Thanks Ernest.
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Posted on 11/30/2012 11:27:15 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A group of Penn State physicists says the universe we now see could have arisen from a "Big Bounce" rather than a Big Bang.
The new work by Penn State, led by professor Abhay Ashtekar, director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, proposes ways to apply quantum physics "further back in time than ever before – right back to the beginning," the university says in a release.
We have a pretty good idea of the large-scale structures of the universe when it was only a few hundred thousand years old. That comes from studying the fingerprint of the ancient universe that's visible in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which has been intensely mapped and studied since its discovery in 1964.
However, the CMB – which marked the "inflationary" period of the universe – poses its own much-argued mystery: why isn't it smooth? How did the "lumps" emerge? (And it's a good thing they did, by the way, since galaxies, stars, planets, and people are all a consequence of those lumps).
The nutshell of Ashtekar's proposal is this: if you can apply quantum physics to the structures of the very early universe, it could explain the structures we now see. And that's what Ashtekar's group believes it has done – it's created a paradigm that uses the emerging field of "quantum loop cosmology" to explain how quantum fluctuations might have created the pre-inflationary structures which, after the universe's inflationary phase, formed the kernels for the universe we know see.
In the period Penn State is looking at, the universe was dense. Very, very dense: where an atomic nucleus has a density of 1014 grams per cubic centimetre, the density of the ancient universe was a staggering 1094 grams per cubic centimetre.
That kind of "stuff" can't be described by the Einsteinian theories that now describe cosmology so well. As one of Ashtekar's collaborators, post-doctoral fellow Ivan Agullo, explains:
The inflationary paradigm enjoys remarkable success in explaining the observed features of the cosmic background radiation. Yet this model is incomplete. It retains the idea that the universe burst forth from nothing in a Big Bang, which naturally results from the inability of the paradigm's general-relativity physics to describe extreme quantum-mechanical situations.One needs a quantum theory of gravity, like loop quantum cosmology, to go beyond Einstein in order to capture the true physics near the origin of the universe.
In fact, the early universe was so strange that even time would appear different if you could go there and survive the experience. Instead of the strict causality that rules the classical macro universe, the "quantum loop universe" would have been ruled by probabilities. It may even point to a "Big Bounce", in which the universe arises not from "nothing", but from that super-compressed mass that had a distinct history of its own.
It seems almost unimaginable, but those probabilities – the mere chance that in the transition from ultra-dense matter to the inflationary universe, a few quantum particles happened to be clustered rather than uniformly distributed – can, Ashtekar's group claims, explain today's universe.
The combination of the new "loop-quantum-origins" paradigm with quantum cosmology equations, they say, show that "fundamental fluctuations in the very nature of space at the moment of the Big Bounce evolve to become the seed-like structures seen in the cosmic microwave background."
Even better, they assert, their theories demonstrate good agreement with what's observed in the CMB.
What is the difference between Quantum and Physics?
Can you demonstrate in a repeatable experiment a physical proof of a Quantum Theorem?
In my opinion, all penny and a half worth, Quantum Physics ranks right up there with the “science” of many branches of Psychology and somewhat below the practical value of a Doctorate in Advanced Basket weaving. At least with basket weaving, you can prove your theorem. And as a bonus, you can gather nuts that you can eat!
Bonus Question for extra points... How many Quantum Theroems and Psycological evaluations can fit in a nut shell, and how many calories are they worth?
No personal slight intended cause I am just kidding, all are retorical questions, no extra points are available and when TSHTF two out of three courses of study have no practical value in producing calories for consumption. Simply because after the SHTF there will be no leftist masters to channel production into the wasteland of mere speculation via the mighty grant.
Gerald Schroeder, The Science Of God: The Convergence Of Scientific And Biblical Wisdom
As the overall mass of the universe was limited to successivley smaller volumes (density=m/v) in its earlier histories we know by Relativity that time would have passed at successively slower rates therein from the viepoint of Earth today. Thus it can be said that 15 billion years≈6 days.
“Does something ever come from nothing?
We just need ONE example!”
Yes. Study “virtual particle pairs”.
In a vacuum, a particle/antiparticle pair can emerge from, well, nothing. Happens a lot actually. The two usually attract and annihilate, leaving nothing behind. Given a slight perturbation, they can avoid each other and survive. One notable case is “Hawking radiation”, where a black hole absorbs one particle leaving the other to look like it did the impossible: emerge from the black hole.
This has actually been captured and leveraged in a lab.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110603/full/news.2011.346.html
By moving a pair of mirrors fast enough, these particle pairs can be disrupted and dispersed, generating light from nothing.
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It was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Ocklseizure.
Beware the coming of The Great White Handkerchief.
Quantum Theory is utilized in the operations of transistors and semiconductors. It was also realized that QT could be used to smooth out the quantum noise in atomic clocks. Furthermore, laser technology stems directly from atomic energy levels being discrete and not continuous, emitted in discrete amounts termed quanta. Additionally the idea of quantum entanglement seems supportable by many experiments confirming Bell's Theorem which will also likely lead to advances in quantum computation....
'Seems pretty real to me.
The particles still don’t emerge on their own behest out of nothing; God has something to do with that process! The existence of “nothingness” itself was also created!
“The two usually attract and annihilate, leaving nothing behind”
A speculative thought!
How God continually pumps energy into the whole of the universe!...think of these pairs occuring and disappearing, sometimes scattering when conditions are right, but on a vast scale across creation...each giving off bursts of gamma and xray energy as they annihilate each other or light energy when special conditions separate the particle pairs. Each pair by itself winking in an out would hardly warm an electron but we could never imagine in the aggregate the total amount of energy these pairs would impart across the universe. Who says these pairs occur only in vacuums? They would occur in solid matter, vacuums, liquid, gas ect... inside of our own bodies, everywhere continuously!
“In Him we live and move and have our being.. He is not far from any of us” the Bible says. These virtual particle pairs may well be one direct physical signature of God’s influence in our universe! ( Christ, of course, being God’s thumbprint pressed directly into our matter universe)
Now you say these pairs leave nothing behind...well they leave energy signatures or else they could never be detected!
Shockley and Bardeen in 1947 would never have had an ability to ever guess how to make a semiconductor/transistor without quantuum physics theory having been established. You and I would never have met on FR without quantum physics.
This quantum stuff is unbelievable.
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