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."

Comments

Relic Hunter

[Anonymous Coward]

We must collect the low-energy neutrinos before the neo-Nazis find them!

Re:only a blog post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloggers are the new journalists in the hipster era, soon to be known as the Stupid Ages.

Theory as it stands is wrong

[nemasu]

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

Re:Theory as it stands is wrong

[oneandoneis2]

No.

Look up inflation.

Re:Theory as it stands is wrong

[Sockatume]

The issue is that the big bang implies the universe is fairly isotropic; it can be clumpy to a certain degree, and the exact degree of clumpiness depends on the exact model you use. Although this Great Wall is a bigger clump than current models allow, you can imagine that there could be other big bang models where the allowed clumpiness is a bit larger. (In fact we know from other observations that we will have to come up with slightly different big bang models than the ones we currently use anyway.)

Neutrino temperature

[Framboise]

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.

 

Not quite

[mbone]

...the only interaction they can conceivably have with normal matter is via a nuclear recoil.

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.

Re:ROFL

[paiute]

" 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.