The Universe

[LightEye]

dear friends,

say slowly after me...panspermia. .

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/3313/full

be well, be love.

david

meteorite contains complex organic molecules
tuesday, 16 february 2010
by gemma black

sydney: previously unknown organic molecules have been discovered in a 100 kg meteorite that hit australia in 1969, suggesting that our early solar system contained a soup of highly complex organic chemistry long before life appeared.

in a recent study scientists analysed the murchison meteorite, which landed in murchison near melbourne, australia, in 1969.

the 100 kg meteor is thought to have originated in the early days of our solar system, perhaps even before the sun formed around four and a half billion years ago.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

what's this tell us?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/molecules-for-life/

be well, be love.

david

all of life’s ingredients found in orion nebula

* by alexis madrigal
* march 8, 2010 |

the ingredients for life as we know it have been found in the orion nebula.

by finely separating the spectrum of incoming light, astronomers are able to detect the chemical fingerprints of molecules like water and methanol. the spectrograph that their work produces can be seen in the image above. the peaks represent the presence of the molecule indicated.

the new data was collected by the herschel telescope, launched into space last year by the european space agency. herschel’s hifi instrument uses a new technique to do more-sensitive spectroscopy. it will enable scientists to better understand the chemistry of space.

the orion nebula is located about 1,300 light-years away. no very active star-forming region is closer to earth. m42, as the nebula is also known, is 24 light-years across.

image: esa, hexos, hifi consortium.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.labspaces.net/102473/mysterious_cosmic__dark_flow__tracked_deeper_into_ universe

be well, be love.

david

mysterious cosmic 'dark flow' tracked deeper into universe
thursday, march 11, 2010

distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations centaurus and hydra. a new study led by alexander kashlinsky at nasa's goddard space flight center in greenbelt, md., tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally reported.

"this is not something we set out to find, but we cannot make it go away," kashlinsky said. "now we see that it persists to much greater distances -- as far as 2.5 billion light-years away." the new study appears in the march 20 issue of the astrophysical journal letters.

the clusters appear to be moving along a line extending from our solar system toward centaurus/hydra, but the direction of this motion is less certain. evidence indicates that the clusters are headed outward along this path, away from earth, but the team cannot yet rule out the opposite flow. "we detect motion along this axis, but right now our data cannot state as strongly as we'd like whether the clusters are coming or going," kashlinsky said.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527520.200-cosmic-clocks-relativitys-final-test.html?full=true

don't be so quick to say that they're not et in origin;

the forgotten challenge: pulsars http://www.openseti.org/ospulsars.html

be well, be love.

david

cosmic clocks: relativity's final test

* 17 march 2010 by richard webb

night in, night out, the rhythmic radio signals reach earth. the slowest of them sound like a nail being hammered into wood, or a shoe being slapped against a post to rid it of mud. others are more like a stuttering motor stopped at a traffic signal. some make almost continuous tones, ripe to be combined into cosmic mood music.

always the same signature tunes, always from the same points in the sky. small wonder that when astronomers first heard them back in the 1960s, some thought they were messages from alien civilisations.

the signals aren't from et, however; they are from pulsars. these extreme cosmic objects have been keeping us on our toes for over 40 years, and are poised for their greatest coup yet. meticulous measurements of pulsars' timekeeping might just solve one of the biggest mysteries of modern physics: the whereabouts of gravitational waves.

the keystone of einstein's general theory of relativity, gravitational waves are tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time. but they have proved frustratingly elusive, despite ever bigger and more expensive instruments being built to detect them. pulsars could now pip these projects to the post - on a fraction of the budget. "we're already at the stage where we can start to rule out things," says george hobbs of the parkes observatory in new south wales, australia, which is home to one of the pulsar-timing experiments. "we could make a detection next week," he says, depending on the nature of gravitational waves.

it was august 1967 when pulsars first made earth contact. in a field on the outskirts of cambridge, uk, graduate student jocelyn bell and her supervisor antony hewish were using a new antenna array to scan the sky for radio sources. back then, astronomical observations were measured in miles - of paper. mechanical pens traced radio signals onto long charts, and it was bell's job to trawl through them.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35957420/ns/technology_and_science-space/

be well, be love.

david

big questions surround big-bang theory
what happened before the universe’s expansion? will it happen again?
by clara moskowitz
updated 9:59 p.m. et march 19, 2010

the big bang was the beginning of the universe as we know it, most scientists say. but was it the first beginning, and will it be the last?

a popular picture of the early universe imagines a single big bang, after which space blew up quickly like a giant bubble. but another theory posits that we live in a universe of 11 dimensions, where all particles are actually made of tiny vibrating strings. this could create a universe stuck in a cycle of big bangs and big crunches, due to repeat on loop.

which scenario is closer to the truth remains to be seen, but scientists say new experiments underway could provide more answers soon.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100322-dark-flow-matter-outside-universe-multiverse/

be well, be love.

david

new proof unknown "structures" tug at our universe
mysterious "dark flow" extends deeper than previously seen.
john roach
for national geographic news
published march 22, 2010

"dark flow" is no fluke, suggests a new study that strengthens the case for unknown, unseen "structures" lurking on the outskirts of creation.

in 2008 scientists reported the discovery of hundreds of galaxy clusters streaming in the same direction at more than 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) an hour.

this mysterious motion can't be explained by current models for distribution of mass in the universe. so the researchers made the controversial suggestion that the clusters are being tugged on by the gravity of matter outside the known universe.

now the same team has found that the dark flow extends even deeper into the universe than previously reported: out to at least 2.5 billion light-years from earth.

after using two additional years' worth of data and tracking twice the number of galaxy clusters, "we clearly see the flow, we clearly see it pointing in the same direction," said study leader alexander kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at nasa's goddard space flight center in maryland.

"it looks like a very coherent flow."

[joe]

i am new to this forum, but find it interesting so therefore would like to contribute to the forum to stay connected and in the loop.
love the physical cosmological, atomic and quantum sciences, but only in the realm of hoby.
the observation of acceleration of theories in these area's must be a shared one, since many of the theories that were once considerd the establishments holy grail's of discovery are being chipped away at by many contemporaries from many different disciplines.
yet even with this mainstream seasoning, within the academic scientific community there seems to be little buzz about what the fringe is doing or even hypothesizing.
we all know how impenitrable the halls of quantifiable science are in regards to the powers that be, and i probably would think that it's best this way for the most part; no matter how many scientific papers you write only accepted paradigms seem to reach the bench.
the incredible fringe studies that tug on all these old paradigms from multiple directions are really a breath of fresh air in a world of stale idealism's; for as we know consciousness is all one, so even though a certain group beleives it's ignoring you; a truth will hold water endlessly until all are able to drink from this vessel, yet some accepted truths are seemingly leaky vessels.

i like your memo's mr. light eye, please continue to update us on your finding's in the natural cosmic continuum, the information found here is as endless as the universe itself.
jc

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dark-energy-the-biggest-mystery-in-the-universe.html

be well, be love.

david


dark energy: the biggest mystery in the universe
at the south pole, astronomers try to unravel a force greater than gravity that will determine the fate of the cosmos
by richard panek
smithsonian magazine, april 2010


twice a day, seven days a week, from february to november for the past four years, two researchers have layered themselves with thermal underwear and outerwear, with fleece, flannel, double gloves, double socks, padded overalls and puffy red parkas, mummifying themselves until they look like twin michelin men. then they step outside, trading the warmth and modern conveniences of a science station (foosball, fitness center, 24-hour cafeteria) for a minus-100-degree fahrenheit featureless landscape, flatter than kansas and one of the coldest places on the planet. they trudge in darkness nearly a mile, across a plateau of snow and ice, until they discern, against the backdrop of more stars than any hands-in-pocket backyard observer has ever seen, the silhouette of the giant disk of the south pole telescope, where they join a global effort to solve possibly the greatest riddle in the universe: what most of it is made of.

for thousands of years our species has studied the night sky and wondered if anything else is out there. last year we celebrated the 400th anniversary of galileo’s answer: yes. galileo trained a new instrument, the telescope, on the heavens and saw objects that no other person had ever seen: hundreds of stars, mountains on the moon, satellites of jupiter. since then we have found more than 400 planets around other stars, 100 billion stars in our galaxy, hundreds of billions of galaxies beyond our own, even the faint radiation that is the echo of the big bang.

now scientists think that even this extravagant census of the universe might be as out-of-date as the five-planet cosmos that galileo inherited from the ancients. astronomers have compiled evidence that what we’ve always thought of as the actual universe—me, you, this magazine, planets, stars, galaxies, all the matter in space—represents a mere 4 percent of what’s actually out there. the rest they call, for want of a better word, dark: 23 percent is something they call dark matter, and 73 percent is something even more mysterious, which they call dark energy.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.physorg.com/news189792839.html

be well, be love.

david

our universe at home within a larger universe? so suggests wormhole research
april 6, 2010

einstein-rosen bridges like the one visualized above have never been observed in nature, but they provide theoretical physicists and cosmologists with solutions in general relativity by combining models of black holes and white holes.

(physorg.com) -- could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe?

such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an einstein-rosen bridge) is suggested in a paper from indiana university theoretical physicist nikodem poplawski in physics letters b. the final version of the paper was available online march 29 and will be published in the print edition april 12.

poplawski takes advantage of the euclidean-based coordinate system called isotropic coordinates to describe the gravitational field of a black hole and to model the radial geodesic motion of a massive particle into a black hole.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

link to the main site at the first video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl7-t9p8zac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4iddyjuaq

be well.

david

an intriguing theory — that the living world builds the physical world — may help answer some of the biggest questions in science.

[Alnakl]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7631252/stephen-hawking-alien-life-is-out-there-scientist-warns.html

[Deambor]

i watched the whle two hourts of into the universe with stephen hawking last night.
the first hour was devoted to the possibility of alien life.

i have to say from rational point of view what hawking is saying makes perfect sense. but all he does is extrapolation of our own experience, and that leads to the conclusion that all inteeligent life forms must be like us. what "like us" means is we would go out and find a planet and exploit it to our benefit. the premise is based on our known recorded history - that we are out there to take advantage of others where we can, not to help.
so from point of view of loo, the premise is entirely sts skewed.

i respect hawking and admire his life and work, and no less so after watching this program. the fact that he goes by what the official sceince position is - i guess it is in line with the work of his life. i don't believe he is a sts himself though - that just doesn't seem right.

i'm still amazed that this topic was covered in such a detail and depth, albeit from generally a negative point of view. anf of course not surprising that the piece that was carved out for the news was exactly the aspect, which hits the most negative tone "fear the aliens, because they are most probably like us, only more technologically or biologically advanced".

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pulsar-shine-many-octaves-100426.html


be well, be love.

david

cosmic beacons sing in different octaves
by denise chow
space.com staff writer
posted: 26 april 2010
07:16 am et

new observations from a trio of international telescopes have caught enigmatic radio-emitting stars called pulsars beaming out signals across different octaves, revealing more clues into how these fast-spinning stars generate their cosmic lighthouse emissions.

using observations from the new european lofar telescope, the effelsberg telescope in germany and the lovell telescope in the united kingdom, astronomers were able to observe six different pulsars, each simultaneously across a range of nearly eight octaves.

"not only do such observations give us a fantastic handle on understanding the emission of pulsars, they are also a powerful probe of the interstellar gas that is between us and the pulsar," said study team member ben stappers of the university of manchester.

[faithinchange]

dear friends,

link to the main site at the first video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl7-t9p8zac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4iddyjuaq

be well.

david

an intriguing theory — that the living world builds the physical world — may help answer some of the biggest questions in science.

a must share.

thank you:)

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25100/

be well, be love.

david

first evidence that mirror matter may fill the universe?

if dark matter exists it may take the form of mirror planets, mirror stars and mirror galaxies. now one physicist says the most recent evidence seems to confirm this idea


when astronomers study distant galaxies, they see only a small fraction of the mass needed to hold these clumps of stars together. without some kind of extra hidden mass, galaxies ought to fly apart.

astronomers call this hidden mass 'dark matter' and physicists around the world are engaged in an increasingly desperate race to find evidence of it here on earth. that's why there are more than 30
experiments in various parts of the planet looking for the stuff.

the consensus is that, despite this global effort, dark matter remains well hidden. nobody has had a whiff of the stuff. that is nobody except an italian group which has spent the last ten years or so watching a giant lump of sodium iodide. their thinking is that any dark matter hitting the sodium iodide should generate a photon. and that as earth moves around the sun, they should see more photons when heading into the background sea of dark matter than when moving away from it.

[Deambor]

in continuation of stephen hawking's recent discovery program, right now apr 28, national public radio is holding the discussion topic in reference to hawking's remarks.

the subject is definitely on the from pages and waves etc.

interesting what comes next.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.viewzone2.com/electricaluniverse.html

be well, be love.

david

electric universe
introduction by dan eden

the picture above is our universe. no one could possibly take such a picture because the universe is so big. the milky way galaxy, some 150,000 light years across, is just a tiny dot, barely visible in this computer generated image, based on deep space observations.

what's interesting about the structure of the universe is that it is made up of countless string-like filaments that arrange themselves in parallel lines and sometimes intersect at "nodes" that encircle empty holes. some scientists have described the universe as looking like swiss cheese.

this new view of how the universe is constructed has upset the traditional paradigm of science. it contradicts the model of the universe that was predicted by the 17th century physics, isaac newton, in which gravity is the basic fabric of everything. it's also hard to imagine a big bang theory with a structure like this. where's the central point of the initial explosion? why do we have this strange kind of structure?

at the moment, most scientists are struggling to explain the traditional model in light of this new evidence but others are quite confident that have found an explanation in a theory called "the electrical universe."

[weboy78]

http://www.sron.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2709&itemid=588
astronomers find recoiling super-massive black hole print
10 may 2010

in a distant remote galaxy, astronomers have possibly found a super-massive black hole that is recoiling out of the galaxy at high speed. the black hole, visible with x-rays as a clear star, is not located as normal in the centre of the galaxy. recoiling black holes are interesting because they provide insights into how super-massive black holes develop in the centre of galaxies.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

and its formed by hexagonal rings ;-)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100621074446.htm

be well, be love.

david

super-complex organic molecules found in interstellar space

sciencedaily (june 21, 2010) — a team of scientists from the instituto astrofísica de canarias (iac) and the university of texas has succeeded in identifying one of the most complex organic molecules yet found in the material between the stars, the so-called interstellar medium. the discovery of anthracene could help resolve a decades-old astrophysical mystery concerning the production of organic molecules in space.

the researchers report their findings in the journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society.

'we have detected the presence of anthracene molecules in a dense cloud in the direction of the star cernis 52 in perseus, about 700 light years from

[Vaughn]

we are constantly bombarded by bacterium and viruses from space, this has a dramatic impact on all life on earth and may effectively evolve our dna.

panspermia video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51v363v1bki&feature=related)
http://thefauxistinternational.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/panspermia-tm.jpg

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25430/

be well, be love.

david

why our universe must have been born inside a black hole

a small change to the theory of gravity implies that our universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.

"accordingly, our own universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe." so concludes nikodem poplawski at indiana university in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.

the idea that new universes can be created inside black holes and that our own may have originated in this way has been the raw fodder of science fiction for many years. but a proper scientific derivation of the notion has never emerged.

today poplawski provides such a derivation. he says the idea that black holes are the cosmic mothers of new universes is a natural consequence of a simple new assumption about the nature of spacetime.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

and so it begins...

be well, be love.

david

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/brightest-x-rays-blind-telescopes-100714.html

record-breaking x-ray blast blinds space observatory briefly
by clara moskowitz
space.com senior writer
posted: 14 july 2010
05:16 pm et

a violent cosmic explosion has unleashed the brightest blast of x-rays ever detected from distant space, a signal so bright it temporary blinded the nasa space telescope assigned to spot it.

the powerful explosion, called a gamma-ray burst, was detected by nasa's swift observatory, scientists announced wednesday. gamma-ray bursts are narrow beams of intense radiation shot out when stars explode in supernovas. in addition to gamma-ray light, they also produce x-rays and other forms of radiation, including visible light.

this recent event, dubbed grb 100621a, was particularly powerful.

[clairead]

why has no-one commented on this? i had to sit back and have a think. if this were it, we'd have flipped over by now. i remembered that i heard of this gamma ray coming back in june. after i read this i thought of the crop circles in the last few days - on the 10th and 12th. the one on the 10th looked like a neutron star; one on the 12 was the grand cross upcoming.
interesting times!

[Shrike]

they are among the true monsters of space
colossal stars whose size and brightness go well beyond what many scientists thought was even possible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10707416

[weboy78]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727703.000-every-black-hole-may-hold-a-hidden-universe.html
we could be living inside a black hole. this head-spinning idea is one cosmologist's conclusion based on a modification of einstein's equations of general relativity that changes our picture of what happens at the core of a black hole.

in an analysis of the motion of particles entering a black hole, published in march, nikodem poplawski of indiana university in bloomington showed that inside each black hole there could exist another universe (physics letters b, doi: 10.1016/j.physletb.2010.03.029). "maybe the huge black holes at the centre of the milky way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes," poplawski says. if that is correct - and it's a big "if" - there is nothing to rule out our universe itself being inside a black hole.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://news.discovery.com/space/why-dont-we-see-white-holes-in-space.html

be well, be love.

david


why don't we see white holes in space?
analysis by jennifer ouellette
mon aug 16, 2010 03:29 pm et

science fiction fans love the possibility of other universes, even more so contemplating the possibility of being able to travel between them through exotic configurations of spacetime, notably wormholes, which are pretty much just black holes with an opening poking through the singularity.

less well known is the equally exotic (and purely hypothetical) possibility of "white holes:" the opposite of black holes. whereas matter and light can fall into a black hole and never escape, white holes would emit light and matter but wouldn't take anything in, for example.

but while we see evidence for black holes in space, thus far there hasn't been any observational evidence of white holes. now a physicist at the university of oregon in eugene thinks he might be able to explain why. 100406172648

here's the standard analogy for the formation of a wormhole: picture a bed sheet stretched taut. place a large bowling ball in the center of the sheet, and the sheet will bend inward in response, creating a gravitational pull.

now imagine that the bowling ball is being squeezed, so that the same amount of mass must fit into a smaller and smaller space. the ball will become denser and denser as it becomes smaller and smaller. this causes the sheet to dip lower and lower, until finally the ball has been squeezed down to the size of a pinhead.

at that point, its density becomes so great and the gravitational force so strong that it pokes a small hole in the center of the sheet. that’s what would happen if a wormhole formed at the center of a black hole.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast223/lectures/lec16.html

and this;

torsion physics. a view from the trenches
by paul a. murad,
november 28th, 2005

http://www.trinitas.ru/rus/doc/0231/008a/02310063.htm

be well, be love.

david

birth of the universe :

physics of the early universe is at the boundary of astronomy and philosophy since we do not currently have a complete theory that unifies all the fundamental forces of nature at the moment of creation. in addition, there is no possibility of linking observation or experimentation of early universe physics to our theories (i.e. its not possible to `build' another universe). our theories are rejected or accepted based on simplicity and aesthetic grounds, plus there power of prediction to later times, rather than an appeal to empirical results. this is a very difference way of doing science from previous centuries of research. our physics can explain most of the evolution of the universe after the planck time (approximately 10-43 seconds after the big bang).

however, events before this time are undefined in our current science and, in particular, we have no solid understanding of the origin of the universe (i.e. what started or `caused' the big bang). at best, we can describe our efforts to date as probing around the `edges' of our understanding in order to define what we don't understand, much like a blind person would explore the edge of a deep hole, learningits diameter without knowing its depth.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.economist.com/node/16930866?story_id=16930866

be well, be love.

david

the fine-structure constant and the nature of the universe
ye cannae change the laws of physics
or can you?
aug 31st 2010

richard feynman, nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. the number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. if it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen. one consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.

why alpha takes on the precise value it has, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. a new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. in a paper just submitted to physical review letters, a team led by john webb and julian king from the university of new south wales in australia present evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. if their results hold up to the scrutiny, and can be replicated, they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it. instead of the whole universe being fine-tuned for life, then, humanity finds itself in a corner of space where, goldilocks-like, the values of the fundamental constants happen to be just right for it.

[12thUranus]

dear friends,

http://www.economist.com/node/16930866?story_id=16930866

be well, be love.

david


for those who don't want to read the whole article, and for my own enjoyment and reiteration, i quote this. it makes me very happy.

love and blessings.

the researchers calculate that there is less than a 1% chance such an effect could arise at random. furthermore, six of the quasars were observed with both telescopes, allowing them to get an additional handle on their errors.

if the fine-structure constant really does vary through space, it may provide a way of studying the elusive “higher dimensions” that many theories of reality predict, but which are beyond the reach of particle accelerators on earth. in these theories, the constants observed in the three-dimensional world are reflections of what happens in higher dimensions. it is natural in these theories for such constants to change their values as the universe expands and evolves.

[12thUranus]

thanks to spiralcycle's latest post, i found a ra quote that may directly pertain to this science link.

"when they analysed the data from both telescopes in this way, they found a great arc across the sky. along this arc, the value of alpha changes smoothly, being smaller in one direction and larger in the other."

16.35 questioner: can you tell me if the progression of life in other galaxies is similar to the progression of life in our galaxy?
ra: i am ra. the progression is somewhat close to the same, asymptotically approaching congruency throughout infinity. the free choosing of what you would call galactic systems causes variations of an extremely minor nature from one of your galaxies to another.


asymptote - n. a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance


omg. did i say spiral cycle?

a curve intersecting an asymptote infinitely many times.

[Natho]

they are among the true monsters of space
colossal stars whose size and brightness go well beyond what many scientists thought was even possible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10707416

if what scientists suggest is true, that this star is possibly 320 times larger than our own sun, that is incredible. it also makes you re-evaluate the creation of a black hole. imagine the mass of that star, yet it has not colapsed from the force. i wonder what elements this star consists of? goin back on loo, ra said that the next distant stage of saturn was the forming of a black hole, yet its mass would be nowhere near that of the distant monster star. it would seem that mass in general only plays one part in the forming of a black hole, energy perhaps being the other catalyst. im taking a shot in the dark here but its a boggling concept. at what stage would this logoi be in, early, late?

god, we have so far to go in the path of understanding. its probably irrelivant at this stage, but curiousity is killer.:confused:

[LightEye]

dear friends,

isn't this what i've been saying for years?...there is only change...

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/13-neil-turok-universe-has-no-beginning-or-end

be well, be love.

david

will we discover that the universe had no beginning and has no end?

neil turok on his hopes for science over the next 30 years


this article is part of discover's 30th anniversary special section, including 11 eminent scientists' predictions about the next 30 years. share your thoughts on the future of science at the science not fiction blog.

in the conventional picture of the origin of the universe, the big bang is the beginning of time. this is one of the greatest mysteries in science, and i’ve spent the last few years trying to work out how to make sense of the moment when, in that picture, the universe emerged from a point of infinite density and temperature—what’s known as the initial singularity. i’m exploring the idea that the singularity was not the beginning of time. in this new view, time didn’t have a beginning, and the big bang resulted from a collision of branes, sheetlike spaces that exist within a higher-dimensional reality. these collisions might happen repeatedly, creating an eternal, cyclic universe. we are now close to having the first mathematically and logically complete, consistent description of the passage of a universe through a singularity.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

there is no end, no beginning...there is only change..

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827825.200-big-bounce-cosmos-makes-inflation-a-sure-thing.html

be well, be love.

david

big bounce cosmos makes inflation a sure thing

* 13 october 2010 by anil ananthaswamy

is our universe a recycled version of an earlier cosmos? the idea, which replaces the big bang with a "big bounce", has received a boost: this vision of the birth of the universe can explain why a subsequent process, called inflation, occurred.

"the result puts the idea of inflation on firmer ground, and at the same time makes the bounce scenario much more credible," says carlo rovelli, who was not involved in the work but studies quantum gravity at the university of marseille in france.

inflation is an episode of exponential expansion thought to have occurred fractions of a second after the big bang. it is needed to explain, among other things, why the universe today has the geometry it does, but explaining what triggered inflation is tricky.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

when you look outside the box the box goes away...

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25880/

be well, be love.

david

milky way is square, according to new galactic map

some of our galaxy's spiral arms are straight rather than curved, giving the milky way a distinctly square look, say astronomers.

the structure of nearby galaxies such as andromeda is relatively straightforward to see. but the milky way presents an entirely different kind of challenge.

the problem is that we see the milky way edge on, so that nearer stars and clouds are superimposed on more distant ones. telling these apart is tricky because working out the distance of any astronomical object is hard. and that makes the overall structure a real head scratcher.

that's not to say astronomers haven't got a few tricks up their sleeves to help. the conventional way to work out the structure is a two step process. astronomers first create a model of the galaxy and work out how each part of ought to be moving relative to us.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/cosmic-rays-record-high/
incoming cosmic rays hit record high

be well, be love.

david


incoming cosmic rays hit record high

* by lisa grossman
* october 19, 2010 |

the earth was pummeled with record-setting levels of cosmic rays in 2009. measurements from nasa’s advanced composition explorer (ace) and other spacecraft found that more high-energy particles from galactic space penetrated the inner solar system in the last few years than at any other time since the beginning of the space age.

the spike is almost certainly due to several weird aspects of the most recent solar minimum, and could be the start of a new normal for cosmic ray levels.

“it’s sort of like everything’s working in the same direction right now, to allow cosmic rays greater access to the inner solar system,” said space scientist richard mewaldt of caltech. mewaldt and colleagues published their findings oct. 7 in astrophysical journal letters.

[mlohr]

..but being 'sucked' up by the milky way. scientists discovered this fact in 2003.

a new infra red digital survey of the entire sky was made in 2003. teams from the universities of virginia and massachusetts used a supercomputer to sort through half a billion stars to create a -- new star map -- showing our solar system to be astoundingly at the nexus-crossroads where two galaxies are actually joining.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/galaxy_gobble_030924.html

the fact that the milky way is seen in the sky at an angle has always puzzled astronomers. if we originated from the milky way, we ought to be oriented to the galaxy's ecliptic, with the planets aligned around our sun in much the same angle as our sun aligns with the milky way. instead, as first suggested by researcher matthew perkins erwin, the odd angle suggests that our sun is influenced by some other system. together with data from the two-micron all sky survey we now know what it is. we actually belong to the sagittarius dwarf galaxy.

http://www.mondovista.com/milkywayx.html

now this info corrolated with the maya calender system:

<<the cycles that we’re seeing astrologically within our solar system are predicated on an idea that we’re part of the milky way and we’re not. we’re part of the sagittarius b dwarf galaxy. this can be proven by infrared, it’s disputed on all of the astronomy forums but it doesn’t matter. in fact, the russians are suggesting, these two particular russian astrophysicists…one’s an astrophysicist and the other is a stellar evolutionist, they’re written a couple papers that suggest by the time we get to that point, december of 2012, our solar system will be finally and permanently attached to the milky way galaxy and won’t ever leave the milky way galaxy.

since the past 35-40,000 years at least but probably on the order of millions of years, we’ve been drawn out of sagittarius b galaxy as the milky way galaxy eats sagittarius b. our solar system has been going up and down through a sine wave pattern through this band of magnetism and that has been the cause of some of our catastrophic problems. the russians are of the opinion that we will be captured by milky way galaxy (mwg) this time thru and we will become part of the third minor spiral arm of the mwg as a permanent address from this point forward and they have some interesting thoughts about that because as we pass up and down through the thin edge of the plate of the mwg, we’re subjected to much more radiation from all of the suns that are part of the mwg that are spreading out all of their radiation from the center in this flat, spiral plate form.

in the past, it’s only been a brief exposure that has hit earth and our solar system and now it’ll be permanent from that time on, and so they’re saying even after that point, maybe no astrological alignments will ever occur that have ever occurred in the past and that none of those in the past will ever occur again, simply because we’ll now be part of a new galaxy.

it does seem to lend some credence to the idea that we may be permanently captured now and curious that the maya may just end their count, not because of the end of the world, but because of the end of the astrology and astronomy upon which they based their systems, even though their systems are actually counts and consciousness extrapolated, they began as astrological calculators on one level and if that disappeared, then they would just stop they calendar because everything would be new from that point forward.

basically what they’re saying is that new patterns will exist, new forms of energy, and new astronomy, and new astrological potential from that astronomy will exist from the point of 2012 onward. it just is an interesting coincidence that they stopped their long count calendar at that point because they may have known there is no point continuing because it would be an entirely new world with new energies affecting us.>>

[3rd link to a blog removed]

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8148525/how-the-universe-evolved-from-a-liquid.html

be well, be love.

david

how the universe evolved from a liquid

the universe was a super-hot liquid in the moments immediately after its birth, according to the first results from an experiment to recreate the conditions of big bang.

by richard gray, science correspondent 11:00pm gmt 20 nov 2010

scientists working at the world's largest particle smasher – the large hadron collider at cern near geneva, in switzerland – have found that an exotic soup more than 10 trillion degrees celsius in temperature was created immediately after the birth of the universe.

this sticky, gloopy substance, known as a quark-gluon plasma, behaved like a hot liquid, according to their results.

this provided the perfect environment for the first particles and atoms to form, which later led to the stars and galaxies that surround us today.
the findings have surprised physicists as they contradict the accepted view of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the creation of the universe – that the big bang threw out a superheated gas that clumped together to form matter.

"in the very first instances of the universe, it was actually behaving like a very dense liquid," explained dr david evans, a particle physicist at the university of birmingham who is the uk's lead investigator in the experiment.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://io9.com/5694701/does-cosmic-background-radiation-reveal-the-universe-before-the-big-bang

be well, be love.

david

have we found the universe that existed before the big bang?

have we found the universe that existed before the big bang? the current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the big bang. but a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.

the big bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing - indeed, it's not clear whether one can even use the term "before" in reference to a pre-big-bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. in the current model, the universe began with the big bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.

sir roger penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. he points out that the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place. his objection is that the big bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution - that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each big bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

or the universe is flat...

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101124/full/news.2010.629.html

be well, be love.

david

dark energy on firmer footing

geometric test supports the existence of a key thread in the fabric of the universe.
eugenie samuel reich

the claim that mysterious dark energy is accelerating the universe's expansion has been placed on firmer ground, with the successful application of a quirky geometric test proposed more than 30 years ago.

the accelerating expansion was first detected in 1998. astronomers studying type 1a supernovae, stellar explosions called "standard candles" because of their predictable luminosity, made the incredible discovery that the most distant of these supernovae appear dimmer than would be expected if the universe were expanding at a constant rate.1 this suggested that some unknown force - subsequently dubbed dark energy - must be working against gravity to blow the universe apart.

since that time, studies comparing variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation — an echo from the big bang — with the distribution of galaxies today have allowed cosmologists to trace how the universe has expanded, supporting the idea of dark energy. they have also suggested that the universe is 'flat' — that is, it contains just enough matter to keep it delicately poised between collapsing in on itself and expanding forever2.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/4063/full

be well, be love.

david

silent symphony of the cosmos
17 february 2011
by fiona macdonald
cosmos online

einstein’s mysterious gravitational waves could be the clue to understanding the universe – if only we could observe them. scientists are now pinning their hopes on australia to track down the elusive waves.

researchers have crunched einstein’s theory of general relativity on the columbia supercomputer at ames research centre to create a 3-d simulation of merging black holes. the simulation provides the foundation to explore the universe in an entirely new way, through the detection of gravitational waves.

the universe seems a lot more tangible than it used to. when scientists first started pondering what was ‘out there’, they relied on theoretical formula, speculation and, occasionally, religious belief.

today we have space cameras taking pictures of galaxies far, far away, and telescopes that can peek back in time, almost all the way to the universe’s origin.

despite our advances, however, there remains much that we do not understand. and according to many scientists, we still only know part of the story – we can only see the universe, we can’t yet hear it.

nearly every telescope, camera and universe-monitoring device that we currently use detects waves on the electromagnetic spectrum, such as radio waves or light. each have different frequencies, from radio waves to gamma rays, but they’re all emitted only by extremely hot bodies, such as suns.

but the universe is filled with another type of wave emitted by any sizeable object, hot or cold, which is going completely unobserved by us. these waves, first predicted by albert einstein, are known as gravitational waves, and could be the key to scientists understanding exactly how the universe was formed and predicting how it will develop.

[Felicatra]

powerful space explosion may herald star's death by black hole

"a huge, powerful star explosion detonated in deep space last week — an ultra-bright conflagaration that has astronomers scratching their heads over exactly how it happened.

the explosion may be the death cry of a star as it was ripped apart by a black hole, scientists said. high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from the march 28 blast's location, about 3.8 billion light-years from earth in the constellation draco.

astronomers say they've never witnessed an explosion so bright, long-lasting and variable before, according to nasa officials.

the explosion looks like a gamma-ray burst — the most powerful type of explosion in the universe, which usually mark the destruction of a massive star — but the flaring emissions from these dramatic events never last more than a few hours, researchers said.

"we know of objects in our own galaxy that can produce repeated bursts, but they are thousands to millions of times less powerful than the bursts we are seeing now," said andrew fruchter, of the space telescope science institute in baltimore, in a statement today (april 7). "this is truly extraordinary."

http://www.space.com/11328-strange-space-explosion-black-hole.html

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1379142/early-universe-just-one-dimension--know-prove-say-physicists.html

be well, be love.

david

early universe may have had one dimension not three... and now we know how to prove it, say scientists

by daily mail reporter
last updated at 9:28 am on 22nd april 2011

* theory suggests fourth spatial dimension set to open up as the universe expands

did the early universe have just one spatial dimension? that's the mind-boggling question at the heart of a theory scientists say they are on the brink of solving.

the theory was first proposed by physicist dejan stojkovic and colleagues from the university of buffalo in 2010.

they suggested that the early universe - which exploded from a single point and was tiny at first - was one-dimensional (like a straight line) before expanding to include two dimensions (like a plane) and then three, which is the world in which we live today.
the next stage? 3d tvs can give the optical illusion of three dimensions to a two dimensional screen. now scientists believe a fourth dimension could open up

the next stage? 3d tvs can give the optical illusion of three dimensions to a two dimensional screen. now scientists believe a fourth dimension could open up

the theory, if valid, would address important conundrums facing particle physicists.

now, in a new paper in physical review letters, dr stojkovic and colleagues have come up with a test that could prove or disprove the 'vanishing dimensions' hypothesis.

[LightEye]

desar friends,

http://plus.maths.org/content/space-chessboard

be well, be love.

david

is space like a chessboard?
by jennifer marcus

physicists at the university of california, los angeles (ucla) set out to design a better transistor and ended up with a discovery which suggests a new explanation of electron spin and may even lead to a new understanding of the nature of space.
electron spin and graphene

an electron in graphene hops from carbon atom to carbon atom as if moving on a chessboard with triangular tiles. at low energies the individual tiles are unresolved, but the electron acquires an internal spin quantum number which reflects whether it is on the blue or the gold tiles. thus the electron's spin could arise not from rotational motion of its substructure, but rather from the discrete, chessboard-like structure of space. (image: chris regan/cnsi)

space is usually considered infinitely divisible — given any two positions, there is always a position halfway between. but in a recent study aimed at developing ultra-fast transistors using a new material called graphene, researchers from the ucla department of physics and astronomy and the california nanosystems institute show that dividing space into discrete locations, like a chessboard, may explain how point-like electrons, which have no finite radius, manage to carry their intrinsic angular momentum, or spin.

while studying graphene's electronic properties, professor chris regan and graduate student matthew mecklenburg found that a particle can acquire spin by living in a space with two types of positions — dark tiles and light tiles. the particle seems to spin if the tiles are so close together that their separation cannot be detected. "an electron's spin might arise because space at very small distances is not smooth, but rather segmented, like a chessboard," regan said. their findings are published in the march 18 edition of the journal physical review letters.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/no-cmb-circles

be well, be love.

david

theory of recycled universe called into question
by lisa grossman may 13, 2011 | 1:52 pm

in november, cosmologists claimed to see echoes of violent collisions that happened before the big bang in the form of circular patterns in the early universe’s relic radiation. but two new analyses of the same data, which are the first papers on the subject to be published in peer-reviewed journals, assert that those circles are nothing special.

“we found there was nothing strange in the [cosmic microwave background] data at all,” said astrophysicist ingunn wehus of the university of oslo, coauthor of a paper published online in the astrophysical journal letters may 9. the difference in their analyses, she says, is “we do it correctly, and they do not.”

the original claim, made in research published on arxiv.org by theoretical physicist roger penrose of the university of oxford in england and vahe gurzadyan of the yerevan physics institute and yerevan state university in armenia, made a small media splash (and was one of wired science’s top scientific breakthroughs of 2010).

penrose had previously championed the idea that the universe got its start well before the big bang, and has been cycling through an endless series of bangs for eons. as evidence for this strange claim, he and gurzadyan pointed out funny concentric circles in the universe’s baby photos, the cosmic microwave background. the cmb shows a universe that looks more or less the same in every direction, with a nearly uniform temperature of about 3 degrees kelvin.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26763/

be well, be love.

david

milky way is warped, like a beer bottle cap

the discovery of a new arm in the milky way suggests that our galaxy is warped, say astronomers
kfc 05/16/2011

in 1852, stephen alexander, an astronomer at the college of new jersey, put forward the radical suggestion that the milky way galaxy is a spiral.

but while today's astronomers agree on this general shape, they disagree over the precise structure of the spiral and in particular on the number of arms.

astronomers have named at least 6 arms and in the 1990s, evidence emerged that the galaxy had a central bar. the uncertainty is easy to understand. our view of the galaxy shows the nearer stars superimposed on the ones that are further away. and much of the opposite side of the milky way galaxy is obscured entirely by the central mass of stars at the centre.

recently, however, a clearer picture has begun to emerge. the growing consensus is that the milky way has a central bar with two main arms, called the perseus arm, which passes with a few kiloparsecs of the sun, and the scutum-centaurus arm. (the other arms are now thought to be minor structures made up largely of gas.)

[Jeia Ra Manuk]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/11/10/science/space/10galaxy/10galaxy-articlelarge.jpg


something big is going on at the center of the galaxy, and astronomers are happy to say they don’t know what it is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/science/space/10galaxy.html?ref=science


love
et

[weboy78]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-universe-born-symmetry-cosmos.html
physicists and astronomers have long believed that the universe has mirror symmetry, like a basketball. but recent findings from the university of michigan suggest that the shape of the big bang might be more complicated than previously thought, and that the early universe spun on an axis.

[weboy78]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20597-largest-cosmic-structures-too-big-for-theories.html
sylos labini has made such a map using a subset of sloan data. it reveals clumpiness on unexpectedly large scales – though not as vast as these. he believes that the universe may have a fractal structure, looking similar at all scales.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

there you go the mobius ring... ;-)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2016902/ribbon-dust-the-strange-twisted-ring-gas-centre-milky-way.html

be well, be love.

david

ribbon in the dust: the strange twisted ring of gas at the centre of the milky way
by daily mail reporter
last updated at 4:23 pm on 20th july 2011


a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the centre of our milky way galaxy has been observed by the herschel space observatory.

only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 light-years, were known before.

but herschel's view reveals the entire ring for the first time - and a strange kink that resembles a ribbon has astronomers scratching their heads.
new horizons: this bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the centre of our milky way galaxy was observed by the herschel space observatory

new horizons: this bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the centre of our milky way galaxy was observed by the herschel space observatory

nasa researcher alberto noriega-crespo, of the california institute of technology in pasadena, said: 'we have looked at this region at the centre of the milky way many times before in the infrared.

'but when we looked at the high-resolution images using herschel's sub-millimetre wavelengths, the presence of a ring is quite clear.'

the herschel space observatory is a european space agency-led mission with important nasa contributions.

it sees infrared and sub-millimetre light, which can readily penetrate through the dust hovering between the bustling centre of our galaxy and us. herschel's detectors are also suited to see the coldest stuff in our galaxy.


when astronomers turned the giant telescope to look at the centre of the milky way, it captured unprecedented views of its inner ring - a dense tube of cold gas mixed with dust, where new stars are forming.

astronomers were shocked by what they saw - the ring, which is in the plane of our galaxy, looked more like an infinity symbol with two lobes pointing to the side.

in fact, they later determined the ring was torqued in the middle, so it only appears to have two lobes. to picture the structure, imagine holding a stiff, elliptical band and twisting the ends in opposite directions, so that one side comes up a bit.

'this is what is so exciting about launching a new space telescope like herschel,' said lead researcher sergio molinari of the institute of space physics in rome, italy.

'we have a new and exciting mystery on our hands, right at the centre of our own galaxy.'

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=multiverse-the-case-for-parallel-universe

be well, be love.

david

the case for parallel universes

why the multiverse, crazy as it sounds, is a solid scientific idea
by alexander vilenkin and max tegmark | july 19, 2011
image: chad hagen

ditor's note: in the august issue of scientific american, cosmologist george ellis describes why he's skeptical about the concept of parallel universes. here, multiverse proponents alexander vilenkin and max tegmark offer counterpoints, explaining why the multiverse would account for so many features of our universe—and how it might be tested.

welcome to the multiverse
by alexander vilenkin

the universe as we know it originated in a great explosion that we call the big bang. for nearly a century cosmologists have been studying the aftermath of this explosion: how the universe expanded and cooled down, and how galaxies were gradually pulled together by gravity. the nature of the bang itself has come into focus only relatively recently. it is the subject of the theory of inflation, which was developed in the early 1980s by alan guth, andrei linde and others, and has led to a radically new global view of the universe.

inflation is a period of super-fast, accelerated expansion in early cosmic history. it is so fast that in a fraction of a second a tiny subatomic speck of space is blown to dimensions much greater than the entire currently observable region. at the end of inflation, the energy that drove the expansion ignites a hot fireball of particles and radiation. this is what we call the big bang.

the end of inflation is triggered by quantum, probabilistic processes and does not occur everywhere at once. in our cosmic neighborhood, inflation ended 13.7 billion years ago, but it still continues in remote parts of the universe, and other “normal” regions like ours are constantly being formed. the new regions appear as tiny, microscopic bubbles and immediately start to grow. the bubbles keep growing without bound; in the meantime they are driven apart by the inflationary expansion, making room for more bubbles to form. this never-ending process is called eternal inflation. we live in one of the bubbles and can observe only a small part of it. no matter how fast we travel, we cannot catch up with the expanding boundaries of our bubble, so for all practical purposes we live in a self-contained bubble universe.

the theory of inflation explained some otherwise mysterious features of the big bang, which simply had to be postulated before. it also made a number of testable predictions, which were then spectacularly confirmed by observations. by now inflation has become the leading cosmological paradigm.

another key aspect of the new worldview derives from string theory, which is at present our best candidate for the fundamental theory of nature. string theory admits an immense number of solutions describing bubble universes with diverse physical properties. the quantities we call constants of nature, such as the masses of elementary particles, newton’s gravitational constant, and so on, take different values in different bubble types. now combine this with the theory of inflation. each bubble type has a certain probability to form in the inflating space. so inevitably, an unlimited number of bubbles of all possible types will be formed in the course of eternal inflation