Showing posts with label WMAP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WMAP. Show all posts

Friday, March 22, 2013

Our Baby Universe with Ed Copeland and Planck Satellite


Where do the seeds of structure in our Universe come from, and why does our Universe appear the way it does? In this talk, Ed explores what happened in those earliest moments that lead to the Universe forming itself into what it is today. He also tells us a bit of a story about how the theories were developed, and who the scientists were behind them.Our Baby Universe: Ed Copeland at TEDxUoN



Cosmic microwave background seen by Planck


 The ESA's Planck satellite, dedicated to studying the early universe, was launched on May 2009 and has been surveying the microwave and submillimetre sky since August 2009. In March 2013, ESA and the Planck Collaboration publicly released the initial cosmology products based on the first 15.5 months of Planck operations, along with a set of scientific and technical papers and a web-based explanatory supplement. This paper describes the mission and its performance, and gives an overview of the processing and analysis of the data, the characteristics of the data, the main scientific results, and the science data products and papers in the release. Scientific results include robust support for the standard, six parameter LCDM model of cosmology and improved measurements for the parameters that define this model, including a highly significant deviation from scale invariance of the primordial power spectrum. The Planck values for some of these parameters and others derived from them are significantly different from those previously determined. Several large scale anomalies in the CMB temperature distribution detected earlier by WMAP are confirmed with higher confidence. Planck sets new limits on the number and mass of neutrinos, and has measured gravitational lensing of CMB anisotropies at 25 sigma. Planck finds no evidence for non-Gaussian statistics of the CMB anisotropies. There is some tension between Planck and WMAP results; this is evident in the power spectrum and results for some of the cosmology parameters. In general, Planck results agree well with results from the measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations. Because the analysis of Planck polarization data is not yet as mature as the analysis of temperature data, polarization results are not released. We do, however, illustrate the robust detection of the E-mode polarization signal around CMB hot- and cold-spots. See: Planck 2013 results. I. Overview of products and scientific results

ESA and the Planck Collaboration





Cosmological parameters from 2013 Planck results[18]
 
Parameter Symbol Planck - Best fit
(CMB+lensing)
Planck - 68% limits
(CMB+lensing)
Planck - Best fit
(Planck+WP+highL+BAO)
Planck - 68% limits
(Planck+WP+highL+BAO)
Age of the universe (Ga) t_0 13.784 13.796±0.058 13.7965 13.798±0.037
Hubble's constant ( kmMpc·s ) H_0 68.14 67.9±1.5 67.77 67.80±0.77
Physical baryon density \Omega_b h^2 0.022242 0.02217±0.00033 0.022161 0.02214±0.00024
Physical cold dark matter density \Omega_c h^2 0.11805 0.1186±0.0031 0.11889 0.1187±0.0017
Dark energy density \Omega_\Lambda 0.6964 0.693±0.019 0.6914 0.692±0.010
Density fluctuations at 8h−1 Mpc \sigma_8 0.8285 0.823±0.018 0.8288 0.826±0.012
Scalar spectral index n_s 0.9675 0.9635±0.0094 0.9611 0.9608±0.0054
Reionization optical depth \tau 0.0949 0.089±0.032 0.0952 0.092±0.013
Ade, P. A. R.; Aghanim, N.; Armitage-Caplan, C.; et al. (Planck Collaboration) (20 March 2013). "Planck 2013 results. I. Overview of products and scientific results". Astronomy & Astrophysics (submitted). arXiv:1303.5062.




See Also:

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Order For Free



A purple haze shows dark matter flanking the "Bullet Cluster." Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/M.Markevitch et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al. Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al

One would have to understand how this may become appealing in the sense, that if one were to believe in a God, that it might as Stuart Kauffman purports, that it to be nature's creative genius.



Self-organization

Self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties.




If we are to think that such creation of universe are to be thought in this way, then what is the emergent principal inherent in such an expression that would allow for complexity to rule with it's matter states while considering the voids?

Self-organization vs. entropy

Statistical mechanics informs us that large scale phenomena can be viewed as a large system of small interacting particles, whose processes are assumed consistent with well established mechanical laws such as entropy, i.e., equilibrium thermodynamics. However, “… following the macroscopic point of view the same physical media can be thought of as continua whose properties of evolution are given by phenomenological laws between directly measurable quantities on our scale, such as, for example, the pressure, the temperature, or the concentrations of the different components of the media. The macroscopic perspective is of interest because of its greater simplicity of formalism and because it is often the only view practicable.” Against this background, Glansdorff and Ilya Prigogine introduced a deeper view at the microscopic level, where “… the principles of thermodynamics explicitly make apparent the concept of irreversibility and along with it the concept of dissipation and temporal orientation which were ignored by classical (or quantum) dynamics, where the time appears as a simple parameter and the trajectories are entirely reversible.”[3]

As a result, processes considered part of thermodynamically open systems, such as biological processes that are constantly receiving, transforming and dissipating chemical energy (and even the earth itself which is constantly receiving and dissipating solar energy), can and do exhibit properties of self organization far from thermodynamic equilibrium.

A LASER (acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”) can also be characterized as a self organized system to the extent that normal states of thermal equilibrium characterized by electromagnetic energy absorption are stimulated out of equilibrium in a reverse of the absorption process. “If the matter can be forced out of thermal equilibrium to a sufficient degree, so that the upper state has a higher population than the lower state (population inversion), then more stimulated emission than absorption occurs, leading to coherent growth (amplification or gain) of the electromagnetic wave at the transition frequency.”[4]



The understanding here on my part is to see that such examples are held relevant to how one may perceive "arrow of time." It is out of a "state of existence"(equilibrium or symmetry) that overrules this universe in expression. While holding this understanding about it's evolution, it will express the universes current state. It is also initiated from this being perceived as "being outside the universe." It is overseen.


WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5-years of data. Colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations of the remnant glow from the infant universe: red regions are warmer and blue are cooler. Credit: WMAP Science Team

This holds a dimensional perspective in that one may see the earth, but at the same time, such a view held to it's gravitational anomalies tracked by Grace, would also hold to this being inclusive to a perception held in the overall scope of the universe and it's matter states. Alas, Lagrangian.

See:
WMAP Reveals Neutrinos, End of Dark Ages, First Second of Universe
Bullet Cluster

Sunday, March 23, 2008

WMAP Reveals Neutrinos, End of Dark Ages, First Second of Universe


WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5-years of data. Colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations of the remnant glow from the infant universe: red regions are warmer and blue are cooler. Credit: WMAP Science Team

NASA released this week five years of data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) that refines our understanding of the universe and its development. It is a treasure trove of information, including at least three major findings:

WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5 years of data. WMAP cosmic microwave fluctuations over the full sky with 5-years of data. Colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations of the remnant glow from the infant universe: red regions are warmer and blue are cooler.

* New evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos permeates the universe
* Clear evidence the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog
* Tight new constraints on the burst of expansion in the universe's first trillionth of a second

"We are living in an extraordinary time," said Gary Hinshaw of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Ours is the first generation in human history to make such detailed and far-reaching measurements of our universe."



Relative constituents of the universe today, and for when the universe was 380,000 years old, 13.7 billion years ago. Neutrinos used to be a larger fraction of the energy of the universe than they are now. Credit: WMAP Science Team

Friday, December 29, 2006

Wolf-Rayet star

While I have started off with the definition of the Wolf-Rayet star, the post ends in understanding the aspects of gravity and it's affects, as we look at what has become of these Wolf-Rayet stars in their desimination of it's constituent properties.

Similar, "in my thinking" to the expansion of our universe?


Artist's impression of a Wolf-Rayet star
About 150 Wolf-Rayets are known in our own Milky Way Galaxy, about 100 are known in the Large Magellanic Cloud, while only 12 have been identified in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Wolf-Rayet stars were discovered spectroscopically in 1867 by the French astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet using visual spectrometery at Paris Observatory.


There are some thoughts manifesting about how one may have see this energy of the Blue giant. It's as if the examples of what began with great force can loose it's momentum and dissipate very quickly(cosmic winds that blow the dust to different places)?


Illustration of Cosmic Forces-Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)
Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that dark energy is not a new constituent of space, but rather has been present for most of the universe's history. Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive force that causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate.


What if the Wolf-Rayet star does not produce the jets that are exemplified in the ideas which begin blackhole creation. Is this part of blackhole development somehow in it's demise, that we may see examples of the 150 Wolf-Rayets known in our own Milky Way as example of what they can become as blackholes, or not.

Quark to quark Distance and the Metric

If on such a grand scale how is it thoughts are held in my mind to microscopic proportions may not dominate as well within the periods of time the geometrics develop in the stars now known as Wolf-Rayet. So you use this cosmological model to exemplify micro perspective views in relation to high energy cosmological geometrics.



Plato:
"Lagrangian views" in relation may have been one result that comes quickly to my mind. Taking that chaldni plate and applying it to the universe today.


While I had in the previous post talked about how Lagrangian views could dominate "two aspects of the universe," it is not without linking the idea of what begins as a strong gravitational force to hold the universe together, that over time, as the universe became dominated by the dark energy that the speeding up of inflation could have become pronounced by discovering the holes created in the distances between the planets and their moons. Between galaxies.



I make fun above with the understanding of satellites travelling in our current universe in relation to planets and moons, as well as galaxies. To have taken this view down to WMAP proportions is just part of what I am trying to convey using very simplistic examples of how one may look at the universe, when gravity dominated the universe's expansion versus what has happened to the universe today in terms of speeding up.


LOOP-DE-LOOP. The Genesis spacecraft's superhighway path took it to the Earth-sun gravitational-equilibrium point L1, where it made five "halo" orbits before swinging around L2 and heading home.Ross


If the distances between galaxies have become greater, then what saids that that the ease with which the speeding up occurs is not without understanding that an equilibrium has been attained, from what was once dominate in gravity, to what becomes rapid expansion?

This book describes a revolutionary new approach to determining low energy routes for spacecraft and comets by exploiting regions in space where motion is very sensitive (or chaotic). It also represents an ideal introductory text to celestial mechanics, dynamical systems, and dynamical astronomy. Bringing together wide-ranging research by others with his own original work, much of it new or previously unpublished, Edward Belbruno argues that regions supporting chaotic motions, termed weak stability boundaries, can be estimated. Although controversial until quite recently, this method was in fact first applied in 1991, when Belbruno used a new route developed from this theory to get a stray Japanese satellite back on course to the moon. This application provided a major verification of his theory, representing the first application of chaos to space travel.

Since that time, the theory has been used in other space missions, and NASA is implementing new applications under Belbruno's direction. The use of invariant manifolds to find low energy orbits is another method here addressed. Recent work on estimating weak stability boundaries and related regions has also given mathematical insight into chaotic motion in the three-body problem. Belbruno further considers different capture and escape mechanisms, and resonance transitions.

Providing a rigorous theoretical framework that incorporates both recent developments such as Aubrey-Mather theory and established fundamentals like Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theory, this book represents an indispensable resource for graduate students and researchers in the disciplines concerned as well as practitioners in fields such as aerospace engineering.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

First Stars Behind the Scene

There are several recognized processes from the early universe that leave relic effects setting the stage for galaxy formation and evolution. We deal here with the first generarion of stars, primordial nucleosynthesis, the epoch of recombination, and the thermal history of various cosmic backgrounds.


Part of understanding the time line is first knowing where the Pregalactic Universe exists in that time line.

Plato:
So given the standard information one would have to postulate something different then what is currently classified?

A new Type III (what ever one shall attribute this to definition), versus Type I, Type IIa?


The idea is to place the distant measure in relation to what is assumed of TYPE I, TypeIIa. It assumes all these things, but has to been defined further, to be a Type III. That's the point of setting the values of where this measure can be taken from.

I wrote someplace else the thought generated above. It is nice that the world of scientists are not so arrogant in some places, while some have been willing to allow the speculation to continue. Even amidst their understanding, that I was less then the scientist that they are, yet recognizing, I am deeply motivated to understanding this strange world of cosmology and it's physics.

When I wrote this title above I was actually thinking of two scenarios that are challenging the way I am seeing it.


Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team
WMAP has produced a new, more detailed picture of the infant universe. Colors indicate "warmer" (red) and "cooler" (blue) spots. The white bars show the "polarization" direction of the oldest light. This new information helps to pinpoint when the first stars formed and provides new clues about events that transpired in the first trillionth of a second of the universe.


First of these, was in terms of the time line and what we know of the WMAP demonstration given to us of that early universe. I of course inject some of what I know by past research to help the general public understand what is being demonstrated from another perspective.

This is what happens as you move through different scientists(Wayne Hu) thoughts to see the world in the way they may see it. This concept can be quite revealing sometimes giving a profound effect to moving the mind to consider the universe in new ways.



"Lagrangian views" in relation may have been one result that comes quickly to my mind. Taking that chaldni plate and applying it to the universe today.



Even though in the context of this post, we may see the universe in a "simple experiment" not just demonstrating the "early universe," but the universe in it's "gravitational effect" from that evolution to matter defined now.

The Time Line


Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team
The expansion of the universe over most of its history has been relatively gradual. The notion that a rapid period "inflation" preceded the Big Bang expansion was first put forth 25 years ago. The new WMAP observations favor specific inflation scenarios over other long held ideas.


Looking to the "far left" of the image we see the place where the cosmic background is being demonstrated, while to the "far right" we see the satellite which has helped measure what we know of the early universe. So this "distant measure" has allowed us to understand what is behind the scene of what we know of cosmology today of events, galaxies and such.

Second, what comes to mind is the Massive Blue Star of 100 Solar masses that would have been further out in terms of the billions of years that we may of sought in terms of our measures. So this would be of value I would assume in relation to model perspective and measures?

So the distance measure has been defined then by understanding the location of the cosmic background and the place where the Blue giants will have unfolded in their demise, to the creation of blackholes.


The processes in the Universe after the Big Bang. The radio waves are much older than the light of galaxies. From the distortion of the images (curved lines) - caused by the gravitation of material between us and the light sources - it is possible to calculate and map the entire foreground mass.Image: Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics
We don't have to wait for the giant telescope to get unparalleled results from this technique, however. One of the most pressing issues in current physics is to gain a better understanding of the mysterious Dark Energy which currently drives the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Metcalf and White show that mass maps of a large fraction of the sky made with an instrument like SKA could measure the properties of Dark Energy more precisely than any previously suggested method, more than 10 times as accurately as mass maps of similar size based on gravitational distortions of the optical images of galaxies.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Cosmic ray spallation


As this NASA chart indicates, 70 percent or more of the universe consists of dark energy, about which we know next to nothing
Other explanations of dark energy, called "quintessence," originate from theoretical high-energy physics. In addition to baryons, photons, neutrinos, and cold dark matter, quintessence posits a fifth kind of matter (hence the name), a sort of universe-filling fluid that acts like it has negative gravitational mass. The new constraints on cosmological parameters imposed by the HST supernova data, however, strongly discourage at least the simplest models of quintessence.


Of course my mind is thinking about the cosmic triangle of an event in the cosmos. So I am wondering what is causing the "negative pressure" as "dark energy," and why this has caused the universe to speed up.


SNAP-Supernova / Acceleration Probe-Studying the Dark Energy of the Universe
The discovery by the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) and the High-Z Supernova team that the expansion of the universe is accelerating poses an exciting mystery — for if the universe were governed by gravitational attraction, its rate of expansion would be slowing. Acceleration requires a strange “dark energy’ opposing this gravity. Is this Einstein’s cosmological constant, or more exotic new physics? Whatever the explanation, it will lead to new discoveries in astrophysics, particle physics, and gravitation.


By defining the context of particle collisions it was evident that such a place where such a fluid could have dominated by such energy in stars, are always interesting as to what is ejected from those same stars. What do those stars provide for the expression of this universe while we are cognoscente of the "arrow of time" explanation.


This diagram reveals changes in the rate of expansion since the universe's birth 15 billion years ago. The more shallow the curve, the faster the rate of expansion.


So of course these thoughts are shared by the perspective of educators to help us along. But if one did not understand the nature of the physical attributes of superfluids, how would one know to think of the relativistic conditions that high energy provides for us?


NASA/WMAP Scientific Team: Expanding Universe



So recognizing where these conditions are evident would be one way in which we might think about what is causing a negative pressure in the cosmos.

Given the assumption that the matter in the universe is homogeneous and isotropic (The Cosmological Principle) it can be shown that the corresponding distortion of space-time (due to the gravitational effects of this matter) can only have one of three forms, as shown schematically in the picture at left. It can be "positively" curved like the surface of a ball and finite in extent; it can be "negatively" curved like a saddle and infinite in extent; or it can be "flat" and infinite in extent - our "ordinary" conception of space. A key limitation of the picture shown here is that we can only portray the curvature of a 2-dimensional plane of an actual 3-dimensional space! Note that in a closed universe you could start a journey off in one direction and, if allowed enough time, ultimately return to your starting point; in an infinite universe, you would never return.


Of course it is difficult for me to understand this process, but I am certainly trying. If one had found that in the relativistic conditions of high energy scenarios a "similarity to a flattening out" associated with an accelerating universe what would this say about information travelling from the "origins of our universe" quite freely. How would this effect dark energy?

In physics, a perfect fluid is a fluid that can be completely characterized by its rest frame energy density ρ and isotropic pressure p.

Real fluids are "sticky" and contain (and conduct) heat. Perfect fluids are idealized models in which these possibilities are neglected. Specifically, perfect fluids have no shear stresses, viscosity, or heat conduction.

In tensor notation, the energy-momentum tensor of a perfect fluid can be written in the form

[tex] T^{\mu\nu}=(\rho+p)\, U^\mu U^\nu + P\, \eta^{\mu\nu}\,[/tex]



where U is the velocity vector field of the fluid and where ημν is the metric tensor of Minkowski spacetime.

Perfect fluids admit a Lagrangian formulation, which allows the techniques used in field theory to be applied to fluids. In particular, this enables us to quantize perfect fluid models. This Lagrangian formulation can be generalized, but unfortunately, heat conduction and anisotropic stresses cannot be treated in these generalized formulations.

Perfect fluids are often used in general relativity to model idealized distributions of matter, such as in the interior of a star.


So events in the cosmos ejected the particles, what geometrical natures embued such actions, to have these particle out in space interacting with other forms of matter to create conditions that would seem conducive to me, for that negative pressure?

Cosmic ray spallation is a form of naturally occurring nuclear fission and nucleosynthesis. It refers to the formation of elements from the impact of cosmic rays on an object. Cosmic rays are energetic particles outside of Earth ranging from a stray electron to gamma rays. These cause spallation when a fast moving particle, usually a proton, part of a cosmic ray impacts matter, including other cosmic rays. The result of the collision is the expulsion of large members of nucleons (protons and neutrons) from the object hit. This process goes on not only in deep space, but in our upper atmosphere due to the impact of cosmic rays.

Cosmic ray spallation produces some light elements such as lithium and boron. This process was discovered somewhat by accident during the 1970s. Models of big bang nucleosynthesis suggested that the amount of deuterium was too large to be consistent with the expansion rate of the universe and there was therefore great interest in processes that could generate deuterium after the big bang.

Cosmic ray spallation was investigated as a possible process to generate deuterium. As it turned out, spallation could not generate much deuterium, and the excess deuterium in the universe could be explained by assuming the existence of non-baryonic dark matter. However, studies of spallation showed that it could generate lithium and boron. Isotopes of aluminum, beryllium, carbon(carbon-14), chlorine, iodine and neon, are also formed through cosmic ray spallation.



Talk about getting tongue tied, can you imagine, "these fluctuations can generate their own big bangs in tiny areas of the universe." Read on.


Photo credit: Lloyd DeGrane/University of Chicago News Office
Carroll and Chen’s scenario of infinite entropy is inspired by the finding in 1998 that the universe will expand forever because of a mysterious force called “dark energy.” Under these conditions, the natural configuration of the universe is one that is almost empty. “In our current universe, the entropy is growing and the universe is expanding and becoming emptier,” Carroll said.

But even empty space has faint traces of energy that fluctuate on the subatomic scale. As suggested previously by Jaume Garriga of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University, these fluctuations can generate their own big bangs in tiny areas of the universe, widely separated in time and space. Carroll and Chen extend this idea in dramatic fashion, suggesting that inflation could start “in reverse” in the distant past of our universe, so that time could appear to run backwards (from our perspective) to observers far in our past.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Back to the Beginning of Time



While some of us who had been engaged in a little prehistory examination of earliest QGP states as glast determination of high energy photons, the question, "to Be or not to be," how could we not ask what Professor Susskind offered up for examination under the title, "the elephant and the event horizon?"

What happens when you throw an elephant into a black hole? It sounds like a bad joke, but it's a question that has been weighing heavily on Leonard Susskind's mind. Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University in California, has been trying to save that elephant for decades. He has finally found a way to do it, but the consequences shake the foundations of what we thought we knew about space and time. If his calculations are correct, the elephant must be in more than one place at the same time.


I think there is still this far reaching philosophical question about what really started time? If "nothing" existed then how could we assume anything could arise from it?

While empirically Aristotle has lead the thinking, you know how I think don’t you:) Do you see me stand apart from Aristotle?




So I resolve this question in my own mind, even if I do refer to Gabriele Veneziano and his introduction of what began as string theory.

How could I resolve "anything" that has been taken down to the very first microseconds, while recognizing the value of anything "underneath the guise of building blocks of matter," and have said, "that this is the theory of everything?"

It only helped us to the point of the singularity, but it is much different then a complete death. The whole time reductionistic thinking has dominated the move back in history, there were other things going on, that us simple lay people were not aware of. Maybe for some scientists too?:)


Colliding galaxies, NGC 4676, known as "The Mice" (credit: Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA )
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. JWST will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. JWST's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

JWST Science

The JWST science goals are divided into four themes. The key objective of The End of the Dark Ages: First Light and Reionization theme is to identify the first luminous sources to form and to determine the ionization history of the early universe. The key objective of The Assembly of Galaxies theme is to determine how galaxies and the dark matter, gas, stars, metals, morphological structures, and active nuclei within them evolved from the epoch of reionization to the present day. The key objective of The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems theme is to unravel the birth and early evolution of stars, from infall on to dust-enshrouded protostars to the genesis of planetary systems. The key objective of The Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life theme is to determine the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems including our own, and investigate the potential for the origins of life in those systems.


So again, we are being lead by science here to look ahead to what plans for the future may have influenced, or caused the decsisons they did, on another trip to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope?

The Dark Ages of the UniverseBy Abraham Loeb

What makes modern cosmology an empirical science is that we are literally able to peer into the past. When you look at your image reflected off a mirror one meter away, you see the way you looked six nanoseconds ago--the light's travel time to the mirror and back. Similarly, cosmologists do not need to guess how the universe evolved; we can watch its history through telescopes. Because the universe appears to be statistically identical in every direction, what we see billions of light-years away is probably a fair representation of what our own patch of space looked like billions of years ago.


So then I am at a loss to explain that what happened billions of years ago near the beginning of this universe, could have ever been created in this universe now? Some body may say to you, "that the beginning of time and the distance of the beginning of the universe to now, has no correlation?"

If the circumstance are to be created in our colliders, then what said that mass determinations will ever arise from our research into the HiGG's, is not relevant, to what can be created in this space and time now?

Remember, everywhere you look in the cosmos this possibility exists. The WMAP is indictive of what I am saying.

So you say, the beginning of the universe and "the time created" to produce the particles of new physics, has no correlation into how this universe came into being?

Perhaps you may like to read Stephen Hawkings perspective on the beginning of time?

The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn't have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again. However, the contracting phase, will not have the opposite arrow of time, to the expanding phase. So we will keep on getting older, and we won't return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards, I think I better stop now.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Window on the Universe

Michio Kaku:
I like to compare it to wandering in the desert, and stumbling over a tiny pebble. When we push away the sand, we find that this "pebble" is actually the tip of a gargantuan pyramid. After years of excavation, we find wondrous hieroglyphics, strange tunnels and secret passageways. Every time we think we are at the bottom stage, we find a stage below it. Finally, we think we are at the very bottom, and can see the doorway.

One day, some bright, enterprising physicist, perhaps inspired by this article, will complete the theory, open the doorway, and use the power of pure thought to determine if string theory is a theory of everything, anything, or nothing.

Only time will tell if Einstein was correct when he said, "But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed."




An Intermediate Polar Binary System. Credit & Copyright: Mark Garlick


Consider any physical system, made of anything at all- let us call it, The Thing. We require only that The Thing can be enclosed within a finite boundary, which we shall call the Screen(Figure39). We would like to know as much as possible about The Thing. But we cannot touch it directly-we are restrictied to making measurements of it on The Screen. We may send any kind of radiation we like through The Screen, and record what ever changes result The Screen. The Bekenstein bound says that there is a general limit to how many yes/no questions we can answer about The Thing by making observations through The Screen that surrounds it. The number must be less then one quarter the area of The Screen, in Planck units. What if we ask more questions? The principle tells us that either of two things must happen. Either the area of the screen will increase, as a result of doing an experiment that ask questions beyond the limit; or the experiments we do that go beyond the limit will erase or invalidate, the answers to some of the previous questions. At no time can we know more about The thing than the limit, imposed by the area of the Screen.


Page 171 and 172 0f, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, by Lee Smolin

Now you have to understand something here that the views of those who push our perceptions have gone even further then this, in how we look at the universe. I am showing you work that was progressing from understanding and bringing together what was going on then in 2004, to show you indeed that such an progression has taken place.

I also point out where "Conformal Field Theory" has planted itself, as we look at the images of Bekenstein bound. Such determinations and the roads taken by Strominger point specifically to what we can measure and what we have yet to measure. This did nt relegate any theoretcial view to the "garbage dump" but allowed visionaries to see beyond the SUN/Earth relation in Lagrangian views.

ISCAP will demonstratively help you "adjust your view" in a cosmological re-adjustment that is necessary. Not only from Glast views that arose from some fantasy, but culminates today in the use of a scientific device(calorimeter) for such measures.

In Gamma Ray detection and the Early Universe I point the direction in how Glast in it's preparation has given us new views on how we look at the universe.

Dust torus around a supermassive black hole
The Astrophysical Journal, in an article titled "Integral IBIS Extragalactic survey: Active Galactic Nuclei Selected at 20-100 keV", by L. Bassani et al., published on 10 January 2006 (vol. 636, pp L65-L68).


Meanwhile, the NASA team is now planning to extend his search for hidden black holes further out into the universe. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. In a few more months we will have a larger survey completed with the Swift mission. Our goal is to push this kind of observation deeper and deeper into the universe to see black hole activity at early epochs. That’s the next great challenge for X-ray and gamma-ray astronomers," concluded Beckmann.


Sun Earth Relation

Part of devloping this vision was to see in ways that the Grace satelitte allowed you to see. In what use "climate functions were happening" within the earth's atmosphere how it was being regarded. Time clock functiosn are necessary views, even within this context and such mapping allowed you to see th eearth as it had never been seen before.



No longer is it the surprize of the "first man to step out in space" to see such a blue marble and be aw struck by it's beauty. Now we have progressed in the same views that I allude too beyound what glast has done. Glast is your measure for now. Mine, and others, excell beyond this. As I show you why.

Dr. Mark Haskins:
On a wider class of complex manifolds - the so-called Calabi-Yau manifolds - there is also a natural notion of special Lagrangian geometry. Since the late 1980s these Calabi-Yau manifolds have played a prominent role in developments in High Energy Physics and String Theory. In the late 1990s it was realized that calibrated geometries play a fundamental role in the physical theory, and calibrated geometries have become synonymous with "Branes" and "Supersymmetry".


Now how abtract these views that I will show you to think indeed "theoretcial surmize exists for the potential to push perception." Then, I will give you a real image to ponder, as satellites now progress through this superhighway.

The second of five Lagrangian equilbrium points, approximately 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth, where the gravitational forces of Earth and Sun balance to keep a satellite at a nearly fixed position relative to Earth.


In order to understand this sun/earth relation, you needed to see beyond what Glast had to impart to you. Yet, I do not say that it is irrelelavnt such experimental fashion to help us see even further. You understand this now?

So now, I'll show you what the universe looks like.

Diagram of the Lagrange Point gravitational forces associated with the Sun-Earth system. WMAP orbits around L2, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth. Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two body system like the Sun and the Earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. The forces at L2 tend to keep WMAP aligned on the Sun-Earth axis, but requires course correction to keep the spacecraft from moving toward or away from the Earth.


Now having this perspective in place, I am telling you what this does for perception, had I not carefully taken you through the roads to discovery. What the scale for gravity does for us in our estimation of what that universe actually looks like, when you put on glasses that change the very ideas of how we see.

While you may see refracting of the pencil in a glass of water, you may also see that the grvaiational relation is also apparent inhow we look at the universe?

If you do not think about the force carrier of the gravity then such extension to the standard model will only hold so much for you, while others in vision had been extended far beyond what you are accustom.

A Better Researcher, Not a Cynic...Yessss?:)

Sometimes there are wiser words then my own, to show what is "healthy and happy" with the research into quantum gravity? "A cynic" needs to wipe the spit from their chin, while recogizing what is really going on? We want a well balanced approach.

Approaches to the Quantum Theory of Gravity by the PI Institute

Two methods evolved in the theory of elementary particles to describe such quantized flux tubes. The one, called the loop method, studies them using the basic laws of electricity and magnetism, combined with quantum theory. The second, called string theory, postulates that the quantized flux tubes may be treated as fundamental in their own right, and the laws of electricity and magnetism derived from them.

Many theorists believe that these two points of view are actually equivalent—just different ways of studying the same thing from different points of view. The idea that they are the same is called duality, which here, as in other areas, signals that the same object is being studied with different ideas and methods.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

What is the False Vacuum?



Quantum Field Theory

Quantum Vacuum:
In classical physics, empty space is called the vacuum. The classical vacuum is utterly featureless. However, in quantum theory, the vacuum is a much more complex entity. The uncertainty principle allows virtual particles (each corresponding to a quantum field) continually materialize out of the vacuum, propagate for a short time and then vanish. These zero-point vibrations mean that there is a zero-point energy associated with any quantum field. Since there are an infinite number of harmonic oscillators per unit volume, the total zero-point energy density is, in fact, infinite. The process of renormalization is usually implemented to yield a zero energy density for the standard quantum vacuum, which is defined as no excitation of field quanta, i.e., no real particles are present. In other word, the quantum vacuum is at a state of minimum energy - the ground state.


You have to be able to envision this movement in what our universe is doing. What is WMAP saying? Other events say what, in the node/anti-nodal?

A Chladni plate consist of a flat sheet of metal, usually circular or square, mounted on a central stalk to a sturdy base. When the plate is oscillating in a particular mode of vibration, the nodes and antinodes set up form a complex but symmetrical pattern over its surface. The positions of these nodes and antinodes can be seen by sprinkling sand upon the plates;


The "quantum harmonic oscillator" and "zero point as a ground state, are the basis of my thinking. :)Energy densities. I needed a way in which to see these events unfolding in the universe. Why I look at WMAPing very seriously. Why I looked at the chaldni plate very early on.

Physically, the effect can be interpreted as an object moving from the "false vacuum" (where = 0) to the more stable "true vacuum" (where = v). Gravitationally, it is similar to the more familiar case of moving from the hilltop to the valley. In the case of Higgs field, the transformation is accompanied with a "phase change", which endows mass to some of the particles


If you look at things in this way I have covered a lot of ground work in terms of what the basis of this universe is? "Nothing," is a extremely hard thing for me to accept when I accept the quantum harmonic oscillator, as the basis of my thinking. I had to be able to describe what I was seeing. So "sound" in analogy became a very important aspect of my research. Became discriptive of what Higgin's the graviton is doing?

If you sprinkle fine sand uniformly over a drumhead and then make it vibrate, the grains of sand will collect in characteristic spots and figures, called Chladni patterns. These patterns reveal much information about the size and the shape of the drum and the elasticity of its membrane. In particular, the distribution of spots depends not only on the way the drum vibrated initially but also on the global shape of the drum, because the waves will be reflected differently according to whether the edge of the drumhead is a circle, an ellipse, a square, or some other shape.

In cosmology, the early Universe was crossed by real acoustic waves generated soon after Big Bang. Such vibrations left their imprints 300 000 years later as tiny density fluctuations in the primordial plasma. Hot and cold spots in the present-day 2.7 K CMB radiation reveal those density fluctuations. Thus the CMB temperature fluctuations look like Chaldni patterns resulting from a complicated three-dimensional drumhead that


String theory is only "topologically equivalent" to the shape and values of those events microscopically/macroscopically at a certain plac einthe unfolding universe? I learnt that the energy densities flunctuations, would give meaning to the place dynamically and geometrically speaking, to the place in time, that is unfolding. What evidence do you have for that if "Higgin's" is strong in some event places and not in others? :)

The star Eta Carina is ejecting a pair of huge lobes that form a "propeller" shape. Jet-like structures are emanating from the center (or "waist"), where the star (quite small on this scale) is located.


Yes, there are many event shapes and they are diverse. But they happen within context of a "larger false vacuum" scenario as I am explaining it, while they make their way to what is "True?"

I had to "go further" then the microseconds, strings inhibit?

The plates can be made visible by mounting a mirror behind the row of plates, angled so that the top of the plates are visible to the audience (same idea as in Polarization by Scattering). Create the optimum angle for the front rows, as the back rows will be looking down on the plates anyway. Make sure the cello bow is nice and tactile by treating it with rosin before the performance. Sprinkle the sand on the plates so that it forms an even cover. Don't overdo the amount.