Zhadman Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060316/sc_space/astronomersdetectfirstsplitsecondoftheuniverse I found this interesting and thought I would share it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cygnusx1 Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 So, then, we are not just a pimple on a giants a$$. We are more like a molecule inside a turbocharged engine just after the combustion stroke. I don't want to be around for the exhaust stroke or the compression stroke!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2126 Posted March 16, 2006 Share Posted March 16, 2006 I'll second that motion! Odds are we'll all be dirt napping when the time comes....lucky for us! Maybe some day, scientists will also discover that all the environmental changes taking place are nothing more than a regular process that occurs in a planets life cycle and not souly caused by humans!!! I believe scientist tend to get too focused on one (popular) train of thought. Let's all remember, at one time they believed the earth was flat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pparaska Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Amen to all of that, 2126! What I found a bit puzzling were these statements: "The new observations reveal that the early expansion wasn't smooth, with some regions expanding faster than others. "We find that density fluctuations on the 1- to 10-billion-light-year scale are larger than density fluctuations on the hundred-million-light-year scale," Spergel said. "That is just what inflation theory predicts." These fluctuations are thought to have led to clumping of matter that allowed the formation of galaxies. I'm about 1/2 way through Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos". In it he states that the early clumping of matter into galaxies was actually just an effect of gravity between the small matter particles from the recent big bang. I found that interesting, as it seemed that gravity would interact to keep the homogeous (even) early density distribution of the universe homogeneous, but apparently, the clumping of the matter is what gravity would do. I wonder if that's what they mean by the early expansion wasn't smooth? BTW, Brian Greene's books on modern physics and cosmology are great for the non-physicist. I'm no physicists and I found his earlier book on Super String Theory ("The Elegant Universe") and the book I mention above quite accessible for the lay person to understand. Brian has a great knack for successfully describing complex physical and mathematical principles to lay-people without any equations. I highly recommend these books if you're interested in these topics. His "The Elegant Universe" was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blueovalz Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Thanks Pete. All this time I thought the Super String Theory was the theoritical natural limit to the number of replies to a string (234 was supposed to be the previously determined limit), which was violated a long time ago on this tail lights string Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pparaska Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Eeew. Thanks Terry, that was pretty funny! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparks280zt Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I'll second that motion! Odds are we'll all be dirt napping when the time comes....lucky for us! Maybe some day, scientists will also discover that all the environmental changes taking place are nothing more than a regular process that occurs in a planets life cycle and not souly caused by humans!!! I believe scientist tend to get too focused on one (popular) train of thought. Let's all remember, at one time they believed the earth was flat! Ummmmm.......no comment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest norm[T12SDSUD] Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 WHAT??? The earth ain't flat?????? Note to self...... haha Interesting stuff. A marble sized object contained all of the Universe!! Amazing what God can do with something so very little!! Later,Norm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blueovalz Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 The other day I was having my son take some sensitive measurements on the earth's rotation. By happen-stance, I took off up the street in the BlueOvalZ and when I came back, my son showed me evidence that I actually accelerated the rotation of the earth from the MASSIVE torque of my little ol' 2.87" stroke SMF! Was I surprised! I guess anything can happen in physics! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
240hoke Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 pparaska -- I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Brian Green at my university (NCSU). I watched his films about String theory before the event and then went to the lecture. It was really cool to see his take on things and youre right He is awesome as wording and explaining things so that everyday people can undrstand the general principles. I enjoyed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevor Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 By happen-stance, I took off up the street in the BlueOvalZ and when I came back, my son showed me evidence that I actually accelerated the rotation of the earth from the MASSIVE torque of my little ol' 2.87" stroke SMF! Terry, Good thing you drove back the same road in the opposite direction and slowed the Earth's rotation down to counter that burst of acceleration or who knows what might have happened. You Could have altered the time-space continuum. Spring arrives Monday! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pparaska Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 pparaska -- I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Brian Green at my university (NCSU). I watched his films about String theory before the event and then went to the lecture. It was really cool to see his take on things and youre right He is awesome as wording and explaining things so that everyday people can undrstand the general principles. I enjoyed it. I'd like to see a lecture like that - but only if it's for non-physicists - otherwise, I'd be LOST. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
280zwitha383 Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Scientists were also able to conclude that the universe is composed of about 4 percent real matter, about 23 percent dark matter, and about 73 percent dark energy. Nobody actually nows what dark matter or dark energy are, however. Uuuh, yeah. But they sure know what percent of the universe it is without actually knowing what it is. I smell bull s*it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2126 Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Uuuh, yeah. But they sure know what percent of the universe it is without actually knowing what it is. I smell bull s*it. Like I said earlier.....scientist used to think the earth was flat too!!! Probably pretty good spectulation though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaleMX Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Marble to universe in a trillionth if a second. Kinda like riding with John Force. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaleMX Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Hey, wait a second that means that there is something faster than the speed of light! The expanding universe! Guess that screws up that theory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pparaska Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Dale, I'll wager that the speed of light and just about any issue non-physicists can come up with have been very seriously looked at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strotter Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 The speed of light thing is a little bit odd - from what I understand, there are a couple of caveats that pulls it out of the "common sense" area and into the "you gotta trust your equations" area. First, velocity is measured as time for some displacement through space, such as from point "A" to "B". So, at some moment in that expansion, let's say it takes 1 second for light to make the trip. A and B are 186,000 miles apart, right? But during the expansion, space itself is getting larger. Light still travels between A and B in one second, and A and B are the same distance apart as measured relative the the universe and space at large, but the universe has gotten bigger in the meantime. Nothing has "moved", in the sense that nothing have changed its position in space, so the distance is the same, so the time it takes light to traverse it is the same. It's just that the miles themselves have gotten bigger. The second thing is about the observation itself. It appears, from outside the universe, that things are moving faster than light. We have a picture of a bubble of some kind, which we're looking at it from the outside, and it's getting bigger at some speed that's faster than light. But the trouble is that there *is* no "outside the universe" to observe it from, so the observation that things are moving faster than light doesn't make sense and can't be valid. *There is no space outside the universe to observe from* - the universe is defined as "everything that is, was, or ever will be". You can't be "outside" of it to observe it. It's very difficult for us as humans to picture "nothing", in the sense that space, volume, time, doesn't exist. The universe isn't moving into some void that's empty, it's expanding relative to itself only. There's nothing outside of it for it to expand into, because anything that's "space" is part of the universe, even if it's empty. It's all fairly weird stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cygnusx1 Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 What I find most amazing is what humans have been able to accomplish with the estimated, "4 percent real matter, about 23 percent dark matter, and about 73 percent dark energy". Those are basically all the ingredients we've had to work with and become from. In addition, there's the "God" thing and the extra-terrestrial life stuff, which we shouldn't get into here now. It's all fascinating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pparaska Posted March 24, 2006 Share Posted March 24, 2006 Thanks, Scott - great explanation. I especially like the "you can't observe from outside the universe" part Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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