Hubble snaps stunning baby pic of cosmos Galactic whirls from 12 billion years ago

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/06/19/bigbang.view.reut/index.html ^ | Thursday, June 19, 2003 Posted: 2:19 PM EDT (1819 GMT)

[DannyTN]

"I feel like the blonde in a joke reading these posts...you guys are amazing and I am getting dizzy"

When the truth comes out and we really do understand the universe, we will probably all look like blondes in a joke. You may be the only one smart enough to say they don't understand.

[Monty22]

There's a real problem with all this. I've seen some shows lately (I know I know, not the best source) about faster than light transmission of data. It used a weird method of blocking the signal, and it 'jumps' across at many times c.

And then there's 'spooky action at a distance', another weird method of data transmission at infinite speed to any point in the universe. Both are basically ignored by relativity as just not happening. Personally, I think there's a lot to learn about gravity and light.

If gravity is transmitted by gravitons, analogous to photons, then there's a REAL death blow to some generally accepted beliefs. If gravity isn't just an after effect of warping of space-time, but a particle, a lot has to be rethought.

[El Gato]

Are you claiming when that galaxy and our galaxy were formed during the big bang they were already 12 billion light years away?

No, at the instant of the Big Bang, the universe had no size. But it expanded. At the time the light was emitted from that galaxcy, the Milky Way galaxcy and that one were less than 12 billion light years apart. Now they are 12 billion light years apart. And if so, how did the light suddenly fill the universe everywhere simulataneously. Didn't that energy still need to propogate through the universe?

The Universe was much smaller then, much much smaller. The universe consisted only of the "light" at that point. Where by "light" one means energy, in the form of radiation. You can't really say "electromanetic radiation", because at that point there was no distinction between the electromagnetic forces and field and the weak and strong nulcear forces/field.

That pretty well exhausts my understanding. See various works by Stephen Hawkings, those written for the layman first. Then if you are glutten for punishment, those written for physicists. :)

also see :

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/html/home.html

http://www.stintercorp.com/physics/OSHU.html

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html

The best is to get the CD or tapes of Hawkings lectures. He paints some great word pictures with his voice synthisizer.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0780631315/gifts4hernet/104-5782130-8243962

or the DVDs of "Stephen Hawkings Universe" available at amazon.com and other places.

or the book version, also available at amazon and others.

"Stephen Hawkings Universe: The Cosmos Explained" and his other books.

http://www.amazon.com/o/dt/assoc/handle-buy-box=0465081983

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html

[El Gato]

True it has mass/energy, but it has no rest mass. You and everything else except radiation, does. Anything with rest mass greater than zero cannot travel at the speed of light, because that would require infinite energy. However things with zero rest mass, such as light photons, can only travel at the speed of light.. well almost, it's true in a vacumn, but the speed in media, such as air, glass, etc, is lower.

[El Gato]

Let's try this again. I got distracted by the clothes dryer stopping. :)

Light travels at the speed of light, and it has mass. Why else would be affected by gravity?

Light indeed does have mass, you can calculate the mass of a photon by using E=MC2 in the form M=E/C2. The energy is related to the frequency (i.e. color)

What light, in general electromagnetic radiation, does not have, is rest mass. The formulae for mass is:

Mass = Rest_mass / sqrt(1 - V2/c2)

where: V2 is the speed squared
C2 is the speed of light (in a vacumn) squared.

From this one can see that as the speed approaches that of light, the denoninator approaches zero and the mass increases without bound (that is infinity) UNLESS the Rest mass itself is zero.

[El Gato]

And then there's 'spooky action at a distance', another weird method of data transmission at infinite speed to any point in the universe. Both are basically ignored by relativity as just not happening. Personally, I think there's a lot to learn about gravity and light.

Relativity is not a quantum mechanical theory. Those are quantum mechanical effects, so naturally standard relativity theory doesn't consider them. Einstien once said" God does not play dice with the universe" (although he came around somewhat afterwards). To which Hawkings "replied". "Not only does God place dice with the universe, He somes throws them where they can't be seen."

[HardStarboard]

I went to your link, blew the picture up to full screen, and then put it on slow scroll across several swaths of the picture.

You can sit there and really think your traveling in space. Absolutely errie, and mind boggling at the same time.

Thanks for the link!

[RoughDobermann]

This may be a goofy question, but how do we know that light has no rest mass? Have we ever "stopped" light to confirm it?

[Monty22]

I believe they did 'stop' a photon at some point. I'm of the opinion that photons and neutrinos have some amount of mass. I don't believe in massless particles of pure energy.
I just don't think we can measure the mass yet. Perhaps something like the super conducting super collider (RIP) could have done this.

[ALS]

slowing light

[ALS]

Physics News Update
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News

Number 472 (Story #1), February 24, 2000 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

LIGHT AT 1 MPH. A year ago Lene Verstergaard Hau used a Bose Einstein condensate (BEC) as a special nonlinear optical medium for slowing light from 3 x 108 m/sec to a mere 17 m/sec (38 mph; Update 415). This comes about when an incoming light pulse enters the BEC and experiences an extremely abrupt change in index of refraction (and as for absorption of the light, this is prevented by applying two laser beams which induce a transparency at the frequency of the incoming light).

In a talk presented at this week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, DC, Hau said that she and her Harvard colleagues had slowed the light further, to a speed of 1 mph. She said that if the velocity could be slowed still more, to a value of 1 cm/sec, then this would be comparable to the speed of sound in the condensate and it might be possible to get atoms to surf on the front of the light pulse. Hau believes that this approach to slowing light, if it can be simplified, would lead to highly sensitive light switches and to low-power nonlinear optics (right now high-power laser light is required to produce nonlinear effects).

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2000/split/pnu472-1.htm

[ALS]

Ultra-Simple Desktop Device Slows Light to a Crawl

[Blood of Tyrants]

No matter what you might think, the mind of man is limited and there are many things that it will never know. Stop reading so many left wing propaganda books that pretend to know things that they cannot.

[Blood of Tyrants]

No matter what you might think, the mind of man is limited and there are many things that it will never know. Stop reading so many left wing propaganda books that pretend to know things that they cannot.

[Eternal_Bear]

Science is leftist? You have to be kidding right? The scientific methodology which is the basis of Western Civilization is leftist too? Science will always prevail because it is based on facts not beliefs. We really don't know how far the mind of man can go. Let's not let dogma and fear hold it back.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yes! At least some disciplines. Especially any field where the primary purpose is try to convince people that God did not create them and that they came into being because of an accident of galactical proportions. If you can convince people that they are simply hairless apes who came from mud and rocks then it is a simple matter to tell them that killing an unborn baby isn't really that bad because well, who are YOU to judge THEIR morals.

I am tired of your idiotic, patronizing attitude. When you want to listen to truth, let me know. Otherwise you are as closed as the worst clintoon lover or Bushbot.

[Blood of Tyrants]

P.S. Good Democrat comeback. Instead of arguing the point logically, make personal attacks against me.

[Eternal_Bear]

I have never heard of a scientific discipline that tries to disprove God's existence. Scientists have never postualated whether God was or wan't the casuation of the Big Bang which brought our present universe into being. You are delusuonal. Some people just can't handle the masculinist tradition of hard reasoning and rationalism. I know the liberals hate that. Faith, wanting to believe and needing to believe are the provenance of the feminine mind. You are welcome to it. The strong have no need of it.

[El Gato]

This may be a goofy question, but how do we know that light has no rest mass? Have we ever "stopped" light to confirm it?

A very proper question actually. Yes we have stopped it, but by a somewhat wierd quantum mechanical process that I don't understand, but that involves propagation through a rather unusual medium. I don't know if that particular experiement was able or asked to answer the question of rest mass of photons.

I would say however that if photons don't have zero rest mass, then they should have infinite mass at all other times, when traveling at the speed of light in a vacumn, unless there something wrong with relativitly theory. That they clearly don't have, but since relativity is not a quantum theory, there probably is something wrong with it, although it must be correct over a wide range of energies and speeds, because it's predictions are verified each time they are tested.