Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on November 27, 2010, 04:07:03 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11837869
'Shockwave' like effects found in the Microwave background that implies previous Big Bangs....
Fascinating stuff.
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This is what Destiny intended from the moment it entered the star system.
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So are we talking like big pop corn explosions?
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From the look of it, the point of origin seems to remain in the same place, or possibly that's just a question of perspective?
Edit : I suppose we are inside the 'bubble' looking out, so the origin would look like the same place to us... not sure though.
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I presume it is a question of perspective.
By the way, looking at the cyclical nature of nature, I support this idea. Of course, hopefully there will be some more evidence soon enough.
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As I understand it, there's a barrier to seeing beyond approximately 1/1000000th of a second after the big bang, due to total saturation. That's what cosmic background is. Any evidence of previous whatevers (or concurrent ones, which seem more likely to leave a mark) would have to be behind that barrier, and the cosmic background, because it's expanding and the marks would be left on the outside of the bubble.
I think it's more likely a problem with the existing saturation theory than proof of anything external. (Or that's the universe's USB ports in the simulation.)
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This is what Destiny intended from the moment it entered the star system.
I think it's nearly ironic that this news appeared on the websites about a day after that episode aired. Obviously the plot point was either part of the original idea or something that came up a bit later but either way the lead time was several months. Initially I wasn't convinced that it was jaw dropping enough a moment - but in retrospect and in light of this real world news it makes things that much more interesting!
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As I understand it, there's a barrier to seeing beyond approximately 1/1000000th of a second after the big bang, due to total saturation. That's what cosmic background is. Any evidence of previous whatevers (or concurrent ones, which seem more likely to leave a mark) would have to be behind that barrier, and the cosmic background, because it's expanding and the marks would be left on the outside of the bubble.
I think it's more likely a problem with the existing saturation theory than proof of anything external. (Or that's the universe's USB ports in the simulation.)
Rian has commanded me to say:
what no
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As I understand it, there's a barrier to seeing beyond approximately 1/1000000th of a second after the big bang, due to total saturation. That's what cosmic background is.
Not quite. The barrier to our ability to see is indeed the Cosmic Microwave Background, but that is from when the universe was about 300k years old, not less than a second. What the CMBR is, is a remnant of the era of recombination, ie when the universe had cooled enough to allow electrons to bind to atomic nuclei, thus making the universe no longer opaque to light. (Previously it was a hot and opaque plasma). So when you look at the CMBR, you see the light that had been previously getting bounced around within that plasma, finally getting freed once atoms formed.
It might help to consider a similar example of this, which is sunlight. The photons of sunlight had been created deep in the core of the sun, but it took those photons a very long time to reach the surface, getting absorbed and re-emitted trillions of times in the process. So when you look at the sun, you don't see all the way to the core, but you see to the depth at which the plasma density is great enough to be opaque to light.
Any evidence of previous whatevers (or concurrent ones, which seem more likely to leave a mark) would have to be behind that barrier, and the cosmic background, because it's expanding and the marks would be left on the outside of the bubble.
The evidence they're looking at here is imprinted on the CMBR itself. What it is is the signature of fine structure that appears to have been created before the Big Bang happened. Specifically, huge rings around galaxy clusters that appear to be shockwaves from pre-Big-Bang-era black holes merging together. Seems very far-fetched to me but the evidence is right there. What matters is how we interpret it, and I'm not 100% sold on this interpretation. Those big rings might very well have been caused by something else we don't quite understand yet. Obviously, more research required. :)
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Not quite. The barrier to our ability to see is indeed the Cosmic Microwave Background, but that is from when the universe was about 300k years old, not less than a second.
You might want to warn the guys publishing articles and giving talks at Palomar then. We can also actually see into the cosmic background for a distance. The deeper you get, though, the more saturated it becomes.
The evidence they're looking at here is imprinted on the CMBR itself.
That's the problem. The universe is expanding, and the background radiation does not mark the edge. The edge is somewhere beyond that. If something else got pushed in then it's really unlikely that it survived long enough to impinge on the part of the CMBR that we can see for the very reasons you described above; it represents a time when nothing could survive. (And yes it's an ugly metaphor but distance and time and it all starts to run together when you talk about cosmic background because that's the way things worked in the big bang. Heat and pressure so intense as to nullify fundamental forces.)
Honestly, rings around distant galaxies and nobody's screamed gravitational lensing effect yet worries me.
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You might want to warn the guys publishing articles and giving talks at Palomar then. We can also actually see into the cosmic background for a distance. The deeper you get, though, the more saturated it becomes.
Yes, this is precisely why I provided the seeing into the sun example. At a certain depth you can't extract anymore meaningful information because the density/opacity is too high. Some wavelengths will take you to deeper layers than others, but there is still a practical limit to how far you can go. I guess you made that more clear than I did first time around -- I was mainly just talking about the age and origin of the CMB. :)
Honestly, rings around distant galaxies and nobody's screamed gravitational lensing effect yet worries me.
I was thinking this, too. Not sure if lensing is actually able to explain these observations or not though.
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I must be missing something fundamental here, because I can't even grasp what this theory is standing on. The researchers apparently found ring-like structures in the CMBR centered around the presumed past locations of galaxy clusters. And the CMBR is, so to speak, the leftover "glow" from about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, right? So...where are they going with this? I don't really see how the existence of these structures lends automatic credence to a theory of a cyclic universe that undergoes periodic Big-Bang-esque events, especially when you consider that there's no particular reason that such an event would leave any evidence of what came before it. Not to mention the fact that such a concept doesn't really delve into what a "Big Bang" would look like if it didn't arise from a singularity, or how such a theory reconciles with current evidence of accelerating universal expansion. Wouldn't it be far simpler to surmise that these structures are remnants of some heretofore unseen process during the period of inflation itself?
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/me adds this (http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.3706.pdf) to the top of his reading list
Looks highly interesting from a quick scim-through. Contains some nice diagrams and appears to do a very good job of explaining the basic principles of CCC.
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Yep, it coincided with that SGU episode nicely. First thing I thought when I read it was "Destiny's mission" :D
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I have always wondered one thing about researching and probing the early moments of the Universe: my experience of the photons is that those bastards don't really want to tell you where they originally came from. They will only tell you where they apparently came from. Given the time and distances of the Universe, one cannot make that reliable deductions from polarization or wavelength.
Perhaps I should discuss this with astronomers who could explain this to the guy who designs their instruments?
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That's the problem. The universe is expanding, and the background radiation does not mark the edge. The edge is somewhere beyond that.
I really hope that by 'edge' you mean 'event horizon for t=0' rather than 'spatial limit of the universe', otherwise those guys at Palomar aren't doing a great job!
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This is what Destiny intended from the moment it entered the star system.
I think it's nearly ironic that this news appeared on the websites about a day after that episode aired. Obviously the plot point was either part of the original idea or something that came up a bit later but either way the lead time was several months. Initially I wasn't convinced that it was jaw dropping enough a moment - but in retrospect and in light of this real world news it makes things that much more interesting!
science fiction always seems to try to find a way to incorporate the latest astrophysics discoveries and even untested theories into the plot. sometimes this happens before peer review, and i find it somewhat amusing when scifi jumps the gun and incorporates a theory that later gets debunked in peer review.
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This is what Destiny intended from the moment it entered the star system.
I think it's nearly ironic that this news appeared on the websites about a day after that episode aired. Obviously the plot point was either part of the original idea or something that came up a bit later but either way the lead time was several months. Initially I wasn't convinced that it was jaw dropping enough a moment - but in retrospect and in light of this real world news it makes things that much more interesting!
science fiction always seems to try to find a way to incorporate the latest astrophysics discoveries and even untested theories into the plot. sometimes this happens before peer review, and i find it somewhat amusing when scifi jumps the gun and incorporates a theory that later gets debunked in peer review.
Well ...science fiction has always been about pushing the limits of what we know about science and weaving that into a hopefully convincing and entertaining narrative. It's nice when it's right but I'm ok if they push things and the science doesn't exactly pan out. It's an exploration of the concept and idea and sometimes exploration doesn't have to mean that it actually is (like zombies :)).
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All this SGU talk is gonna get us split..
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All this SGU talk is gonna get us split..
no