
I'm beyond disbelief when somebody tells me that a subatomic thingy becomes a universe covering billions of light years in a trillionth of a second. Where is Einstein when we need his simple explanations of these topics?<br>
Well, let me try to reduce that level of disbelief at least a *little* bit ...<br><br>First, let me correct your misperception - the inflationary period of the universe took it from a size much smaller than a proton to about the size of a grapefruit, according to the references I've seen. This happened far faster than the speed of light, so you can see that it didn't last very *long*.<br><br>There are a number of interesting points about the Universe that need to be dealt with when crafting a theory to describe its origin. One of these is called the "flatness" problem. During the latter half of the 20th century, astronomers spent a lot of observational time trying to determine the curvature of the Universe. It turned out to be a difficult observation, and that, in and of itself, is a problem.<br><br>Why, after so many billions of years, should the Universe be so flat that it's very difficult to tell whether and how it is curved? The Universe would have had to start out *extremely* close to being flat in order for curvature effects to still be very small at the present time.<br><br>Another problem is the "horizon" problem - the Universe basically looks the same in all directions, even though, when we look 10 billion light-years in one direction and then 10 billion light-years in the other direction, those parts of the Universe should not be causally connected, since they're 20 billion light-years apart and the Universe is only 13.7 billion years old.<br><br>The interesting thing about Guth's inflationary theory is that it was not directly invented to solve these problems. According to his book, Guth was trying to calculate how many magnetic monopoles were produced in the Big Bang, and stumbled across the idea that the Universe must have undergone a very early and very brief period of superluminal expansion ("inflation").<br><br>And this inflation offers a solution for the flatness problem and the horizon problem.<br><br>The theory makes predictions regarding what the early Universe should look like, and the WMAP data confirms one of those predictions. So this isn't some "space potato" crayon drawing theory - this is real physics and mathematics combining to make testable (and now borne out) predictions.<br><br>(Is it "correct"? Who knows? But a theory based on sound physical and mathematical principles, that makes verified predictions, is worth lending *some* credence ... at least until some observation comes along that it *can't* explain; then it's time for somebody to come up with a new theory that makes all of the same old predictions, explains the new observation, and goes on to make new predictions of its own.)<br><br>Yes, creating the Universe from a "subatomic thingy" is hard to grasp. I find it helpful to look at it from the opposite point of view. Suppose the Universe was *contracting* instead of expanding. It's easy to imagine that it will eventually *become* a subatomic thingy. (Nothing is going to stop gravity from crushing the contracting Universe right out of existence ...)<br><br>I hope this helps ...<br><br>Terry (astrotrf)<br>
<br>See<br><br>http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=427172&poll_id=&news_id=&page=<br><br><blockquote class="blockquote"><div class="italic"><i>Ron Streetenberger said:</i><br><br>I'm beyond disbelief when somebody tells me that a subatomic thingy becomes a universe covering billions of light years in a trillionth of a second. Where is Einstein when we need his simple explanations of these topics?<br></div></blockquote>
