http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/cosmology/ en-us Mon, 19 May 2008 05:40:38 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017939/posts Observations of the cosmic microwave background might deal blow to theory. The background patterns of space could help us focus on quantum problems.NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team The question of whether quantum mechanics is correct could soon be settled by observing the sky — and there are already tantalizing hints that the theory could be wrong. Antony Valentini, a physicist at Imperial College, London, wanted to devise a test that could separate quantum mechanics from one of its closest rivals — a theory called bohmian mechanics. Despite being one of the most successful theories of physics, quantum mechanics... Nature News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017939/posts#comment Mon, 19 May 2008 05:40:38 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2002901/posts A telescope on the far side of the moon could probe the "dark ages" of the universe while blocking out the radio-wavelength noise of Earth civilizations. Up to one hundred thousand antennas would form the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer (DALI), the largest telescope ever built, and allow astronomers to hear faint whispering signals from a time when no stars even existed. "This will look at one of the most fundamental questions ever conceived, back when the universe was made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium — no stars, no galaxies," said Kurt Weiler, senior astronomer at the U.S. Naval... Space.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2002901/posts#comment Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:54:44 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2001418/posts John Wheeler, giant on whose shoulders we stand, has died at 96. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2001418/posts#comment Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:04:50 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1955195/posts This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic... new york times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1955195/posts#comment Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:04:00 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1945606/posts The history of cosmology – the study of the Universe – for the last five hundred years is often portrayed as a clash between science on the one hand, and the cold hand of religious dogma on the other. Part of this is rooted in fact – the Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation for instance was suspicious of intellectual innovation and experiment, with its harsher elements longing for the certainties of the age before Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The desire to make the Universe fit into a pre-ordained and orderly scheme that needed no correction reached its infamous,... American Chronicle http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1945606/posts#comment Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:50:01 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1931687/posts Einstein's self-proclaimed "biggest blunder" -- his postulation of a cosmological constant (a force that opposes gravity and keeps the universe from collapsing) -- may not be such a blunder after all, according to the research of an international team of scientists that includes two Texas A&M University researchers. The team is working on a project called ESSENCE that studies supernovae (exploding stars) to figure out if dark energy – the accelerating force of the universe – is consistent with Einstein’s cosmological constant. Texas A&M researchers Nicholas Suntzeff and Kevin Krisciunas are part of the project, which began in October of... www.physorg.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1931687/posts#comment Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:02:29 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929540/posts Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too. The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang. The Boomerang Nebula, mankind ‘shortening the universe’s life’ Cosmologists claim by observing dark... http://www.telegraph.co.uk http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1929540/posts#comment Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:45:30 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884938/posts Predictions Part I astronomy and climatology http://home.earthlink.net/~gravitics/LaViolette/Predict.html Superwave Theory Predictions and their Subsequent Verification Galactic Core Explosions - prevailing concept (1980): At the time of this prediction, astronomers believed that the cores of galaxies, including our own, become active ("explode") about every 10 to 100 million years and stay active for about a million years. Since our own Galactic core presently appears quiescent, they believed it would likely remain inactive for many tens of millions of years. Although, in 1977, astronomer Jan Oort cited evidence that our Galactic core has been active within the past 10,000 years. Prediction No. 1... THE STARBURST FOUNDATION http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884938/posts#comment Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:00:43 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1815265/posts Freeman Dyson: My optimism about the long-term survival of life comes mainly from imagining what will happen when life escapes from this planet and becomes adapted to living in vacuum. There is then no real barrier to stop life from spreading through the universe. Hopping from one world to another will be about as easy as hopping from one island in the Pacific to another. And then life will diversify to fill the infinite variety of ecological niches in the universe, as it has done already on this planet. ... Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details... TCS Daily http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1815265/posts#comment Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:39:53 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1812767/posts Take one part unidentified goop. Add three parts mysterious energy. Throw in a dash of ordinary atoms. Mix. Compress. Explode. Let expand for 13.7 billion years. It's an absurd recipe, but it's one that makes cosmologists drool. Ten years ago, no one could agree on what the universe is made of, how it is shaped, or what its ultimate fate will be. But less than five years later, long-awaited measurements and one stunning discovery forever transformed our picture of the universe. The resulting model, often called the concordance model, holds that 22 percent of the universe is composed of dark... Symmetry Magazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1812767/posts#comment Thu, 5 Apr 2007 21:48:17 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1768135/posts It's official, Elvis lives Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/01/2007 It might sound a little crazy, but our standard theories of cosmology and physics suggest that an infinite number of Presleys still exist, says Marcus Chown. And if that's not scary enough, it also means that you, and these words, are repeated ad infinitum across the universeElvis is alive. No, really! He didn't die of a cardiac arrest in his bathroom at Graceland on August 16, 1977. Instead, he slipped out of the back door under cover of darkness dressed as a nun, had a sex change and worked for several years... Telegraph.co.uk http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1768135/posts#comment Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:32:55 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1746411/posts ON ANGELS IN GENERAL AND IN PARTICULAR I. Angels are substances merely spiritual, created after the image of God, not only that they might acknowledge, love and worship their Creator, and might live in a state of happiness with him, but that they might likewise perform certain duties concerning the rest of the creatures according to the command of God. II. We call them "substances," against the Sadducees and others, who contend that angels are nothing more than the good or the evil motions of spirits, or else exercises of power to aid or to injure. But this is completely... Arminius' Works http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1746411/posts#comment Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:43:13 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1704006/posts Home About Edge Features Edge Editions Press Edge Search A striking consequence of the new picture of the world is that there should be an infinity of regions with histories absolutely identical to ours. That's right, scores of your duplicates are now reading copies of this article. They live on planets exactly like Earth, with all its mountains, cities, trees, and butterflies. There should also be regions where histories are somewhat different from ours, with all possible variations. For example, some readers will be pleased to know that there are infinitely many O-regions where Al Gore is the President... Edge - The Third Culture http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1704006/posts#comment Tue, 19 Sep 2006 04:44:07 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1700817/posts An international research team led by Prof. Michael Kramer of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, has used three years of observations of the "double pulsar", a unique pair of natural stellar clocks which they discovered in 2003, to prove that Einstein's theory of general relativity - the theory of gravity that displaced Newton's - is correct to within a staggering 0.05%. Their results are published on the14th September in the journal Science and are based on measurements of an effect called the Shapiro Delay. The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A and B, is 2000 light-years away in... EurekAlert (AAAS) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1700817/posts#comment Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:57:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1693816/posts The apparent absence of shadows where shadows were expected to be is raising new questions about the faint glow of microwave radiation once hailed as proof that the universe was created by a "Big Bang." In a finding sure to cause controversy, scientists at UAH found a lack of evidence of shadows from "nearby" clusters of galaxies using new, highly accurate measurements of the cosmic microwave background. A team of UAH scientists led by Dr. Richard Lieu, a professor of physics, used data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to scan the cosmic microwave background for shadows caused by... University of Alabama in Huntsville http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1693816/posts#comment Fri, 1 Sep 2006 15:10:03 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1692401/posts TIME BEFORE TIME An event like the Big Bang is about as likely as billions of coin tosses all coming up heads. Explaining why that is might take us from empty space to other universes--and through the mirror of time. by Sean Carroll • Posted August 28, 2006 11:53 AM From the SEPTEMBER issue of Seed:    The nature of time is such that the influence of the very beginning of the universe stretches all the way into your kitchen—you can make an omelet out of an egg, but you can't make an egg out of an omelet. Time, unlike... Seed Magazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1692401/posts#comment Wed, 30 Aug 2006 08:01:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1689302/posts The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is to receive the Royal Society's most prestigious prize for scientific achievement. The Copley medal is the oldest scientific award in the world and has been won by such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Captain James Cook. The Cambridge don, most famous for his book A Brief History of Time, will be honoured in a ceremony on November 30 for his contribution to theoretical physics and theoretical cosmology. "This is a very distinguished medal," Professor Hawking said. "It was awarded to Darwin, Einstein and [Francis] Crick. I am honoured to be... Guardian Unlimited http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1689302/posts#comment Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:25:55 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1678192/posts That's the Extremely Large Telescope, not just the Very Large one. ACCORDING to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is the answer to life, the Universe and everything. Now scientists have turned to Douglas Adams’s magic number — 42 — to help them to answer that question for real. Not satisfied with the spectacular views afforded by the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which is kept at Paranal Observatory in Chile, astronomers plan to build a bigger version, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), with a mirror measuring 42m in diameter. The project, to be undertaken by the European Southern Observatory... The Times (Times Online UK) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1678192/posts#comment Sat, 5 Aug 2006 11:31:28 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1677590/posts The question of what happened before the Big Bang long has frustrated cosmologists, both amateur and professional. Though Einstein's theory of general relativity does an excellent job of describing the universe almost back to its beginning, near the Big Bang matter becomes so dense that relativity breaks down, says Penn State physicist Abhay Ashtekar. "Beyond that point, we need to apply quantum tools that were not available to Einstein." Now Ashtekar and two of his post-doctoral researchers, Tomasz Pawlowski and Parmpreet Singh, have done just that. Using a theory called loop quantum gravity, they have developed a mathematical model that... Pennsylvania State University http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1677590/posts#comment Fri, 4 Aug 2006 11:26:21 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1677257/posts That intergalactic road trip to Triangulum is going to take a little longer than you had planned. An Ohio State University astronomer and his colleagues have determined that the Triangulum Galaxy, otherwise known as M33, is actually about 15 percent farther away from our galaxy than previously measured.This finding implies that the Hubble constant, a number that astronomers rely on to calculate a host of factors -- including the size and age of the universe -- could be significantly off the mark as well.That means that the universe could be 15 percent bigger and 15 percent older than any previous... Ohio State University http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1677257/posts#comment Thu, 3 Aug 2006 19:52:54 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1660121/posts Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking and his CERN colleague Thomas Hertog have proposed a radical new approach to understanding the universe that studies it from the "top down" rather than the "bottom up" as in traditional models. The approach acknowledges that the universe did not have just one unique beginning and history but a multitude of different beginnings and histories, and that it has experienced them all. But because most of these other alternative histories disappeared very early after the Big Bang to leave behind the universe we observe today, the best way to understand the past, they say, is to... PhysicsWeb http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1660121/posts#comment Tue, 4 Jul 2006 11:29:06 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1654694/posts University of California, Berkeley, physicist Saul Perlmutter has been awarded the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his role in discovering that the universe is expanding faster than previously thought. Perlmutter is a UC Berkeley physics professor, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leader of the international Supernova Cosmology Project. He shares the $1 million prize with Adam Riess of NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute and Brian Schmidt of Australia's Mount Stromlo Observatory, all recognized for their leadership of two teams, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search. In 1998, the teams reported the acceleration... UC Berkeley News Center http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1654694/posts#comment Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:43:23 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643522/posts David Thomson and Jim Bourassa of the Quantum AetherDynamics Institute (QADI) released a new theory which mathematically predicts and explains the measured values of physics with striking precision. Their Aether Physics Model includes the "Holy Grail" of physics sought by Albert Einstein; the Unified Force Theory. "Our model shows the forces are unified by a simple set of general laws explainable as the fabric of space-time itself, which is a dynamic, quantum-scale Aether," said Bourassa. In February 2002, Thomson was observing a peculiar setup of a Tesla coil and noticed what appeared to be two distinctly different manifestations of charges.... EurekAlert (AAAS) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643522/posts#comment Mon, 5 Jun 2006 10:53:31 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1638296/posts Scientists at Duke and Rutgers universities have developed a mathematical framework they say will enable astronomers to test a new five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Charles R. Keeton of Rutgers and Arlie O. Petters of Duke base their work on a recent theory called the type II Randall-Sundrum braneworld gravity model. The theory holds that the visible universe is a membrane (hence "braneworld") embedded within a larger universe, much like a strand of filmy seaweed floating in the ocean. The "braneworld universe" has five dimensions -- four spatial dimensions plus time -- compared... Science Daily http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1638296/posts#comment Thu, 25 May 2006 20:35:30 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1637759/posts Scientists use quantum gravity to describe the universe before the Big Bang.Scientists may finally have an answer to a "big" question: If the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe, what could have caused it to happen? Using a theory called "loop quantum gravity," a group led by Penn State professor Abhay Ashtekar has shown that just before the Big Bang occurred, another universe very similar to ours may have been contracting. According to the group's findings, this previous universe eventually became so dense that a normally negligible repulsive component of the gravitational force overpowered the attractive component, causing... Seed Magazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1637759/posts#comment Wed, 24 May 2006 22:59:24 GMT