Cosmological iconoclasts offer new ideas

[Celebration]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/15/MNGUSE7QIA1.DTL


The article covers details of the following (thought this might be a substitute for the locked thread as this has complete sourcing from a mainstream newspaper, is broader in scope, and readily accessible through the link....)

-- Doubt about present formulations of the Big Bang hypothesis. This month, a major problem in the mainstream Big Bang hypothesis is reported by two physicists at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. According to the Aug. 1 issue of the prestigious Astrophysical Journal, Professor Richard Lieu and research associate Jonathan Mittaz analyzed measurements of the cosmic background radiation made by a space satellite, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a few years ago.

Snip...............

-- Doubt that a puzzling and so-far-unseen dark energy is causing the universe to expand faster and faster over time. When first reported in the 1990s, this discovery was recognized as one of the most counterintuitive developments in the history of astronomy. Previously, astrophysicists had assumed the universe was expanding but would either expand increasingly slowly with time or collapse back upon itself like a ruined souffle.

Snip...............


-- Doubt about neutron stars. Are some of them impostors? First discovered by their electromagnetic pulses in the 1960s -- by scientists who initially suspected the signals might come from "bug-eyed monsters" or BEMs in an alien civilization -- neutron stars, some of which are pulsars, are among the strangest cosmic phenomena. In theory, they consist largely or totally of extremely compacted neutrons. Whereas our sun is almost 900,000 miles wide, a neutron star might be as compact as San Francisco. (The three main building blocks of atoms are protons, electrons and neutrons, which are, respectively, positively, negatively and neutrally charged particles.)

snip..............

-- Doubt that our universe is the only universe. Until recent years, most astrophysicists dismissed as metaphysical mumbo-jumbo the "anthropic principle." This quasi-scientific hypothesis posits a mysterious link between the existence of human life and the existence of the universe itself. For example, scientists have long puzzled over certain physical phenomena -- say, the structure of the carbon atom -- which seem almost ideally designed to support the existence of organic molecules, of which living entities are composed. Religious people interpret this fact in "intelligent designer" terms -- they say, in effect, that "God made carbon atoms that way so that life would emerge."

[benburch]

1. Some people whore their scientific judgement off to their Religion.

Few honest people will do that.

[Celebration]

6. Sure

An even greater problem is whoring their scientific judgment off to money!!

Make no mistake about it-- the biblical creationists have hitched their wagon to the Big Bang-- not for any scientific reason, but because it is generally accepted. They will take the generally accepted scientific paradigm and reinvent and spin it to meet their stated objective. The Big Bang is relatively easy for them to spin--there being a beginning and all--whatever replaces it may (or may not) make things more difficult.

[papau]

2. Great Post - below is non-copyrighted PRESS RELEASE of 3/05

http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1018771

Source: INFN/Fermilab
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 16 March 2005
*******************************************************************

March 16, 2005

For immediate release

ITALIAN, US COSMOLOGISTS PRESENT ALTERNATE EXPLANATION FOR ACCELERATING
EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE: WAS EINSTEIN RIGHT WHEN HE SAID HE WAS WRONG?

Why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, spreading its contents over ever greater dimensions of space? An original solution to this puzzle, certainly the most fascinating question in modern cosmology, was put forward by four theoretical physicists, Edward W. Kolb of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Chicago (USA): Sabino Matarrese of the University of Padova; Alessio Notari from McGill University (Montreal,Canada) and Antonio Riotto of INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) of Padova (Italy). Their study was submitted yesterday to the journal Physical Review Letters.

Over the last hundred years, the expansion of the universe has been a subject of passionate discussion, engaging the most brilliant minds of the century. Like his contemporaries, Albert Einstein initially thought that the universe was static: that it neither expanded nor shrank. When his own Theory of General Relativity clearly showed that the universe should expand or contract, Einstein chose to introduce a new ingredient into his theory. His “cosmological constant” represented a mass density of empty space that drove the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate.

When in 1929 Edwin Hubble proved that the universe is in fact expanding, Einstein repudiated his cosmological constant, calling it “the greatest blunder of my life.” Then, almost a century later, physicists resurrected the cosmological constant in a variant called dark energy. In 1998, observations of very distant supernovae demonstrated that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This accelerating expansion seemed to be explicable only by the presence of a new component of the universe, a “dark energy,” representing some 70 percent of the total mass of the universe. Of the rest, about 25 percent appears to be in the form of another mysterious component, dark matter; while only about 5 percent comprises ordinary matter, those quarks, protons, neutrons and electrons that we and the galaxies are made of.

“The hypothesis of dark energy is extremely fascinating,” explains Padova’s Antonio Riotto, “but on the other hand it represents a serious problem. No theoretical model, not even the most modern, such as supersymmetry or string theory, is able to explain the presence of this mysterious dark energy in the amount that our observations require. If dark energy were the size that theories predict, the universe would have expanded with such a fantastic velocity that it would have prevented the existence of everything we know in our cosmos.”

The requisite amount of dark energy is so difficult to reconcile with the known laws of nature that physicists have proposed all manner of exotic explanations, including new forces, new dimensions of spacetime, and new ultralight elementary particles. However, the new report proposes no new ingredient for the universe, only a realization that the present acceleration of the universe is a consequence of the standard cosmological model for the early universe: inflation.

“Our solution to the paradox posed by the accelerating universe,” Riotto says, “relies on the so-called inflationary theory, born in 1981. According to this theory, within a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe experienced an incredibly rapid expansion. This explains why our universe seems to be very homogeneous. Recently, the Boomerang and WMAP experiments, which measured the small fluctuations in the background radiation originating with the Big Bang, confirmed inflationary theory.

It is widely believed that during the inflationary expansion early in the history of the universe, very tiny ripples in spacetime were generated, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. These ripples were stretched by the expansion of the universe and extend today far beyond our cosmic horizon, that is over a region much bigger than the observable universe, a distance of about 15 billion light years. In their current paper, the authors propose that it is the evolution of these cosmic ripples that increases the observed expansion of the universe and accounts for its acceleration.

“We realized that you simply need to add this new key ingredient, the ripples of spacetime generated during the epoch of inflation, to Einstein’s General Relativity to explain why the universe is accelerating today,” Riotto says. “It seems that the solution to the puzzle of acceleration involves the universe beyond our cosmic horizon. No mysterious dark energy is required.”

Fermilab’s Kolb called the authors’ proposal the most conservative explanation for the accelerating universe. “It requires only a proper accounting of the physical effects of the ripples beyond our cosmic horizon,” he said.

Data from upcoming experiments will allow cosmologists to test the proposal. “Whether Einstein was right when he first introduced the cosmological constant, or whether he was right when he later refuted the idea will soon be tested by a new round of precision cosmological observations,” Kolb said. “New data will soon allow us to distinguish between our explanation for the accelerated expansion of the universe and the dark energy solution.”

INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Italy’s national nuclear physics institute, supports, coordinates and carries out scientific research in subnuclear, nuclear and astroparticle physics and is involved in developing relevant technologies.

Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, USA, is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc. for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds advanced research in particle physics and cosmology.

[Orrex]

4. I have a concern about the framing of this issue

Here's the snippet from the quoted press release:

Why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, spreading its contents over ever greater dimensions of space?

Is that the right way to ask the question? I mean, the universe is space (and time, of course), so to say that it's expanding through space seems redundant to me.

Am I misreading the sentence, or is it meant as a colloquialism? If the latter, then I think it does a disservice to its own arguments.

[Celebration]

5. I give up!!

Isn't there supposedly an edge to the universe? I guess if the planetary bodies (stars) are staying the same size but getting further apart that is a clue. But really I don't know.

[papau]

9. "expanding through space" is not a phrased used - As you note

space itself is expanding.

Perhaps "void" - perhaps no word - describes non-universe.

It gets into even more fun with words when folks discuss the shape of the universe!

:-)

[longship]

3. Waiting for the next revolution

The current situation with cosmology is similar to that of the latter part of the 19th century when the atomic theory was being fleshed out and radioactivity was discovered. The photoelectric effect (Einstein's 1906 Nobel Prize paper) was the first shot fired in the revolution that swept over modern physics.

The current cosmological situation is a mess. The mysterious dark matter and dark energy are a real problem. As Kuhn has written the stress of this situation is essential to the development of a new direction for theory. Scientists are patiently working and waiting in a way that only scientists can do.

[papau]

7. Very True - Paradigm shift coming - DUCK! :-)

:-)

[Ian David]

8. The Universe is giving us the finger (see below)

[papau]

10. LOL - - very good!

:-)

[BillZBubb]

11. Is that the W Bush nebula???

Seems like a worthy name.