Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Take Most Accurate Reading Yet of Universe's Cooling
angry tapir writes "An international team of astronomers has used the CSIRO-run Australia Telescope Compact Array to measure the cooling of the universe since the Big Bang. According to the CSIRO, it is the most accurate reading yet of how hot the universe used to be. When the universe was half its current age its temperature was -267.92 degrees Celsius (5.08 Kelvin), the team found, which is warmer than today's universe (-270.27 degrees Celsius)."
That the universe will not end in a fire ball, but a deep freeze.
We need to start pumping more carbon dioxide into the universe!
267.92C is 5.23 K, not 5.08 K, and 270.27C is freaking hot.
wait wait wait a minute, you first its global cooling, than warming, now universal cooling? WHAT IS IT!!!?!?!?!!
/joke
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Quit complaining and put on a sweater!
Would it be possible to use the cooling rate and hubble constant to estimate the size of the universe?
Yeah, they knew about the universe before it was cool.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
should be: The team measured the temperature at -267.92 degrees Celsius (5.08 Kelvin), which is warmer than today's universe (-270.27 degrees Celsius). I suck.
Has anyone got a number for the amount of heat locked up in black holes?
And when a black hole forms does the temperature of the universe experience a quantum drop?
Since the heat "locked up" in black holes hasn't disappeared from the universe, just become locked in a black hole, no, the average universe temperature doesn't drop.
That's really cool
Table-ized A.I.
Damn, this climate change is really getting out of control. It's bad enough that the planet's changing, but the universe?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
In fact since due to time dilation, everything that drops into a blackhole seems to freeze at the event horizon, the energy radiating from the black hole must equal the energy that will be lost as a function of the matter that falls in.
A few important points which the original story mixed up.
The guys at ATNF measured the temperature of a galaxy 7.2 billion light-years away to be 5.08K is -268.07C
The local temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background is 2.72548K that is -270.42452C
(you are minus a minus -- and that does not cancel outside mathematics)
As the light takes time to reach us, measurements of something 7.2 billion light-years away is essentially 7.2 billion years ago.
This shows the change of the CMB temperature over time, from the big bang (infinite K at 13.7 billion years ago) to now.
---
Dr Richard Dodson,
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
University of Western Australia
With a rectal thermometer the size of Uranus, of course...
So I guess the real way to solve global warming is universal cooling. Hmmm.
sounds like there must have been more lasers back in the day.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/01/24/0025255/researchers-use-lasers-for-cooling
If an observer dropped into a black hole their time would slow.
To an outside observer the stuff just falls in.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The early universe was warm, almost balmy... a popular place for ancient New Yorkers to go in the winter.
complete layman here, my questions might not even make sense but I'm gonna ask anyway. Is there any chance of some of the universe energy "drop out" of our universe by going faster than light at the border of our observable universe? Maybe some of this cooling is due of actually lost energy? Could we glean some info from outside of our universe from it?
you have this completely backwards.
An observer falling into a black hole would not notice anything particularly special about crossing the event horizon and would reach the center of the black hole in a finite amount of time from their perspective. To an outside observer, it would look like it takes infinite time for the falling matter to cross the event horizon, although it will red-shift as it approaches and quickly go "out of view" as it gets red shifted way into the radio spectrum.
Oh, come on, somebody had to say it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Two degrees colder? Me, without my muff.