The Universe

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://blog.hasslberger.com/2007/12/...rlpo.html#more

be well, be love.

david

star formation: 'reverse whirlpool' or accretion vortex?

star formation is thought to be driven by gravity-induced accretion of material distributed in space. a recent article on space.com titled jets spiral in 'reverse whirlpool' from star illustrates this widely accepted but mistaken conception of the formation of heavenly bodies. space.com's jeanna bryner reports that

"astronomers have observed for the first time a jet of matter spiraling outward from an infant star, as if a lengthy strand of curly pasta. the enormous jet, which shoots out in two directions, is rocketing material away from the so-called protostar and into interstellar space at more than 'supersonic speeds'."

"stars are thought to form at the center of rotating disks of hydrogen gas and dust", continues the article, describing the theory according to which gravitation is the principal star-forming mechanism. however, there is a problem: "the gas can't fall inward toward the star until it sheds excess spin power called angular momentum". as far as official theory goes, the vortices astronomers observed in hh 211, are thought to dissipate some of the energy of rotation which, it is argued, counter-acts accretion by giving rise to centrifugal forces.

that is the official theory, but this explanation of star formation has several problems.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...says.html#more

be well, be love.

david

is time literally slowing down and disappearing from the universe?

remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? well what if the time part of the equation was literally running out? new evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. this radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years.

scientists previously have measured the light from distant exploding stars to show that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. they assumed that these supernovae are spreading apart faster as the universe ages. physicists also assumed that a kind of anti-gravitational force must be driving the galaxies apart, and started to call this unidentified force "dark energy".

however, to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it comes from. professor jose senovilla, and his colleagues at the university of the basque country in bilbao, spain, have proposed a mind-bending alternative. they propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we’re looking at things backwards. senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down. at an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. however, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

there wasn't a "beginning" just as there won't be an "end." there will only be "change..."

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...g-bang-wa.html

be well, be love.

david

the big bang wasn't the beginning
by brandon keim december 31, 2007 | 12:34:46

what if the big bang wasn't the beginning of the universe, but only one stage in an endlessly repeated cycle of universal expansion and contraction?

so suggests mathematical physicist and string theorist neil turok. he thinks there may be many universes, at once interpolated but separate, like a mixture of gases. these universes are attracted to each other; every few trillions of trillions of years, they collide, explode, expand and contract, then repeat the sequence all over again.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

imagine my surprise...

http://www.physorg.com/news118658078.html

be well, be love.

david

hot cyclones churn at both ends of saturn

despite more than a decade of winter darkness, saturn's north pole is home to an unexpected hot spot remarkably similar to one at the planet's sunny south pole. the source of its heat is a mystery. now, the first detailed views of the gas giant's high latitudes from the cassini spacecraft reveal a matched set of hot cyclonic vortices, one at each pole.

while scientists already knew about the hot spot at saturn's south pole from previous observations by the w. m. keck observatory in hawaii, the north pole vortex was a surprise. the researchers report their findings in the jan. 4 issue of science

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...icosmic104.xml

be well, be love.

david

cosmic web to be unravelled

forget about the world wide web. the cosmic web is much bigger, stranger and more interesting, says roger highfield

plans to explore and understand the cosmic web - one of the biggest and most mysterious features of the universe - have been unveiled by scientists.

the sky appears as a vast darkness with spots of lights and clouds of dust, but astronomers have discovered that the stars and galaxies we can see are embedded in streams of light stretching between inky voids, forming a wispy invisible structure called "the cosmic web."

this "framework" for the universe contains visible matter that we are all familiar with but 80 per cent of it consists of dark matter, the matter that astronomers only know to be there because of its gravitational tug on nearby objects.

the structure, and how it glues the cosmos together, poses one of the next big challenges for astronomy. scientists believe that a quantum leap in computing power and the development of powerful new telescopes will soon unravel the secrets of the web, which reaches right into our own cosmic back yard.

one puzzle, says farbrizo nicastro of the harvard-smithsonian centre for astrophysics and colleagues, is that predictions about the makeup of ordinary matter in the web are wrong.

the web is as big as the universe itself, measuring some 14 billion light years across, adds claude-andré faucher-giguère of harvard university, another of the groups discussing the web in the journal science.

although the details are being actively investigated, its birth is one of the best understood results of cosmology. the cosmic web grew out of tiny fluctuations imprinted in the early universe shortly after the big bang, which eventually condensed into the massive structures we see now.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.thinktechnologies.com/por.../blackhole.swf

be well, be love.

david

[weboy78]

ua astronomers on team describing new evidence of ‘inconvenient’ galaxy

tuscaloosa, ala. – discovery of two new components within a puzzling spiral galaxy confirm it must have a pair of arms winding in the opposite direction from most galaxies, according to results being presented today to the american astronomical society meeting in austin, texas. presenting the results are drs. gene byrd and ron buta, from the university of alabama; tarsh freeman, bevill community college; and dr. sethanne howard, retired from the u.s. naval observatory.

“while the existence of a galaxy with a pair of ‘backward’ arms may seem like an inconvenient truth to many, our latest analysis indicates it is, nonetheless, a reality,” says byrd, professor of astronomy at the university of alabama.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.physorg.com/news119184975.html

be well, be love.

david

hubble sees double einstein ring

the nasa/esa hubble space telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. the double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string.

more than just a novelty, a very rare phenomenon found with the hubble space telescope can offer insight into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and even the curvature of the universe. a double einstein ring has been found by an international team of astronomers led by raphael gavazzi and tommaso treu of the university of california, santa barbara.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

"that implies that something, probably the temperature of jupiter's atmosphere is changing."

more concerning solar system changes ;-)...

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/0...-red-spot.html

be well, be love.

david

red spot offers window into jupiter
larry o'hanlon, discovery news

keeping an eye on the spot

jan. 14, 2008 -- the mysterious great red spot of jupiter may be providing an opportunity to see how the giant planet works, say researchers.

spacecraft observations of the way bands of high winds scream past the red spot show how the spot -- inaccurately described as a storm -- is actually far calmer than other parts of the jovian atmosphere.

"the red spot is very quiet at its center," said jupiter researcher philip marcus of the university of california at berkeley.

the winds at the center are just 9 or 10 miles per hour, whereas around the perimeter they exceed 200 miles per hour.

numerical modeling of the spot, as well as laboratory experiments trying to reproduce the dynamics of the great red spot indicate there's more going on than meets the eye.

"one of the interesting things we've discovered about this is that when you try to recreate this in the lab, it's highly, highly unstable," marcus told discovery news. "it just literally rips itself to shreds."

[LightEye]

dear friends,

there was no "big bang" at least not as some would have you "believe."

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/32439

be well, be love.

david

ekpyrotic cosmology resurfaces
branes collide

a six-year-old controversial theory that told of a time before the big bang is undergoing a resurgence, only to be lampooned again by its original critics.

the theory of ekpyrotic cosmology was first put forward as an alternative to the standard “inflation” model of the universe. inflation supposes that just after the big bang the universe underwent a brief period of rapid expansion. this amplfied tiny density perturbations, which evolved into the stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters we see today. although there is currently no way to prove that inflation ever occurred, the fact that it provides such a simple explanation for cosmic structure and the flatness of the universe has cemented it in cosmological doctrine since it was outlined in the early 1980s.

in ekpyrotic cosmology — which was proposed in 2001 by physicists paul steinhardt, justin khoury, neil turok and burt ovrut — there is no beginning of time. instead, our visible universe exists on one of two four-dimensional “branes” floating in a five-dimensional space. these two branes are locked in an endless oscillatory motion in which they creep together, “bounce” through each other, withdraw and then creep together again (see animation: branes collide). at each bounce, which is like a fresh big bang, ripples in the branes collide and liberate energy at different places to produce the initial density perturbations. and because energy conservation would favour a flat brane, the theory explains why our visible universe is flat too. “it’s like the antichrist to inflation,” says khoury.