Proto Bang...

and before the beginning...Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, General Relativity

Although for five decades, the Big Bang theory has been the best known and most accepted explanation for the beginning and evolution of the Universe, it is hardly a consensus among scientists.

Brazilian physicist Juliano Cesar Silva Neves part of a group of researchers who dare to imagine a different origin. In a study recently published in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, Neves suggests the elimination of a key aspect of the standard cosmological model: the need for a spacetime singularity known as the Big Bang.

In raising this possibility, Neves challenges the idea that time had a beginning and reintroduces the possibility that the current expansion was preceded by contraction. "I believe the Big Bang never happened," the physician said, who Works as a researcher at the University of Campinas's Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computation Institute (IMECC-UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo State, Brazil.

For Neves, the fast spacetime expansion stage does not exclude the possibility of a prior contraction phase. Moreover, the switch from contraction to expansion may not have destroyed all traces of the preceding phase.

Physicist assumes the possibility of vestiges of an Universe previous to the Big Bang
Staff Writers, Space Daily

Minuscule to Immense...

Artwork by Ana Kova

Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics

In particle physics, scientists study the properties of the smallest bits of matter and how they interact. Another branch of physics—astrophysics—creates and tests theories about what’s happening across our vast universe.

While particle physics and astrophysics appear to focus on opposite ends of a spectrum, scientists in the two fields actually depend on one another. Several current lines of inquiry link the very large to the very small.

The seeds of cosmic structure

For one, particle physicists and astrophysicists both ask questions about the growth of the early universe.

In her office at Stanford University, Eva Silverstein explains her work parsing the mathematical details of the fastest period of that growth, called cosmic inflation.

“To me, the subject is particularly interesting because you can understand the origin of structure in the universe,” says Silverstein, a professor of physics at Stanford and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. “This paradigm known as inflation accounts for the origin of structure in the most simple and beautiful way a physicist can imagine.”

Scientists think that after the Big Bang, the universe cooled, and particles began to combine into hydrogen atoms. This process released previously trapped photons—elementary particles of light.

The glow from that light, called the cosmic microwave background, lingers in the sky today. Scientists measure different characteristics of the cosmic microwave background to learn more about what happened in those first moments after the Big Bang.

According to scientists’ models, a pattern that first formed on the subatomic level eventually became the underpinning of the structure of the entire universe. Places that were dense with subatomic particles—or even just virtual fluctuations of subatomic particles—attracted more and more matter. As the universe grew, these areas of density became the locations where galaxies and galaxy clusters formed. The very small grew up to be the very large.

Scientists studying the cosmic microwave background hope to learn about more than just how the universe grew—it could also offer insight into dark matter, dark energy and the mass of the neutrino.

What can particles tell us about the cosmos?
The minuscule and the immense can reveal quite a bit about each other.
Amanda Solliday, Symmetry Magazine

Dawn's First Light...

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Big Bang, Black Holes, Cosmology, Theoretical Physics

Not long after the Big Bang, all went dark. The hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe would have snuffed out the light of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. For hundreds of millions of years, even a galaxy’s worth of stars — or unthinkably bright beacons such as those created by supermassive black holes — would have been rendered all but invisible.

Eventually this fog burned off as high-energy ultraviolet light broke the atoms apart in a process called reionization. But the questions of exactly how this happened — which celestial objects powered the process and how many of them were needed — have consumed astronomers for decades.

Now, in a series of studies, researchers have looked further into the early universe than ever before. They’ve used galaxies and dark matter as a giant cosmic lens to see some of the earliest galaxies known, illuminating how these galaxies could have dissipated the cosmic fog. In addition, an international team of astronomers has found dozens of supermassive black holes — each with the mass of millions of suns — lighting up the early universe. Another team has found evidence that supermassive black holes existed hundreds of millions of years before anyone thought possible. The new discoveries should make clear just how much black holes contributed to the reionization of the universe, even as they’ve opened up questions as to how such supermassive black holes were able to form so early in the universe’s history.

In the first years after the Big Bang, the universe was too hot to allow atoms to form. Protons and electrons flew about, scattering any light. Then after about 380,000 years, these protons and electrons cooled enough to form hydrogen atoms, which coalesced into stars and galaxies over the next few hundreds of millions of years.

Starlight from these galaxies would have been bright and energetic, with lots of it falling in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. As this light flew out into the universe, it ran into more hydrogen gas. These photons of light would break apart the hydrogen gas, contributing to reionization, but as they did so, the gas snuffed out the light.

Quanta Magazine: Discoveries Fuel Fight Over Universe’s First Light
Ashley Yeager

GERDA...

From Nature: “The inner walls of the water tank are covered by a reflecting foil improving the light detection. This permits the identification of cosmic muons.” Image: K. Freund, GERDA collaboration

Topics: Antimatter, Big Bang, Cosmology, Neutrinos, Particle Physics

You and me, we’re matter. Everyone you know is matter. Everything on Earth, spare a few particles, is matter. Most of the things in space are matter. But we don’t have convincing reasons why there should be so much more matter than antimatter. So where’s all the antimatter?

A team of European scientists have taken a major step in understanding this conundrum, using a house-sized detector called the Germanium Detector Array, or GERDA, buried inside a mountain in Grand Sasso, Italy. GERDA’s scientists are looking for a strange behavior in radioactive atoms, called “neutrinoless double beta decay” (I’ll get to that in a second). Some versions of the rules of particle physics says this behavior could help explain where all the antimatter went. But for now, the experiment is reporting some important results: it works.

“A discovery of [neutrinoless double beta] decay would have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of particle physics and cosmology,” the researchers write in the paper, published today in the journal Nature. It’s important that we understand why there is more matter than antimatter today. The Big Bang probably should have created equal amounts... but it didn't.

Neutrinos, they’re weird. Scientists don’t know how much they weigh, but even at the upper limit of what we guess their mass is, they’re many times lighter than electrons. They’re also really common—for example, the sun sending almost a hundred billion of them per square centimeter of your body every second. They don’t interact via electromagnetism, though, so they don’t harm us in any way. If they were their own antiparticle, what scientists call “Majorana particles,” they should annihilate one another. Most extensions of our main theory of particle physics, called the Standard Model, say this is true.

That’s what GERDA is looking for. They’re watching 35.6 kilograms of a special form of germanium, the shiny semiconducting metal, sitting inside a vat of liquid argon inside a bigger vat of water, waiting however long it takes for it to experience a neutrinoless double beta decay. No, they haven’t found any evidence of the process yet. But their experiment works really, really well—there’s no background noise, which is an incredible feat. Otherwise, we might see a false signal. And there’s radiation that could set off the detector everywhere, from the sun to the air we breathe.

Gizmodo:
Scientists Are Getting Closer to Understanding Where All the Antimatter Has Gone
Ryan F. Mandelbaum

Clean Rooms...

Building project managers and scientific leads confer at the site of a new clean room under construction at Argonne National Laboratory. When completed, the lab will enable scientists and engineers to build extremely sensitive detectors — such as those capable of detecting light from the early days of the universe. (Image by Mark Lopez/Argonne National Laboratory.)

Topics: Applied Physics, Big Bang, Carl Sagan, Research

The clean room has an interesting history. In this recap on Space.com by Miriam Kramer (April 21, 2014, excerpt below):

The scientist who discovered the age of the Earth also helped end the use of lead in gasoline and other products in the United States.

Sunday night's episode (April 20) of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" explored the life of Clair Patterson, a geochemist who pinpointed Earth's age for the first time and also uncovered a secret: Lead contamination is a major and potentially deadly problem. The newest episode of "Cosmos," called "The Clean Room," takes viewers on a tour of Patterson's work and the industry that fought him as he tried to learn more about lead and its harmful effects.

You can see more at the link. I have an "affection" for clean rooms (obviously) due to spending a considerable amount of time in them for things like your I-Phone, your I-Pad; your game platform, your GPS...etc.

Moi...

I guess I shouldn't be amazed that a facility first built to estimate the age of the Earth, then suddenly find out about lead poisoning in gasoline could also be used in clearly more imaginative ways. Clean rooms are used by NASA and ESA to assemble spacecraft prior to launch. It's almost poetic that they would have a usage on Earth to peer at the very epoch of the universe itself.

It takes a very, very clean room to build a detector sensitive enough to see the light from the beginning of the universe.

Work is underway at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory on a new "clean room." The new lab will be specially suited for building parts for ultra-sensitive detectors — such as those to carry out improved X-ray research, or for the South Pole Telescope to search for light from the early days of the universe.

"This will be a unique facility, and a wonderful investment for the future of the laboratory," said Supratik Guha, who heads the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science User Facility adjacent to where the new space will be located.

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Argonne National Laboratories:
Building a room clean enough to make sensors to find light from the birth of the universe
Louise Lerner

Bang or Bounce...

Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale and NASA/JPL-Caltech and NASA/STScI

Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, Science Fiction, Theoretical Physics

The next-to-last related topic may seem unrelated: one of the Marvel Comics I recall reading was "Origin of Galactus," nee Galan who in the rebirth of the previous universe became the devouring planet eater that the Fantastic Four would battle and enslave his herald The Silver Surfer. This wouldn't be possible without someone reading the scientific papers of the day, so this idea is not new. It doesn't have to be true, proven or compelling to exist as an effective plot device.

What most non-fans of comics never appreciated is the amount of research the writers did to create their stories. I recall for instance passing a history test on Norse Mythology solely on the info I'd gleaned from Thor comics, albeit the original Norse god was describe as red-haired, needing a power belt and gloves to lift Mjölnir, having a goat-drawn chariot; three wives and children. Probably too much to put on the big screen.

Did the universe start with a bang or a bounce—or something else entirely? The question of our origins is one of the thorniest in physics, with few answers and lots of speculation and strong feelings. The most popular theory by far is inflation, the notion that the cosmos blew up in size in the first few fractions of a second after it was born in a bang. But an underdog idea posits that the birth of this universe was not actually the beginning—that an earlier version of spacetime had existed and contracted toward a “big crunch,” then flipped and started expanding into what we see today. Now a new study suggesting a twist on this “bounce” scenario has supporters excited and inflation proponents newly inflamed over a “rival” they say they have repeatedly disproved, only to have it keep bouncing back.

Inflation has many admirers because the rapid expansion it posits seems to explain numerous features of the universe, such as the fact that it appears relatively flat (as opposed to curved, on large scales) and roughly uniform in all directions (there is roughly the same amount of stuff everywhere, again on large scales). Both conditions result when regions of space that ended up very far away initially started out close together and in contact with one another. Yet the latest versions of the theory seem to suggest—even require—that inflation created not just our universe but an infinite landscape of universes in which every possible type of universe with every possible set of physical laws and characteristics formed somewhere. Some scientists like this implication because it could explain why our particular universe, with its seemingly random yet perfectly calibrated-to-life conditions, exists—if every type of cosmos is out there, it is no wonder that ours is, too. But other physicists find the multiverse idea repulsive, in part because if the theory predicts that every possibility will come to pass, it does not uniquely foretell a universe like the one we have.

“Big bounce” theories also predict a flat and uniform cosmos, thanks to smoothing-out effects on space that can take place during the contraction. But the sticking point of the bounce idea has long been the transition between shrinking and expanding, which seemed to require the much-hated idea of a “singularity”—a time when the universe was a single point of infinite density—seen by many as a mathematically meaningless proposition that indicates a theory has gone off the rails. Now physicists say they have found a way to calculate the bounce without encountering any singularities. “We found we could describe the quantum evolution of the universe exactly,” says study co-author Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario. “We found that the universe passes smoothly through the singularity and out the other side. That was our hope, but we’d never really accomplished this before.” He and Steffen Gielen of Imperial College London published their calculations last month in Physical Review Letters.

Scientific American: Did the Universe Boot Up with a “Big Bounce?” Clara Moskowitz

Genesis Planet...

Image Source: Daily Galaxy link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, White Dwarfs

I took the title from the Daily Galaxy's original post. It seemed apropos and succinct, but I am aware of the strong feelings it may generate.

Science strives mightily to fight "confirmation bias" : "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories." The way scientists try to weed out minutiae is through peer review. Feelings are bruised, but truth is winnowed from social and preconceived chaff. Previous theories once held in high regard are thrown away. As new technology and instruments become available, this disciplined process is repeated. A scientific discovery may or may not confirm already preconceived notions. It's usually the latter. Such is not science, but the seeds of the boondoggle, pseudoscience and superstition; it is the natural tendency in an ever-changing world to reach for the comfortable instead of lighting "a candle in the dark" (Carl Sagan).

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

"I would rather have questions I can't answer, than answers I can't question."

Richard Feynman

In 2015, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of 13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth's 4.5 billion years. It's about as old as a planet can be. It formed around a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe's birth in the Big Bang. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history because it resides in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. A few intrepid astronomers have concluded that the most productive to look for planets that can support life is around dim, dying stars white dwarfs.

"In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs," said Avi Loeb, theorist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation. Even dying stars could host planets with life - and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade.

The ancient planet orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a cluster of more than 100,000 stars. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate about the identity of this ancient world. Until Hubble's measurement, astronomers had debated the identity of this object. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble's analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, confirming that it is a planet. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence that the first planets formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude that planets may be very abundant in our galaxy.

The Daily Galaxy:
Hubble Space Telescope Reveals "The Genesis Planet" --The Oldest Known Planet in the Milky Way (Today's Most Popular)

News in Neutrons...

When a free neutron (green) undergoes a process known as beta decay, it produces a proton (red), an antineutrino (gold) and an electron (blue)–as well as a photon (white). An experiment at NIST measured the range of energies that a given photon produced by beta decay can possess, a range known as its energy spectrum.
Credit: Hanacek/NIST

Topics: Atomic Physics, Big Bang, Particle Physics, Quantum Electrodynamics, Standard Model, Theoretical Physics

A physics experiment performed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has enhanced scientists’ understanding of how free neutrons decay into other particles. The work provides the first measurement of the energy spectrum of photons, or particles of light, that are released in the otherwise extensively measured process known as neutron beta decay. The details of this decay process are important because, for example, they help to explain the observed amounts of hydrogen and other light atoms created just after the Big Bang.

Published in Physical Review Letters, the findings confirm physicists’ big-picture understanding of the way particles and forces work together in the universe—an understanding known as the Standard Model. The work has stimulated new theoretical activity in quantum electrodynamics (QED), the modern theory of how matter interacts with light. The team’s approach could also help search for new physics that lies beyond the Standard Model.

NIST: Physicists measured something new in the radioactive decay of neutrons
Chad Boutin

Particle X...

A new type of particle could have interacted with protons and neutrons shortly after the Big Bang, so as to break up lithium-7. (Courtesy: iStockphoto/Insomnela)

Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Early universe, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics

I remember Racer X as a child, but this is just another reason to blame for our laptop batteries not holding a charge as long as we'd like.

For a little more than a decade, scientists have been struggling to explain why the amount of lithium predicted to have been formed in the early universe is about three times the value actually observed. Now, an international team of researchers believes it may have the answer: a new type of particle, outside of the Standard Model, that would have interacted with protons and neutrons shortly after the Big Bang so as to break up lithium-7.

According to a theory known as "Big Bang nucleosynthesis", protons and neutrons fused to form nuclei in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. This process generated deuterium, large amounts of helium-4 and smaller amounts of helium-3 – the latter two combined to create beryllium-7, which eventually decayed to lithium-7. The theory makes very precise predictions of the relative proportions of these nuclei, based on a quantity – known as the photon–baryon ratio – taken from observations of the cosmic microwave background.

For helium and deuterium, these predictions agree very well with observations of physical systems thought to contain material dating back to the time of the Big Bang. However, the theoretical value for lithium – just five per billion of hydrogen – is between two and five times too high.

Now, Maxim Pospelov of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, together with colleagues at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, says that this mismatch is not a "full-blown crisis for cosmology" because the observed lithium-7 levels, which are obtained from atmospheric spectra of very old stars, might not match primordial values. The researchers say that obscure astrophysical processes might have depleted lithium within the stellar atmospheres, but add that astrophysicists have yet to pinpoint such a process.

Physics World: Particle 'X' may have snuffed out cosmic lithium, Edwin Cartlidge

Charlotte's Web...

Figure 3. A snapshot from a cosmological simulation shows relatively cool gas flowing into two rotating protogalactic disks (magenta) from filaments (gray-green) of the cosmic web. Hot ionized gas at temperatures greater than 106 K is shown in red. (Courtesy of Philip Hopkins/Caltech.)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, Early Universe

A strand of the web appears to be conducting gas into the protogalaxy.

The clumpy universe we see today can be traced back to quantum fluctuations during the period of inflation, just after the Big Bang. Cosmologists think that as the universe cooled, the fluctuations seeded emerging matter that then collapsed into giant walls, and within those walls it collapsed further into filaments separated by great voids. The network of filaments, dubbed the cosmic web, is revealed—if indirectly—by astronomical surveys that show galaxies strung across the presumed filaments, with bigger galaxies and galaxy clusters at nodes where filaments intersect.

Direct observation of the filaments themselves is difficult because their constituents, mostly dark matter and cold gas, are either invisible or too faint. But with help from a quasar 10 billion light-years from Earth, Christopher Martin of Caltech and his colleagues have been able to take a close look at a strand of the cosmic web.¹ The astronomers trained the Palomar Observatory’s 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope on the neighborhood of quasar QSO UM287 and observed, illuminated by the quasar’s intense UV radiation, a cosmic-web filament attached to a rotating, actively forming galaxy.

1. D. C. Martin et al., Nature 524, 192 (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14616

Physics Today:
Astronomers observe a nascent galaxy stuck to the cosmic web, Sung Chang

DSR and Gravity's Rainbow...

Dr. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University alongside illustrations of a black hole and an event horizon with Hawking Radiation. He continues to engage his grey matter to uncover the secrets of the Universe while others attempt to confirm his existing theories. Credit: Photo: BBC, Illus.: T.Reyes

Topics: Big Bang, Black Holes, Einstein, DSR, Gravity, Spacetime, Special Relativity

We've come a long way in 13.8 billion years; but despite our impressively extensive understanding of the Universe, there are still a few strings left untied. For one, there is the oft-cited disconnect between general relativity, the physics of the very large, and quantum mechanics, the physics of the very small. Then there is problematic fate of a particle's intrinsic information after it falls into a black hole. Now, a new interpretation of fundamental physics attempts to solve both of these conundrums by making a daring claim: at certain scales, space and time simply do not exist.

Let's start with something that is not in question. Thanks to Einstein's theory of special relativity, we can all agree that the speed of light is constant for all observers. We can also agree that, if you're not a photon, approaching light speed comes with some pretty funky rules – namely, anyone watching you will see your length compress and your watch slow down.

But the slowing of time also occurs near gravitationally potent objects, which are described by general relativity. So if you happen to be sight-seeing in the center of the Milky Way and you make the regrettable decision to get too close to our supermassive black hole's event horizon (more sinisterly known as its point-of-no-return), anyone observing you will also see your watch slow down. In fact, he or she will witness your motion toward the event horizon slow dramatically over an infinite amount of time; that is, from your now-traumatized friend's perspective, you never actually cross the event horizon. You, however, will feel no difference in the progression of time as you fall past this invisible barrier, soon to be spaghettified by the black hole's immense gravity.

So, who is "correct"? Relativity dictates that each observer's point of view is equally valid; but in this situation, you can't both be right. Do you face your demise in the heart of a black hole, or don't you? (Note: This isn't strictly a paradox, but intuitively, it feels a little sticky.)

And there is an additional, bigger problem. A black hole's event horizon is thought to give rise to Hawking radiation, a kind of escaping energy that will eventually lead to both the evaporation of the black hole and the destruction of all of the matter and energy that was once held inside of it. This concept has black hole physicists scratching their heads. Because according to the laws of physics, all of the intrinsic information about a particle or system (namely, the quantum wavefunction) must be conserved. It cannot just disappear.

Why all of these bizarre paradoxes? Because black holes exist in the nebulous space where a singularity meets general relativity – fertile, yet untapped ground for the elusive theory of everything.

Enter two interesting, yet controversial concepts: doubly special relativity and gravity's rainbow.

Phys.org:
Space-time theory may reconcile black hole conundrum
Vanessa Janek, Universe Today

The Impact of Dust...

Image Credit: ESA - Planck Collaboration

(Inside Science) -- "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This phrase, popularized by the late Carl Sagan, kept going through my head on March 17, the day that researchers involved with BICEP2, a telescope in Antarctica, made a big announcement at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The researchers reported that BICEP2 detected gravitational waves from the first moments after the big bang, a feat, which if confirmed, would open up a new field of study and would surely be recognized in a future Nobel Prize.

On the day of the BICEP2 announcement, and for many days afterward, people were largely accepting the results as correct and already jumping to the implications of the BICEP2 results for what appeared to be a new era of gravitational-wave cosmology.

In writing my (the author's) story for Inside Science News Service, I was fortunate to get an early voice of skepticism from David Spergel, a theoretical cosmologist at Princeton University in New Jersey. He commented:

"Given the importance of this result, my starting point is to be skeptical. Most importantly, there are several independent experimental groups that will test this result in the next year."

Sure enough, in the weeks that followed, other researchers pointed out that the signal that BICEP2 detected may have been attributable to the polarization of light caused by dust in our galaxy. The BICEP2 team certainly knew that dust could also polarize light in a similar way to gravitational waves, but they used a model, based on the data that was available from the Planck satellite, that, the other researchers pointed out, may have underestimated the amount of dust in the part of the sky they were studying.

The biggest lesson, to me (the author), is that no one should rush to make announcements and pronouncements, whether big or small, even in the face of intense competition and the alluring prospects of launching a new field of study and winning a Nobel Prize. Scientists, and the rest of the public, should follow the time-tested scientific practice of subjecting claims to sufficient levels of scrutiny, and waiting for other groups to validate results, before making bold statements. At the very least, there have been major caveats and qualifiers in announcing new data with potentially huge implications.

Inside Science: You Cannot Ignore Dust
Ben P. Stein, Director of Inside Science

How It Works...

Source: The Economist

I have four previous posts about BICEP2 and how the initial roll out (i.e. announcement) was heady for some; aggrandizement for others.

This next to the last paragraph at the bottom of The Economist sums it succinctly:

Rowing back on a triumphant announcement about the first instants of creation may be a little embarrassing, but the saga is a useful reminder of how science works. There is no suggestion that anyone has behaved dishonourably. Admittedly, the BICEP team’s original press conference looks, with hindsight, seriously overconfident. More information-sharing between the various gravitational wave-hunters, all of whom guard their data jealously, might have helped tone down the triumphalism. But science, ideally, proceeds by exactly this sort of good-faith argument and honourable squabbling—until the weight of evidence forces one side to admit defeat.

Now, the last paragraph points to a joint paper that's coming from the European Planck Telescope & BICEP2, (open adversaries to) the BICEP2 team. This seems confusing to those that would use this to point to scientific findings as "just theory," and if the scientists were so sure, they wouldn't change their minds on it. It atomizes the academy and politicizes reported results.

This however, is the nature of science and how it works.

There has to be an understood release to public scrutiny - not at all like (emphasis: unequal to) opinions trolled on Social Media - but peer review, which can be brutal for the uninitiated.

Whatever your findings are, become vetted by like-trained professionals who will first attempt to: 1. Read and understand your report and its results; 2. Using the conditions you've described in your paper, attempt to simulate and/or duplicate or get statistically close to your reported results within an acceptable percent error range.

The pseudosciences are not apt to subject themselves to this kind of scrutiny, often becoming openly hostile to any challenge to their veracity. The projected accusation is usually the scientific community is close-minded, reactionary and projecting a "religion of secular humanism."

All scientists are not humanists, that is a generalization. However, for a field to call itself a "science," it must be willing to allow this kind of public scrutiny, and if proven wrong: acquiescence to the prevailing evidence. Otherwise, it is mere notion and political canard for manipulation of a public that wishes to hear it for their own comfort at the sacrifice of their advancement and empowerment.

How Stuff Works:

How The Scientific Method Works
Scientific Method Steps
Scientific Method Videos
History of the Scientific Method

#P4TC: Ibn al-Haytham

Emerging From Plato's Cave...

Source: Link below

In his Allegory of the Cave, the Greek philosopher Plato described prisoners who have spent their entire lives chained to the wall of a dark cavern. Behind the prisoners lies a flame, and between the flame and prisoners parade objects that cast shadows onto a wall in the prisoners' field of view. These two-dimensional shadows are the only things that the prisoners have ever seen—their only reality. Their shackles have prevented them from perceiving the true world, a realm with one additional dimension to the world that they know, a dimension rich with complexity and—unbeknownst to the prisoners—capable of explaining all that they see. [1]

It could be time to bid the Big Bang bye-bye. Cosmologists have speculated that the Universe formed from the debris ejected when a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole — a scenario that would help to explain why the cosmos seems to be so uniform in all directions.

The standard Big Bang model tells us that the Universe exploded out of an infinitely dense point, or singularity. But nobody knows what would have triggered this outburst: the known laws of physics cannot tell us what happened at that moment.

In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object — a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi’s team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand.

The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane — and that we detect the brane’s growth as cosmic expansion. “Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang — but that is just a mirage,” says Afshordi. [2]

1. Scientific American: The Black Hole That Birthed the Big Bang
2. Nature: Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe?

The First Second...

At first, I was just going to post without comment, but given the environment and the excitement "theory" elicits from a few of us with either limited understanding and/or only the social metaphor appreciation:

The United States National Academy of Sciences defines scientific theories as follows: The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. See also: Wikipedia and  Live Science.

Now - I saw this on The Science Channel Thursday morning:

BICEP2: Pro and Con...

Source: Quanta Magazine

The pro...

On March 17, a panel of four astrophysicists held a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., to announce that they had discovered features in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that are consistent with gravitational waves from the universe’s first moments. The results agreed with predictions from the decades-old theory of inflation, said panelist Chao-Lin Kuo of Stanford University, providing the first direct evidence that for an infinitesimal instant after the Big Bang, our universe expanded faster than the speed of light.

Kuo had designed the sensitive photon detectors in the telescope responsible for the breakthrough. For three years in the cold, dry atmosphere of the South Pole, the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP2) telescope collected photons from the CMB, the 13.8-billion-year-old residue of the Big Bang. Information describing the intensity and polarization of the captured photons was transmitted by satellite to an international collaboration of 47 researchers working at various institutes. Gradually, a pattern of polarized light emerged. The researchers were initially reluctant to interpret the data as evidence for primordial gravitational waves. They labored to rule out alternative explanations for the signal, including the possibility that the pattern had been generated not by gravitational waves but by dust in the Milky Way.

The con...

In mid-March, a panel of four astrophysicists working on an experiment to probe the first moments of time held an extraordinary press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass. The scientists announced that a radio telescope located at the South Pole had discovered gravitational waves generated by the Big Bang. They posted a non-peer-reviewed paper on the Internet that proclaimed the beginning of a “new era” in cosmology.

Sharing the spotlight at the press conference were Andrei Linde and Alan Guth, two theoretical physicists who have developed seminal theories of how our universe rapidly inflated at its birth. The new results validated those theories — or so it seemed.

Stanford University and the CfA both distributed press releases calling the discovery a “smoking gun” showing that the theory of inflation is true, a phrase that appeared in international headlines about the findings. A short video of Stanford researcher Chao-Lin Kuo walking up Linde’s driveway to share the news of the discovery was viewed by millions. Smiling physicists and cosmologists nearly danced with excitement in media interviews.

Quanta Magazine:

Early-Universe Explorer Looks for Answers, (pro)
A Bold Critic of the Big Bang’s ‘Smoking Gun’, (con)
both by Peter Bryne

Fearing Fundamentalism...

Fundamentalism: 1. movement with strict view of doctrine: a religious or political movement based on a literal interpretation of and strict adherence to doctrine, especially as a return to former principles; 2. support for literal explanation: the belief that religious or political doctrine should be implemented literally, not interpreted or adapted

We've confused opinion with fact-based inquiry and reporting of the same; we've confused sensationalism with journalism. The arcane 50's barometer Nielsen ratings - not informing the citizenry - is the all-important arbiter of broadcast decisions; what news outlets put out on the web. Talk radio becomes the model of how we disseminate information. Seeing a television interview of The National Inquirer years ago - they admitted to making up stories after "a few joints and beers," yet they managed to sober up and discover John Edward's dalliances with Rielle Hunter scooping all other conventional outlets. I assume it was the same muse at the now defunct Weekly World News, hence the occasional "bat-boy" alien pieces.

Quoting historian Jarret Ruminski, PhD:

In her essential study of the modern right-wing Tea Party movement, historian Jill Lepore explains that “historical fundamentalism is marked by the belief that a particular and quite narrowly defined past — ‘the Founding’ — is ageless and sacred and to be worshipped; that certain historical texts — ‘the founding documents’ — are to be read in the same spirit with which religious fundamentalists read, for instance, the Ten Commandments,” and that “the Founding Fathers were divinely inspired.” A belief in historical fundamentalism, Lepore notes, means that “political arguments grounded in appeals to the founding documents, as sacred texts, and to the Founding Fathers, as prophets, are therefore incontrovertible.”* In other words, the Far Right, from the Tea Partiers to the militia and sovereign citizens all believe that the Founding past must be restored to reclaim the present from the tyrannical powers of big government and the globalized world order. [1]

It is the same market fundamentalism that fuels the "stock exchange as deity" worship; it is the same fundamentalism that fuels science and climate change denial to our existential peril; it is the same fundamentalism that needs the Earth and the rest of the universe to be only 6,000 years old despite the evidence contrary to that assertion and fuels ill-labeled "creation science/intelligent design"; it is the same fundamentalism that against the changes technology fosters in social interactions, minority rights, women's rights, LGBT rights that publishes digital mountainous screeds of a "return to traditional values" (using the technology responsible for that change) at sovereign, white supremacists, right-wing sites on the Internet...let that irony sink in for a moment as you look for Ozzie and Harriet's URL.

It is why there's common cause between sovereign citizens movements, The Tea Neanderthals, Answers in Genesis (vs. COSMOS); White Supremacists, States Rights Advocates, and Conspiracy Theorists: the changing demographics in America spells [for some] a social and genetic holocaust, yet not a peep about dark money in politics and how that is not democratic nor republic. These are those who think they are at the top of the pecking order by virtue of magical thinking/manifest destiny: more like a set-up unfair structure based solely (or mostly) on a lack of Melanin, and a lot lately on financial clout. That "once-upon-a-time," a particular side of town had all the good books and libraries; everyone else had hand-me-downs and rags; "separate but equal" was the boondoggle that assured a place at the apex of the polyhedron and crush of the weight of its base on the 99%.  Information back then intentionally wasn't democratized, and it sure couldn't be downloaded on a Smart Phone. When one didn't have to think about competing with global workers for the same job; that if one wasn't "college material," you could get a job at the local plant and make a decent living for yourself and any dependents, even promote over college-prepared women and minorities. Unions only could benefit the group that you belonged to, and not strive for some egalitarian utopia. That was how some thought it was, until some nefarious "other": African Americans; black-guy-in-the-White House; black helicopters; Beelzebub; coming-to-take-your-guns; Hispanics; Illuminati; immigrants; jack-booted-thugs; Latinos; LGBT; Martians; New World Order Conspiracy and Women's Rights all conspired and decided to ship this "American dream" and its goods, services and jobs overseas.

It's always something mysterious without an address (ghosts after all, are easy to typecast and harder to fight), yet NAFTA "was signed by President George H.W. Bush, Mexican President Salinas, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1992" and "signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993." [2] These are easily researched points, and involve participation in the governance of a democratic republic by informing oneself; engaging in public debate and voting. In two italic emphases, I showed both parties are equally at fault. Missing from the discussion of the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexican border is how this trade agreement contributed to the demise of Central America's middle class; the rise of the drug cartels; how it, Citizen's United and the McCutcheon decision are contributing to the demise of this country's.

democratic republic: (n) a form of government embodying democratic principles and where a monarch is not the head of state; democracy: (n) free and equal representation of people: the free and equal right of every person to participate in a system of government, often practiced by electing representatives of the people by the majority of the people; republic: (n) political system with elected representatives: a political system or form of government in which people elect representatives to exercise power for them

Politicians are more than happy to fuel this willful ignorance of basic civics as long as it benefits their serial terms in office and plush retirement benefits. Local governors are more than willing to disenfranchise a part of the electorate not likely to vote for their policies anyway, and call it "protecting the integrity of the voting process" for a chimera made up whole cloth resurrecting Jim Crow 2.0. They will memorize the talking points and manage a speech into a three-point sermon with a call-and-response whooping conclusion, thumping a holy writ covered in dust and lint neglected on their own coffee tables. They will play up the fear of "blaming the other-than-your-group" and do nothing, absolutely NOTHING substantive legislatively, other than annual pay raises and continued tax cuts for themselves.

I fear an authoritarian fundamentalism, no different than the "Creation Science" Charlatans, the Tea Party and Open Carry Neanderthals here, and the political party that plays footsies with these groups, lighting a tinderbox that will eventually ignite us into a pyre of quick global irrelevance; the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda stemming from the Arabian Peninsula are kindred spirits. A reaction to a changing globe and technology doubling capacity as it follows Moore's Law [3, 4]: the unanticipated consequence of scientific efficiency, fought vigorously by dogma, pseudoscience and superstition. "Knowledge IS power": the ability to reason, question and hold accountable the powerful, the feared Achilles heel of all authoritarian fundamentalists the world over. It reduces their potency to flaccid impotence. They need the mob, the bewildered herd, for power and relevance.

My fear is founded on the observed, steady, evidence-based erosion of our faculties at critical thinking, reasoning and problem-solving. My fear is the embracing of demagogues in high places that will legislate our futures into a new dark ages. The Dystopian novels from Margaret Atwood [5] and Octavia Butler [6] are instructive. As I said yesterday, I'd rather "life [not imitate] art."

1. That Devil History: "Gun Nuts, Militias, and American Extremism  in a Globalized World."
2. About.com: "History of NAFTA."
3. Intel: Excerpts from A Conversation With Gordon Moore - Moore's Law (PDF)
4. MIT News - Topic: Moore's Law
5. "The Handmaid's Tale," Margaret Atwood
6. "Parable of the Sower"; "Parable of the Talents," Octavia Butler

Golden Anniversary...

Atlas Experiment Blog

If you’re over 50, you probably remember the Big Bang—indeed, it would be hard to forget it. One moment you’re part of an infinitely tiny, infinitely dense point that contains the entirety of the universe, and the next moment you’re accelerating outward faster than the speed of light, expanding along with space-time itself. That’s a remember-when day if ever there was one.

You might argue that the Big Bang occurred a bit earlier than 50 years ago—13.8 billion years earlier, in fact—and most people might agree with you. What actually happened 50 years ago was that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs made measurements of the cosmic background radiation that provided the first solid evidence of the Big Bang’s existence. Still, that didn’t stop Bell Labs itself from noting the event with a recent e-mail blast inviting recipients to “Celebrate the 50th Anniv. of the Big Bang.” In light of a just-released AP poll showing that a stunning 51% of Americans say they are “not at all confident” or “not too confident” that the Big Bang even occurred, the last thing we need is more confusion on the point. 1

It was 50 years ago May 20 that two scientists in the famous Bell Labs in New Jersey, while experimenting with an antenna, discovered the first evidence of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

The discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation eventually brought Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson the Nobel Prize for Physics and gave more credence to Bell Labs as a premiere research institution in the United States. 2

1. Time: The Big Bang Did NOT Occur 50 Years Ago, Jeffrey Kluger
2. E Week: Bell Labs Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Big Bang Discovery, Jeffrey Burt

Loop Quantum Cosmology...

This classic video discusses the rapidly growing field of loop quantum gravity or, more generally, loop cosmology. The main idea behind loop quantum gravity is that space-time is granular and that such granularity is a consequence of quantum mechanics. The powerful implication of this, if, of course, the theory turns our to be correct, is that quantum theory and general relativity can be joined together in what is usually called quantum gravity. Such a powerful junction of the two fields would enable cosmologists to answer some fundamental and almost esoteric questions, for instance, what was the nature of the big bang and what caused it. This video introduces the main ideas of the field and the leading experts, including their interviews.

Source: PhysicsDatabase.com