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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!
Bloggers are the new journalists in the hipster era, soon to be known as the Stupid Ages.
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
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Well, when you create a theory of the universe's creation, you should probably take a hint from the name "universe" that there will be just one starting point...
[FUCK BETA]
well if you could somehow transport yourself to outside of this universe you might be able to observe the other big bangs.
hoooowever there's some significant problems with doing that. some people believe that if you jump from a bridge into concrete you get outside though(they base this on a lucid revelation given to someone else than them).
really though you don't need to be an astrophysicist to understand the basis for why your question sounds very misinformed. volcanic action in iceland is observable from california to some extent. quite well too if you include technical means like getting measurement readings from sensors in Iceland. to observe other big bangs you would need to in another universe than Iceland is in, which would make all sensor readings and communication impossible(you can only theorize if there's a multiverse or not, since everything you can possibly see is in this one universe that we are in).
in short: universes are not like galaxies that are _inside_ an universe. universe is what all the galaxies, background radiation and everything else we can see are in. the universe isn't like a room in a house but the universe is like the universe the house is in.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
That's a legitimate question, and in fact cosmologists are curious about the idea of whether the big bang is a unique event or something that can happen spontaneously. The hope is that advanced physics will provide some answers.
As for the "locality" issue: cosmologists address issues related to the entire observable universe. Speculations on regions that are unobservable aren't really a topic for scientific investigation, except where a good model implies certain (untestable) things about unobservable areas.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
In "eternal inflation," inflation is seen as something like the natural state of the universe, with little nodes from time to time budding off of the inflationary stream, and forming universes like our own, with inflation continuing elsewhere (from our standpoint, very very far away, much beyond any distance we could reach, even if we traveled at the speed of light). In such theories, the big bang is not the time of the birth of the universe, it is the time of the cession of inflation here, in our part of this bigger universe. This is one type of what Max Tegmark calls a Level I Multiverse (as there would be other "big bangs" elsewhere).
It may be that the recent detection of cosmic acceleration (aka "dark energy") indicates that our universe may (if the acceleration itself starts to accelerate into something like a "big rip") return to this natural state of inflation in due course, and that might be the typical fate of "normal" universes like ours.
" 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
If quantum fluctuations created the big bang, than what created the quantum fluctuations ?
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
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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?
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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."