Big bang discovery. amazing isnt it?

emo72 · 18-03-2014 07:51PM #1

all over the news and no thread here? maybe i should check the religious forums:pac:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0317/602860-big-bang-echo/

i will try to insert this amazing video of a researcher breaking the news

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2583058/Eureka-Video-reveals-moment-researcher-told-theory-big-Bang-correct.html#v-3355719604001

so the universe went from something infintesimal to about the size of a marble in a minute fraction of a second? wow. and in that time it expanded faster than the speed of light? its unbelievable that all we see can be reversed down to that size. even for a scientific person thats amazing.

ps200306 · 19-03-2014 01:58AM

I'd say the lack of posts might be because of the difficulty of understanding it. The news media made a complete hames of trying to explain it, even at the superficial sound bite level. I watched the BBC News 24 story evolve until by the end of the day, they had at least managed to mention "twisted light from the Big Bang". They also showed their stock Big Bang footage ... something that looked like a gas explosion, complete with solid debris spinning through space. Realistic or what? :rolleyes: I guess they were never going to mention "B-mode polarisation of the CMB at the angular degree scale".

On a total tangent ... if anyone manages to track down the actual academic announcement paper on the web, have a look at the first listed author: P.A.R Ade. I was convinced it was some sort of elaborate Paddy's Day joke. But no, he is an actual researcher in experimental cosmology, Peter Ade from University of Cardiff:

pic.php?id=8

http://www.astro.cardiff.ac.uk/contactsandpeople/?page=full&id=8

http://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/5443/

It gets more bizarre. His address is:

P.A.R. Ade,
5 The Parade
Cardiff CF24 3YB

How cool is that? :cool:

zenno · 19-03-2014 02:00AM

A lot of folk still think the sun revolves around the earth, so it doesn't surprise me

Another interesting one... It's the cosmic event of the year. Right now, telescopes all over the world are turning to our galaxy's center, where for the first time ever they may have a front-row look at a supermassive black hole consuming a gas cloud.

By observing this galactic snack fest, astronomers should be able to figure out what's going on in the black hole's immediate vicinity and potentially even witness some gas disappear into the massive object's maw. What they see may help scientists solve a decades-old puzzle about why our galaxy's central black hole is so quiet.

Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/17/black-hole-snack-time

slade_x · 19-03-2014 03:11AM

There have been many rumours over the last few days

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/03/16/gravitational-waves-in-the-cosmic-microwave-background/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Proof-of-Inflationary-Universe-To-Be-Announced-Monday-250522521.html

BICEP2 2014 Results Release:

http://bicepkeck.org/

Beeker · 19-03-2014 02:53PM

Fantastic discovery! Inflation always sounded crazy to me and I assumed we would come up with a better explanation. However as we have seen many times before the Universe is not obliged to conform to our biases.
Science rocks!

Justin1982 · 21-03-2014 11:20PM

I just want to rain on everyone's parade a small bit. I think the whole thing is a bit overplayed and I kind of find it a bit annoying how excited physicists get about this experiment (and a few others that have taken the world by storm the last few years). And the media, who largely don't understand the science or the experiment, are really spinning the crap out of it.

I have to admit I don't understand the science of inflation to a very high level and I know absolutely zilch about the technical aspects of the BICEP experiment either. I'm out of the whole Theoretical Physics game a few years now. But last I heard, there was some fairly large problems with Inflation theory, absolutely no experimental evidence and plenty of rival theories. There is even some fairly worrying holes in the standard model of physics, of which a lot of its results are the most accurately tested results in physics.

If you even look at the real experimental evidence for General Relativity, its not as concrete as its portrayed to be.

And to even consider the term "Quantum Gravity", which I've seen quoted a lot over the last few days, one should take a look at some of the theories of "Quantum Gravity". Firstly, they all involve hard hard abstract maths and secondly there is a multitude of them, all backed by a legion of followers who fervently believe their particular "Quantum Gravity" theory is thee one true theory.

As for the Big Bang itself, there is a crazy amount of experimental data which backs it but I still feel that physicists need to take a more reasoned approach to it and stop plugging it as a certainty.

I could spend all day shooting holes in some really great physics but I'll just ask that people add a pinch of salt to all you read.

The Hill Billy · 22-03-2014 01:25AM

To be honest, you are not 'shooting holes' in anything, you are just offering an opinion. If you have some hard facts to counter the well respected & in some cases empirically-proven matters that you are referring to, I'd be all ears.

22-03-2014 10:10AM

Justin1982 wrote: »

But last I heard, there was some fairly large problems with Inflation theory, absolutely no experimental evidence and plenty of rival theories.

This thread discusses experimental evidence for Inflation. That's what this whole hot fuss is about. How did you miss that fact?

Justin1982 · 22-03-2014 11:29AM

gvn wrote: »

This thread discusses experimental evidence for Inflation. That's what this whole hot fuss is about. How did you miss that fact?

I'd just like people to take a look at the technical aspects of these experiments before deciding its proof. Physicists these days are pretty good at spinning their own success and the public/media often remind me of the blind masses rushing to worship the next false god that promises a greater paradise.

Its only a short while ago, that a highly respected team of physicists were claiming that the speed of light was no longer the ultimate speed for a particle. Anyone sitting down and thinking about it would know that there is a multitude of things that can go wrong in these highly complex experiments that can give bad results and they can be very hard to spot. Most respected physicists were skeptical of the experimental results from the start. The research team who announced the result were also questioning the results and inviting other teams to see if they could find a problem with the experiment and replicate the experiment in other labs. The media and public were taking it all a bit too seriously, really over playing the result.

BICEP is only one experiment. It has to stand up to a lot of scrutiny now. I'd prefer if another team did the same experiment to see if the results are repeated. And for Inflation, it should make a lot more predictions that can be tested by different types of experiments before it should be taken seriously.

The Big Bang had to get a multitude of different experimental results over something like 50 years before it became accepted generally (and it still has a lot of questions surrounding it and its not proven beyond doubt). Big Bang theory itself had strong opposition from Steady State Theory for a long time (some early experimental results backed up both theories). Steady State theory might not have been brought forward only for Fred Hoyle and his team.
Inflation theory may have some rival theories itself, some of which may not have been discovered theoretically yet and others may have been discovered but not as well known yet for whatever reason (could be something as simple as the Theoretical Physicist who discovers a better rival theory is not as good at PR as the Inflation guys or hasn't been around as long)

I just think salt and cutting edge physics go well together.

Turtwig · 22-03-2014 05:57PM

Media does what media wants I don't think anyone in the physics community is declaring this a holy grail yet. It's got the potential to be part of a holy grail. The folks BICEP are happy with their data. But that's only part of the story, now they want to see if others can replicate their results or can find flaws in the interpretation. Some have been already been noted.

Really don't like this attitude some people have towards theoretical physics and cosmology. Both disciplines are grounded in experiment and its practitioners are truly excellent at pulling predictions from abstract equations. Nothing will 'confirm' inflation. That's science you can't ever confirm anything. It's just find flaws, build refined models, find flaws in those. Inflation itself is a by product of that process. It's probably wrong but it's what all the best current evidence indicates may be true and so far experiments done to test it aren't exactly chucking the idea in the waste bin.

When CERN published their findings about breaking the speed of light they weren't declaring a nail in the coffin of Einstein's postulate. They just announced their results, as they had to do, and then it was up to others to find the flaws that they couldn't see. By all means be skeptical of the every piece of science news but please don't confuse the attitude shown in the media as being representative of a larger community as a whole. Linde's first response in the video released with the announcement was:
"What if it's a trick?"

syklops · 22-03-2014 06:00PM

emo72 wrote: »

so the universe went from something infintesimal to about the size of a marble in a minute fraction of a second? wow. and in that time it expanded faster than the speed of light? its unbelievable that all we see can be reversed down to that size. even for a scientific person thats amazing.

This is not news to me. I read the theory years ago.

Justin1982 · 22-03-2014 06:47PM

Jernal wrote: »

Media does what media wants I don't think anyone in the physics community is declaring this a holy grail yet. It's got the potential to be part of a holy grail. The folks BICEP are happy with their data. But that's only part of the story, now they want to see if others can replicate their results or can find flaws in the interpretation. Some have been already been noted.

Really don't like this attitude some people have towards theoretical physics and cosmology. Both disciplines are grounded in experiment and its practitioners are truly excellent at pulling predictions from abstract equations. Nothing will 'confirm' inflation. That's science you can't ever confirm anything. It's just find flaws, build refined models, find flaws in those. Inflation itself is a by product of that process. It's probably wrong but it's what all the best current evidence indicates may be true and so far experiments done to test it aren't exactly chucking the idea in the waste bin.

When CERN published their findings about breaking the speed of light they weren't declaring a nail in the coffin of Einstein's postulate. They just announced their results, as they had to do, and then it was up to others to find the flaws that they couldn't see. By all means be skeptical of the every piece of science news but please don't confuse the attitude shown in the media as being representative of a larger community as a whole. Linde's first response in the video released with the announcement was:
"What if it's a trick?"

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. A Theoretical Physicist of the highest reputational standing in my opinion and one of the big players in cosmology/inflation writing an article straight after the announcement of the BICEP experiment results. I know he was obviously over the moon with the news and I have to allow him his obvious momentary lapse into excitement but I really feel physicists need to be their own biggest critics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/good-morning-inflation-he_b_4976707.html

On saying all this, I do acknowledge that all these experiments go through the highest standards in checking and double checking.

emo72 · 23-03-2014 11:05PM

syklops wrote: »

This is not news to me. I read the theory years ago.

yeah so did i. this is the corrobarating evidence though.

Big bang discovery. amazing isnt it?

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