Planck Sees Light Billions of Years Old
August 14, 2009
An artist's conception of Planck.
The Planck space telescope has begun to collect light left over from the Big Bang explosion that created our universe.
The mission, which is led by the European Space Agency with important participation from NASA, will help answer the most fundamental of questions: How did space itself pop into existence and expand to become the universe we live in today?
The answer is hidden in ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, which has traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us. Planck will measure tiny variations in this light with the best precision to date.
The mission officially started collecting science data yesterday, Aug. 13, as part of a test period. If all goes as planned, these observations will be the first of 15 or more months of data gathered from two full-sky scans. Science results are expected in about three years.
Oct 04, 2006 |
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"How did space itself pop into existence and expand to become the universe we live in today?"
The short answer is we do not know if the universe is a.) finite in time and space, or b.) infinite.
We now have evidence that the Sun - and probably other stars and galactic centers - are powered by nuclear dissociation that releases Hydrogen to interstellar space as a waste product.
a.) If the universe is finite and there really was a "Big Bang" then it produced neutrons and compressed them into massive neutron stars -- the most compact, energetic form of nuclear matter -- rather than Hydrogen, the most dispersed form of nuclear matter.
Neutrons may be particle-sized black holes that were made in the "Big Bang". See the recent paper by Coyne and D. C. Cheng ["A Scenario for Strong Gravity in Particle Physics: An alternative mechanism for black holes to appear at accelerator experiments"] http://arxiv.org/...5.1667v1
b.) If the universe is infinite, then it probably oscillates between:
b-1) The expansion that is currently observed as interstellar space is filled with Hydrogen from neutron decay, and
b-2 ) A subsequent contraction after the neutron stars have evaporated and gravitational forces become dominant.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com
Know, no. Have good reasons to believe, yes. The Universe is expanding. Therefor it must once have been smaller. As far back as we can see the Universe is expanding. Therefor it is reasonable to think that it had a beginning. So we have at least one border in time. There is, at present no evidence that the Universe will stop expanding. The evidence is that it is open. Open in time implies that its future size is limited only by the speed of light.
However there is another possible border that is called Timelike Infinity. If space continues to expand than eventually all particles will be separated from each other. With sufficient time they would be so separated they would no longer interact EVER again. This is effectively another border.
At present this looks to be a likely scenario with only one possible way that Timelike Infinity might not occur. That is if the Big Bang occurred by a vacuum fluctuation or something similar. If so than it will happen again since an infinite amount of time should really be sufficient for one to occur again no matter how low the odds. (that feels like someone else wrote it).
Which doesn't fit the quark model. Simply put neutrons are not fundamental particles and it is fundamental particles that are what the paper is proposing might be indistinguishable from Black Holes. Free neutrons decay. Therefor they are not fundamental and therefor they cannot be Black Holes even if the paper is correct. Indeed especially if it is correct. They would be made up of Black Holes if the paper is not a Paper Tiger.
This whole lot adds up to a perpetual motion machine. Of course since neutrons only decay if they are free it is wrong even if we ignore the perpetual motion problem.
Ethelred
Sorry for the new signature. But It Needed Killun.
From QubitTamer's fake profile
Qubitwit gets the rest of August in my signature for aiming his idiocy at me. Again.