Is the Big Bang in the Bible?

[Geo]

And leaving out the (distracting) black hole/microverse part, is it just possible that universal expansion is really a POV issue?

We're talking Quantum here. AFAIT, anything's possible then.

[Buster's Uncle]

And again, I suspect the six missing spatial dimensions from string theory have something to do with virtually all the quantum effects we can't yet understand.

Maybe.

[Buster's Uncle]

Exploring Dark Energy
The Daily Beast
By Matthew R. Francis  8 hours ago






The Universe is expanding—the space between galaxies is growing larger all the time. Not only that, but the rate of expansion is getting faster, a phenomenon we call “dark energy.” Right now, we don’t know what dark energy is, but thanks to detailed astronomical observations, we’re getting a better idea of how it behaves.

One of those observations is BOSS: the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. Baryon oscillation is basically sound waves in the early Universe. (Ordinary matter particles, like atoms, are perversely known as “baryons” to people who study the Universe.) BOSS studies those sound waves by mapping the positions and distances to huge numbers of galaxies, stretching back as far in time as possible. The oscillations, in turn, are a way to measure the structure and expansion rate of the cosmos, providing a detailed look at dark energy.

Last week, BOSS researchers revealed they had mapped 164,000 galaxies an average of 11 billion light-years away. One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, so light left these galaxies when the Universe was less than 3 billion years old—about 20 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years. Those are early galaxies, providing a beautiful map of the cosmos in the old days.

So what does this have to do with cosmic acceleration?

First, “dark energy” is a lame-ass name. For one thing, it sounds like it has to do “dark matter,” but they are almost complete opposites. The only things they have in common: they’re both invisible, and we don’t know what either of them really is. (I’ll write a piece about dark matter soon—stay tuned!)

Dark matter is the invisible mass holding galaxies together and shaping the distribution of stuff on the biggest scales. Except for the “invisible” bit, it mostly acts like atoms and other ordinary matter: it helps keep things together by gravitational attraction. Dark energy, on the other hand, pushes everything apart. As the Universe expands, dark energy makes the speed of expansion get bigger, while a cosmos with only dark matter in it would slow down. From what we can tell, the total amount of dark energy seems to increase as the Universe expands. It’s a feedback cycle: the more expansion we have, the more dark energy; the more dark energy, the faster the Universe grows.

We want to know if dark energy has always been this way, or if it has changed over history—and if it will stay the same forever. We’re also curious about whether dark energy pushes expansion the same way everywhere in the Universe, or if it’s stronger some places than others. Those are important mysteries: they tell us about the nature of dark energy, but also inform us about how our Universe began, and what its future will be like.

If dark energy will be the same in billions of years as it seems to be today, the future will be dark and empty, as galaxies continue to move apart from each other at ever-faster rates. If dark energy comes and goes, though, maybe the rate of expansion will slow down again. All of this is a long time from now—trillions of years after the death of the Sun—but we might see hints about it today. We hope to see signs of what is to come by looking at how dark energy behaves now, and how it has acted in the past. Similarly, if dark energy is stronger in some parts of the cosmos, then certain pockets of the Universe would grow faster than in others. That also has implications for how the future cosmos looks.

And that’s where BOSS comes in. If dark energy was different in the past, then galaxies in the early cosmos would be closer together (for less dark energy) or farther apart (for more). And if the effect of acceleration was stronger in some patches than others, that would mean less or more clumping up of galaxies.

Galaxies that distant are very faint, so BOSS looks for quasars: the powerful massive black hole at the centers of many early galaxies. As matter falls toward these black holes, it accelerates close to the speed of light, heating up and sending a lot of energy back into space. Contrary to stereotypes, black holes don’t devour everything—they can be some of the brightest objects in the Universe! And that helps BOSS: quasars are bright enough to be seen and mapped from 11 billion light-years away.

I visited the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico two years ago, where the telescope taking data for BOSS is located. Unlike many, this telescope doesn’t have a dome to cover it, so to compensate, it has a square metal box around it to deflect wind. And let me say: those baffles make the telescope ugly, like its own mama puts a bag over its head before kissing it goodnight.

But the results coming out of BOSS are beautiful, even if the telescope is hideous. The new results provide the most accurate measure yet of the expansion rate of the cosmos 11 billion years ago. As researchers sift through the data, they’ll compare it to the outcomes of other observations—and try to answer some of those profound questions about the nature of dark energy.


http://news.yahoo.com/exploring-dark-energy-142200485--politics.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Elusive 'Exotic Hadron' Particles Confirmed
LiveScience.com
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer  April 15, 2014 10:13 AM



Overview of the first element (L) of the huge magnet of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experimental site at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN (Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire) in the French village of Cessy near the Swiss city of Geneva November 29, 2006.  (REUTERS/Denis Balibouse)



The existence of exotic hadrons — a type of matter that doesn't fit within the traditional model of particle physics — has now been confirmed, scientists say.

Hadrons are subatomic particles made up of quarks and antiquarks (which have the same mass as their quark counterparts, but opposite charge), which interact via the "strong force" that binds protons together inside the nuclei of atoms.

Researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland — where the elusive Higgs boson particle was discovered in 2012 — announced today (April 14) they had confirmed the existence of a new type of hadron, with an unprecedented degree of statistical certainty.

"We've confirmed the unambiguous observation of a very exotic state — something that looks like a particle composed of two quarks and two antiquarks," study co-leader Tomasz Skwarnicki, a high-energy physicist at Syracuse University in New York said in a statement. The discovery "may give us a new way of looking at strong-[force] interaction physics," he added.

The Standard Model of particle physics allows for two kinds of hadrons. "Baryons" (such as protons) are made up of three quarks, and "mesons" are made up of a quark- antiquark pair. But since the Standard Model was developed, physicists have predicted the existence of other types of hadrons composed of different combinations of quarks and antiquarks, which could arise from the decay of mesons.

In 2007, a team of scientists called the Belle Collaboration that was using a particle accelerator in Japan discovered evidence of an exotic particle called Z(4430), which appeared to be composed of two quarks and two antiquarks. But some scientists thought their analysis was "naïve" and lacked good evidence, Skwarnicki said.

A few years later, a team known as BaBar used a more sophisticated analysis that seemed to explain the data without exotic hadrons.

"BaBar didn't prove that Belle's measurements and data interpretations were wrong," Skwarnicki said. "They just felt that, based on their data, there was no need to postulate existence of this particle."

So the original team conducted an even more rigorous analysis of the data, and found strong evidence for the particle.

Now, the LHCb team has studied data from more than 25,000 meson decay events selected from data from 180 trillion proton-proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. They analyzed the data using both the Belle and BaBar teams' methods, and confirmed the particle was both real and an exotic hadron.

The results of the experiment are "the clincher" that such particles do exist, and aren't just some artifact of the data, Skwarnicki said.

His colleague, Sheldon Stone of CERN, also praised the achievement. "It's great to finally prove the existence of something that we had long thought was out there," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/elusive-exotic-hadron-particles-confirmed-141306885.html

[Buster's Uncle]

'Clever Editing' Warps Scientists' Words in New Geocentrism Film
LiveScience.com
By Elizabeth Howell, Live Science Contributor  12 hours ago



Geocentrism, a long-debunked idea, holds that the Earth is the center of the universe.



Four prominent cosmologists say they were misquoted in a documentary trailer promoting a claim debunked more than 450 years ago: that the Earth is in a privileged spot in the universe.

Producers of the independent film "The Principle" state that "science could be wrong" about the Copernican principle, or calculations by 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus showing that Earth orbits around the sun and not the other way around. An Earth-centered solar system or universe is also defined as a geocentric system.

Co-producer Robert Sungenis did not respond to multiple interview requests from Live Science. His  trailer received universal ridicule among scientists interviewed for this story, including Lawrence Krauss, who was portrayed in the preview.

"I'd be more upset, except the idea is so stupid that in the end, it will just reflect badly on them," said Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University. Krauss has authored more than 300 scientific publications and several mainstream books.

"People are afraid that science will threaten their faith, and there are two approaches: One is to deny the results — the science — and the other is to misuse science," he told Live Science. "I think these people think if they can hoodwink scientists, they can show off a thing or two, and of course they won't show anything."


'Clever editing'

The science of Copernicus and Isaac Newton (who formulated three laws of motion) underpin modern astronomy and physics. Their principles cover matters such as how spacecraft get from one planet to another and foundational mechanics governing how skyscrapers are built.

As for how the scientists appeared in "The Principle" in the first place, Michio Kaku — best known for his work on string theory – said it was a matter of "clever editing" of innocuous statements, which is hard to combat, since he likely signed a release form for his participation.

"It borders on intellectual dishonesty to get people to be a part of a debate they don't want to be a part of," said Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York who was also quoted in the trailer.

George Ellis, a mathematics professor emeritus at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said geocentrism never came up in his interview.

"The interviewers never put that idea to me, and if they had done so, I would, of course, have said I do not agree," Ellis wrote in an email to Live Science. "There is no reason whatever to support such a view."

British physicist Julian Barbour — cited in a trailer description of the documentary on YouTube – said his involvement in the film seems to have arisen from a gross misunderstanding of a 1977 paper he di-authored with Italian physicist Bruno Bertotti.

The paper, Barbour told Live Science, created a model showing that Newton's First Law — that objects in motion will continue to move in a straight line unless an external force is applied — can be explained by distant stars or masses in the universe. The physicists used a simple modelin which the sun is at the center of the universe, but the model was not supposed to fully represent reality. It also, Barbour pointed out, is not a geocentric model as the Earth is still going around the sun.

"There's an awful lot of people on your side of the Atlantic that don’t believe in evolution," Barbour said. "I think it geocentrism] might be the same kind of phenomenon.," Barbour sai.


Finding Earth's motion in space

Astronomer Chris Impey of the University of Arizona, who was not quoted in the trailer,  – said geocentric views do not necessarily mean  a disbelief in evolution. Scientific conspiracy views, however, tend to cluster, he said.

More scientific literacy is needed to combat such uninformed views, especially to explain the subtle arguments against geocentrism, he said.

"Earth moving versus the sun was not a trivial issue to resolve, and in fact, it was not completely resolved in the time of Copernicus," Impey told Live Science. It wasn't until 1728 that James Bradley reported the aberration of starlight, a phenomenon where Earth's motion in space makes it look like the stars are changing positions.

Producers of the documentary include Robert Sungenis, whose writings include the book "Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right" (CAI Publishing Inc., 2007), and Rick DeLano, who wrote a statement on "The Principle's" Facebook page.

DeLano said the documentary addresses information that "mainstream opinion makers" would not want publicized — for example, a 1922 statement by Albert Einstein saying the motion of the Earth "cannot be detected by any optical experiment."

DeLano did not mention the rest of Einstein's sentence, in which he added that the Earth is revolving around the sun,  – or that Einstein's theory of special relativity explains stellar aberration.

http://news.yahoo.com/clever-editing-warps-scientists-words-geocentrism-film-120818059.html

[Buster's Uncle]

SO - a question for anyone who thinks they can wrap their head around it:

The entire universe is expanding - the furthest parts we'd observed when I was a lot younger displayed a red-shift indicating they were receding at about half the speed of light, according to our frame of reference.  So according to the reference frame of a hypothetical inhabitant of the far side of the universe, we're doing the receding, and I suppose the relativistic space/time dilatation balances/cancels out.  Fine.

But imagine that I'm aboard a starship, we'll call it the Unity, heading for Alpha Centauri at 10%C, making for a forty year journey (from an outside "resting" reference point).  The universe has no center -something I don't really understand, BTW- and all of it is moving relative to the rest of it, and the time/space dilation of special relativity is a function of %C - is the frame of reference for relative velocity the average position of the rest of the entire universe, and what/where/how's the bookkeeping to determine relative velocity taking place?

Keep in mind that I'm stupid at math, if you think you know the answer.  I would like a layman's understanding, though.  Please.

...

BTW, I hadn't seen the first episode of new Cosmos yet when I said that about the universe maybe being an in-falling black hole...

[gwillybj]

Astrophysicists and theoretical mathematicians say the universe has no center because it loops and folds and twists in and on and through itself. Wherever you are in it, you can call that its local center. I don't have your answer, except to say that wherever you are in the universe at any given moment is the basis for that frame of reference. Of course, as for the bookkeeper: Could it be someone has a much broader reference point?

[Buster's Uncle]

The Search for Gravitational Waves: New Documentary on Project LIGO Launches (Watch Online)
SPACE.com
by Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer  April 15, 2014 6:16 PM



An aerial view of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facility in Livingston, La.



A newly released documentary brings the hunt for ripples in the fabric of space-time — called gravitational waves — into focus, and you can watch it live on Space.com.

The 20-minute film, called "LIGO, A Passion for Understanding," follows the scientists working to create one of the most powerful scientific tools ever made: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories, or LIGO for short. LIGO collected data between 2004 and 2010, but a newly upgraded version of the instrument is set to come online in 2015. You can [url-http://www.space.com/25455-ligo-documentary-film-complete-coverage.html]watch the LIGO documentary on Space.com[/url] now.

"As an aspiring filmmaker, it is my intent to focus on films which act as a conduit for science education and outreach," Kai Staats, the director of the new film, said of the inspiration behind the documentary. "While the general populous understands 'cancer research' and frequently quotes the most recent findings on age or diet, most people do not really understand what science is about, nor even what 'science' means."

The $205 million LIGO is designed to detect gravitational waves from Earth using a laser that shoots down two 2.5-mile (4 kilometers) arms outfitted with mirrors. In theory, if a gravitational wave passes, the two lasers will change size relative to each other.

The two LIGO observatories — one in Washington state and another in Louisiana — are seismically isolated so that scientists can try to be sure that they are measuring a gravitational wave instead of another event that could shake up the positioning of the lasers.

Staats worked with the LIGO scientists and used animation to show some of the more complex ideas explored in "LIGO, A Passion for Understanding."

"The film was shot in just 12 days at LIGO Hanford Observatory, mid December 2013," Staats told Space.com via email. "The 3D art was produced by the talented artist Leonardo Buono. The trailer was completed by mid January. Editing of the proper film was initiated the second week of February and completed (mostly) by mid March, with some fine-tuning of key sections. I estimate nearly two hundreds hours editing for the trailer and film."

LIGO's science is on the cutting edge of astrophysics today. Gravitational waves have recently made headlines, thanks to a new result from a telescope called BICEP2 (short for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) in Antarctica.

Scientists using the South Pole instrument have discovered what look like the signs of primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background — ancient light that spread throughout the universe about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. If the finding is confirmed, those early ripples in space-time could be the telltale signs of the universe's rapid expansion shortly after the Big Bang.

Although LIGO will not look for these early gravitational waves, Staats did want to include something about primordial gravitational waves in the film. He even crafted a section about them. But the timing didn't work out, so the late-breaking science didn't make the cut.

"Given the time to premiere, we chose to use the next film as a place to thoroughly explain the various frequencies of gravitational waves and what they mean to human observers," Staats said. "It is never easy to drop part of film … but now we can look forward to an in-depth, likely very creative visual explanation in the next chapter."

Staats hopes that he'll have a chance to follow up the new documentary with another. The next film will detail the stories of the founder of LIGO and the new scientists working with the detector today.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 12:53 p.m. EDT on April 15.

http://news.yahoo.com/search-gravitational-waves-documentary-project-ligo-launches-watch-221656341.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Astrophysicists and theoretical mathematicians say the universe has no center because it loops and folds and twists in and on and through itself. Wherever you are in it, you can call that its local center. I don't have your answer, except to say that wherever you are in the universe at any given moment is the basis for that frame of reference. Of course, as for the bookkeeper: Could it be someone has a much broader reference point?

God?  Possibly - you do know what Bertrand Russell called that, don't you?

I'd point out that according to theory, I'd be experiencing time aboard the Unity in a way consistent with the frame of reference being fairly local - I think.  I wonder if it's even possible to comment intelligently without some field experimentation/observation...

[gwillybj]

Enlighten me, please. There is a site with six pages of his quotes (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bertrand_russell.html) and those dealing with religion and God and science seem positive enough.

some field experimentation/observation...

Something I wish was seriously possible in my (our?) lifetime.

[Buster's Uncle]

He was an atheist mathematician and philosopher whom atheists love to quote.  $#@! those guys, if you ask me, but he had a strong point here:  God of the Gaps - when pro-science Christians like you point at gaps in our scientific understanding as evidence of God.

Once in high school, someone showed me a Chick tract that asserted that no one knew what held nuclei together, claiming God did it.  Mr. Chick, like me at 13, had never heard of the fundamental forces.  God of the Gaps.

None of which is proof God isn't in there, of course, just that we've filled a lot of gaps so far without finding an Old Testament sky patriarch staring back in a way we understood as such. [shrugs]


Have you read Contact by Carl Sagan, or seen the movie?

Something I wish was seriously possible in my (our?) lifetime.

QFT!

[gwillybj]

I did see Contact three times over the years, and I really liked it. That bit where she talked to her "father" seemed a bit more fiction than science for me, but, imho, Sagan was trying to get "us" to just stop the nonsense and be real about life here on Earth before "we" messed it up so bad no alien would think of it as worth visiting. I have the book, but can't get to it right now, so I might be way off on that point. Between Sagan and Hawking, I can't decide who to read first.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm thinking about the stuff with God hiding a message in the value of Pi; I don't remember much being made of it in the movie - a pity, too.

[Yitzi]

I'm thinking about the stuff with God hiding a message in the value of Pi; I don't remember much being made of it in the movie - a pity, too.

Which doesn't really make sense; pi can be defined in a number of equivalent ways (the most fundamental is probably as half the period of solutions to the differential equation y''=-y), none of which are properties of the universe or of anything else that can be said to have been created.

[Buster's Uncle]

The idea was hiding messages in natural laws/universal constants - the book had the pseudo-dad claiming there were lots in lots of places.  The ending had base ten maths expressing a binary code, for that matter; but Pi IS a law of the universe as we know it - and wouldn't it be cool if God had done that?