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03-17-2014, 05:14 PM | |
The Boom Boom Room
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Scientists find cosmic ripples from birth of universe
Scientists find cosmic ripples from birth of universe
Published March 17, 2014 Astronomers have discovered what they believe is the first direct evidence of the astonishing expansion of the universe in the instant following the Big Bang -- the scientific explanation for the birth of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists believe that the universe exploded from a tiny speck and hurled itself out in all directions in the fraction of a second that followed, beginning just 10 to the minus 35 seconds (roughly one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second) after the universe's birth. Matter ultimately coalesced hundreds of millions of years later into planets, stars, and ultimately us. And like ripples from a ball kicked into a pond, that Big Bang-fueled expansion caused ripples in the ancient light from that event, light which remains imprinted in the skies in a leftover glow called the cosmic microwave background. Scientists still don’t know who kicked the ball. But if confirmed, the newfound ripples would be amazing proof of what has long been mere theory about what happened in those first millionths of a second. “The implications for this detection stagger the mind,” said Jamie Bock, professor of physics at Caltech, laboratory senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and project co-leader. “We are measuring a signal that comes from the dawn of time.” "It would be the most important discovery since the discovery, I think, that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who is not a member of the study team, told Space.com. He compared the finding to a 1998 observation that opened the window on mysterious dark energy and won three researchers the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics. The groundbreaking results came from observations by BICEP2, a telescope at the South Pole, of the cosmic microwave background -- a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Beginning a fraction of a fraction of a second after the universe's birth, according to the current theory, space-time expanded incredibly rapidly, ballooning outward faster than the speed of light. The afterglow from that expansion is called the cosmic microwave background, and tiny fluctuations in it provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters. Since the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too. “Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called ‘B-modes,’ which represents a twisting or ‘curl’ pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light,” said Bock. The team presented their work at a press conference Monda at Harvard -- the discovery of that characteristic pattern of polarization in the skies, which they called proof of the gravitational waves across the primordial sky. “This work offers new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin? These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation, they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was,” Harvard theorist Avi Loeb said. |
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03-18-2014, 11:44 AM | #61 |
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Because the universe isn't the alpha and the omega?
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03-18-2014, 11:45 AM | #62 | |
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03-18-2014, 11:45 AM | #63 |
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Because it is what you believe or you have actual evidence of such?
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Thanks, Trump for the civics lesson. We are learning so much about RICO, espionage, sedition, impeachment, the 25th Amendment, order of succession, nepotism, separation of powers, 1st Amendment, obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest, collusion, sanctions, oligarchs, money laundering and so much more. |
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03-18-2014, 11:50 AM | #64 |
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Absolutely. It's mans greatest achievements that we have come to discover things so vastly far away and those so vastly small as well. I can't imagine anything more interesting or awe inspiring. I saw a quasar 10 billion light years away. Thats
6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away. Thats impressive in my book.
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Thanks, Trump for the civics lesson. We are learning so much about RICO, espionage, sedition, impeachment, the 25th Amendment, order of succession, nepotism, separation of powers, 1st Amendment, obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest, collusion, sanctions, oligarchs, money laundering and so much more. |
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03-18-2014, 12:03 PM | #65 |
I BRAUGHT THE BOOZE
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The Kansas legislation does not approve this.
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03-18-2014, 12:25 PM | #66 |
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Yet we know so little about the deepest depths of our oceans.
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03-18-2014, 02:06 PM | #67 | |
To the Game
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"Krauss's latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, explains the scientific advances that provide insight into how the universe formed. Krauss tackles the age-old assumption that something cannot arise from nothing by arguing that not only can something arise from nothing, but something will always arise from nothing." |
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03-18-2014, 02:09 PM | #68 | |
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03-18-2014, 02:17 PM | #69 | |
Don't Be A Dick
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03-18-2014, 02:25 PM | #70 |
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Not really a fan of Richard Dawkins or his posse.
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03-18-2014, 02:27 PM | #71 |
..........
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I was just about to say, maybe the universe is round like the earth and we haven't made it all the way around yet.....
Oh and to continue being devils advocate (although I'm being dismissed). If the answer is just because I believe it; to both the religion and the universe, maybe natural sciences formed from nothing without design and by accident is just as hard to comprehend as a little invisible guy in the sky. Perhaps, the eternal universe is the eternal being, both "super natural" and "natural science" joined together and explained by two opposite sides of our human comprehension. |
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03-18-2014, 02:28 PM | #72 |
..........
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03-18-2014, 02:30 PM | #73 |
Rock Chalk Jayhawks! KU!!!
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This thread is nuttier than squirrel shit.
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03-18-2014, 02:36 PM | #74 |
..........
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03-18-2014, 02:59 PM | #75 | |
Ain't no relax!
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Quote:
The Big Bang(if true) wasn't simply a big explosion. There is no confusing the Big Bang with a random gas explosion. Before that point, there wasn't even empty space. The findings in the OP were never meant to explain the "Why". The findings were meant to show that one of the major predictions for evidence of the Big Bang has actually been verified, giving more validity to the Big Bang theory as a whole.
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