Slashdot Mirror
The Big Bang's Last Great Prediction
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "Even with the add-ons of dark matter, dark energy and inflation, the Big Bang still thrives as the most successful scientific model of the Universe ever constructed. It not only accounting for phenomena like the abundance of the light elements, the cosmic microwave background, and the Universe's large-scale structure, but it's led to observable predictions about their details that have since been verified. But there's one thing the Big Bang has generically predicted that we haven't been able to test: a cosmic background of low-energy, relic neutrinos."
We must collect the low-energy neutrinos before the neo-Nazis find them!
The humble banana disproves this all.
As good as it is, I was expecting a bit more than a blog post.
I just found this out a couple weeks ago, and it blew my mind, the big bang theory actually does not explain things we can actually observe right now.
For instance, the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall
I made an app! Shoutium
IANA astro-physicist - but something bothers me about the big bang theory (or at least what I know about it). Why just one? Why aren't we able to detect other big bangs elsewhere? And another thing - we theorise based on what we are able to measure and observe. While we seem to have a theory that fits the data available, surely it is quite possible that our data are just unique to our locality. Seems like we are looking into someone's CA backyard and trying to say something about volcanic action in Iceland.
The orginal article keeps quoting the temperature of 1.96K as the neutrino background temperature, as found in most textbooks on the topic. This is a relic of the time people were assuming massless neutrinos. The confusion is maintained by people using the temperature as a synonym of energy. Actually the non-zero rest mass energy must be subtracted, providing the real kinetic energy of these particles (moving now at 100-1000 km/s) that would be exchanged with a super large thermometer (in view of the tiny interaction cross section). The effective neutrino temperature would then be measured in the milliKelvin range.
No, not quite. These neutrinos also interact gravitationally with ordinary matter, which, of course, the author knows, but just doesn't think of. That introduces two possible means of detecting them, either gravitationally, or by using the Sun or other bodies to focus them on a detector, thereby greatly amplifying their signal.
Will Sheldon finally find a way to communicate with Penny?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
" the Big Bang still thrives as the most successful scientific model of the Universe ever constructed."
Really? Then give us proof where all of that matter came from so the big bang could happen. If it already existed to allow the big bang to occur, then where did it come from before that?
A degree in cosmology takes years of study and research. A degree in cosmetology can be obtained in six months. Your girlfriend will laugh and ridicule your opinions in cosmetology, but you feel fully qualified to comment on the current questions being studied in cosmology.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Why is it: Almost everything IN the universe is a blob and an accretion disk, Earth-Moon, Sun-Planets, spiral galaxies, etc.
But the universe as a whole is uniform. It would imply that the universe was not spinning before the Big Bang.
Or that some outside force Ripped the universe apart, a force that was stronger than the force of the universe's spin energy.
If quantum fluctuations created the big bang, than what created the quantum fluctuations ?
Nobody knows. Although we know that it was there, and it was in a hot dense state.
Note that "nobody knows" does not mean "whatever pet theory you have is right".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well played. I'll have to remember that response.
Botswana.
... but it be good too!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There are two main principles closely related to each other that are rarely mentioned but always exist in the foundation of any such theory:
the assumption that we are not in any special place in the universe (i.e. what we observe its more or less the same regardless of where we are)
and the assumption that the laws of physics are the same everywhere
That is also known as the the cosmological principle.
One could argue that there is no reason to think that is the case but then we stray into philosophy and cosmologists get panic attacks
Come on, DICE: If you're going to troll us with articles, at least try to make it a bit more subtle. This one basically reads as "Evolution is best science EVARRRR!!"
It not only accounting for phenomena
Glad to see the editors we know and love are still living up to the high standards we set for them, too.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Go watch Primer a couple times and then come back and see if you still want to ask that question.
I suspect why everyone gets pissed at this question--assuming it's not just a knee-jerk anti-creationism reaction--is that the question doesn't really "mean" anything. It's like asking someone, "Who was phone?" There's at least one model that posits that ball or some version of the universe has "always been there."
Plus, isn't talking about "before the big bang" paradoxical since time itself technically didn't exist "then"?
#quitepossiblycompletelyfullofcrap
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Sorry, but Scientology isn't a theory - at best it's a wacky hypothesis. A hypothesis must make definite useful predictions and withstand many and varied attempts to disprove it before it gets promoted to a theory (which is, roughly, synonymous with a scientific law)
As for the story changing - absolutely, that's called "learning", a concept you may be familiar with. I'd bet your own story as to where babies come from, or what women want (or men,as appropriate) has changed considerably since you first asked the question. The alternative is to continue to cling to a story that has either been proven false, or is interpreted in such a metaphorical context as to render it irrelevant to physical reality.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Your girlfriend will laugh and ridicule your opinions in cosmetology
Guys with degrees in cosmetology don't have girlfriends, no matter how many chicks you see them hanging out with.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're obviously trolling, but what the hell:
One of the current theories with some traction is that inflationary energy was self-replicating, capable of "separating" flat space into more inflationary energy and the corresponding gravitational well (negative energy potential), for net zero change in total energy. The inflationary energy then later decayed into what we today call mass and energy.
That is to suggest that the entire universe contains a net mass-energy of approximately zero - all positive mass-energy is perfectly balanced by it's negative gravitational potential, and it's only that initial separation that allows anything to exist at all.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That was really lovely, and thank you for posting it.
You assert that one problem with detection is the difficulty of accelerating entire neutrino detectors to GeV energy scales. I'm not sure that I agree. Muons, as we know, decay into electrons and two kinds of neutrino/antineutrino. Electrons moving at GeV scales have more than enough energy to be transformed into muons in the inverse reaction -- if they happen to hit an electron antineutrino -- or more properly, they have a chance to be transformed into a W- boson which can then decay into several things -- lepton/neutrino pairs or quark pairs, one of which produces muons
Muons are easy to detect. Electrons with "suddenly" shifted energy are also easy to detect (another possible outcome). Finally, quark-antiquark "jets" are easy to detect.
At the densities of thermal neutrinos asserted, it seems reasonably probable (without, admittedly, doing the computation) that GeV scale electrons will encounter free neutrinos and undergo the inverse reaction and produce muons along a freely moving beam track and indeed that places like SLAC and the Duke FEL would be producing a small but detectable flux of muons all along the straight legs of their beams that would then either exit sideways (where they could be detected lots of ways) or continue along the collision frame of reference and be moderately separable at the next bending magnet. Yes, there would likely be some auxiliary production near the actual beam from electron collisions with beam pipe metal outside of the beam envelope, but one would expect to be able to put a vacuum pipe along the frame of reference of the collision a kilometer long or thereabouts PAST a a bending magnet (at the right angle) at the end of a long straight leg and run it into a detector, which would then detect all/mostly muons produced by neutrino scattering. Or so it seems.
Is this wrong?
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
The most successful scientific model is found in Genesis chapter 1. It begins with the creation of light.
Well, yes. That's what the Big Bang Theory is in a nutshell, and it was after all originally developed by Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian Catholic Priest.
It's notable that all of the planet's major religions endorse the BBT and consider it to not be at odds with their faith including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, & Judaism.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
That Nobel prize will be mine ....
E = M C2
That's about all there is to it.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
My understanding of the Big Bang Theory, from Hawking's books, is that the theory doesn't try to address what came before the big bang. Or what set it in motion. How how this something came from nothing or if there was a "nothing."
All it attempts to explain is, once it starts, how does it proceed?