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Universe's Dark Ages May Not Be Invisible After All

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-you-have-a-big-enough-flashlight dept.

StartsWithABang writes: The Universe had two periods where light was abundant, separated by the cosmic dark ages. The first came at the moment of the hot Big Bang, as the Universe was flooded with (among the matter, antimatter and everything else imaginable) a sea of high-energy photons, including a large amount of visible light. As the Universe expanded and cooled, eventually the cosmic microwave background was emitted, leaving behind the barely visible, cooling photons. It took between 50 and 100 million years for the first stars to turn on, so in between these two epochs of the Universe being flooded with light, we had the dark ages. Yet the dark ages may not be totally invisible, as the forbidden spin-flip-transition of hydrogen may illuminate this time period after all.

55 comments

  1. Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Islam is incompatible with Western Civilization - why are we tolerating it?

    Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

    1. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Banning thoughts and/or expressions of those thoughts are what lead to dark ages. Whether done by Catholic kings or Muslim presidents, this is a bad idea due to the bad things for which this will be a precedent.

    2. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by myowntrueself · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Islam is incompatible with Western Civilization - why are we tolerating it?

      Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

      Actually, intellectual property restrictions might be leading us more into a dark age...

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    3. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by ultranova · · Score: 0

      Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

      You mean cultural suicide. After all, it violates the freedom of religion, which is absolutely vital for the marketplace of ideas to exist. That marketplace is the essence of Western Culture, underlaying every currently reigning local ideas.

      The only thing mosques do is give the local populace a chance to copy whatever good ideas Islam might have, and of course the other way around. And the only ones it threatens are those who are on top in current status quo and wish it to remain.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    4. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell, yes, just look at Xtians in the USA trying to shut things down because it's not bible learning.

      There's fuck all difference between their actions because the problem isn't the faith, it's what they do with it and the fact that it IS only faith. Ergo used to "justify" any and all atrocities that they wanted to commit.

    5. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

      You mean cultural suicide. After all, it violates the freedom of religion, which is absolutely vital for the marketplace of ideas to exist. .

      No, freedom of religion is not necessary. What we can't have is enforced religion, which usually comes with lots of limits on "allowed ideas". Abolishing religion completely merely disallows discussions about "gods", you can still have all the interesting controversial scientific ideas we have enjoyed in the past.

    6. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      , you can still have all the interesting controversial scientific ideas we have enjoyed in the past.

      Unless power is given to the numerous types that try to brand specific science theories they dislike as a "religion."

    7. Re:Just wait, Islam will lead us to another one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't try to deflect the blame. It is null hypothesis p-values.

  2. matter, antimatter and everything else imaginable) by rossdee · · Score: 1

    Negative matter?

  3. Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Science requires two things:

    1) Hypothesizing.

    2) Testing those hypotheses.

    Yet we rarely see both done when it comes to advanced astronomy and astrophysics.

    Once we get beyond naming the planets, stars and other astral bodies, and once we get beyond predicting where they might be found at a given time, we've left the realm of science.

    All we get is speculation, without any testing of this speculation. Sometimes, like in the case of the Big Bang, there is no way to test it, so it will forever be speculation.

    When a critical element of science, namely testing one's hypotheses is missing, it makes me very unwilling to consider what's being practiced as being "science".

    1. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sometimes, like in the case of the Big Bang, there is no way to test it, so it will forever be speculation.

      Testable predictions have been made, tested, and new ones continue to be made.

      When a critical element of science, namely testing one's hypotheses is missing, it makes me very unwilling to consider what's being practiced as being "science".

      Trying to pretend testing of hypothesis doesn't exist and rebranding something people don't like (e.g. dark matter), isn't practicing science either.

    2. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We speculated the Sun contains helium, we tested that in the 19th century. Why can't we use the same methods for other stars, and by extension, everything?

    3. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      We speculated the Sun contains helium, we tested that in the 19th century. Why can't we use the same methods for other stars, and by extension, everything?

      We tested that? Did someone go to the Sun, breathe some solar matter in, and talk in a squeaky voice? I think you mean we tested a test of a test of a test that seems to point toward the likelihood of the Sun containing helium, and that's the best guess we have.

    4. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There is a name for your complaint:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis

    5. Re: Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We thought (hypothesis) that space expanded from everywhere.

      We predicted a cmb.

      We designed experiments to observe cmb.

      The evidence rules out expansion from a single point.

    6. Re: Is science this speculative actually science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We thought (hypothesis) that space expanded from everywhere.

      We predicted a cmb.

      We designed experiments to observe cmb.

      You have that backwards. Igor Novikov—of the Novikov self-consistency principle fame—and another Soviet scientist (whose name escapes me) theorized the existence of the CMB in the mid 1960s. However, it was actually discovered accidentally and incidentally in 1964 at Bell Labs in New Jersey by Penzias and Wilson. They were working on a large and very sensitive radio antenna which—after trying to eliminate all known interference—they were still receiving an unknown and mysterious hiss. It wasn't until later that the hypothesis of the existence of the CMB was paired with the already present evidence. They won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978 for their discovery.

      The evidence rules out expansion from a single point.

      I'm not sure the CMB does *that*, exactly. However, there are a growing number of scientists who question the inflationary model.The Ekpyrotic Unvierse Model is one such example of a non-inflationary model. Also, Laura Mersini-Houghton has produced some interesting and testable hypotheses about a competing model to the Big Bang..

    7. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Drumhellar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. We looked at the sun. Helium is something we can see, though, not with our eyes.

      You see, beyond the basic blackbody radiation (Which is purely due to matter radiating heat), each atom glows at specific wavelengths - this happens when an electron moves to a lower energy state (Think: smaller orbit), and emits a photon at the energy level that corresponds to the difference. Every atom has its own set of wavelengths that it emits - this is called the emission spectrum, and if you stretch out the spectrum of a point of light, you can see bright spots that correspond to this emission spectrum.

      Additionally, each atom has a set of wavelengths that it highly efficient at absorbing. These appear as darker spots when you spread out the spectrum of a star. These are called absorption spectrum, and they are unique to each element.
      Analyzing the emission and absorption spectrum of the Sun showed that it was largely made up of a gas that hadn't been discovered, because there were strong emission and absorption lines that corresponded to an element we hadn't yet discovered. This gas was named "Helium", after the Greek word "Helios", meaning the sun.

      A number of years later, knowing that there was strong evidence of its existence, chemists managed to isolate Helium in the lab, and ran tests on it to measure the properties of Helium's spectrum, and it matched to what we saw in the Sun.

      This is how we know the Sun is made of Helium.

    8. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Correction:
      This is how we know the Sun is^W made^W of^W contains some Helium. (And what proportion.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    9. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Drumhellar · · Score: 2

      Whoops. Didn't mean to imply that it was, but I clearly did. Yeah. The sun is about 71% hydrogen, 27% helium, 1% oxygen, and a smattering of a few other elements.

    10. Re:Is science this speculative actually science? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      Wonderfully written post. I just want to point out that the way you relate the history, it's tautological that the Sun contains helium. After all, we named the element after the observations of the Sun.

  4. Starts with a Bang by vikingpower · · Score: 4, Insightful

    is not scientific news, nor does the link point to any academic results. "Ask Ethan" is simply a popular-scientific discussion of results already known. So no News for Nerds, and hardly any Stuff that Matters, IMHO.

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    1. Re:Starts with a Bang by Ikester8 · · Score: 1

      I think I figured out who "StartsWithABang" is...

      --
      That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
    2. Re:Starts with a Bang by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I found the article very interesting, learned something new, and am glad it was posted here!

    3. Re:Starts with a Bang by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.scilogs.com/the-dark-matter-crisis/2013/03/08/the-dark-matter-crisis-continues-on-the-difficulties-of-communicating-controversial-science/

    4. Re:Starts with a Bang by itzly · · Score: 2

      hardly any Stuff that Matters

      But we get Matter that Stuffs.

    5. Re:Starts with a Bang by dohzer · · Score: 1, Interesting

      There are so many of these crappy articles every day that I've just started ignoring anything that "starts with a bang".
      It's such a shame what has become of slashdot lately.

    6. Re:Starts with a Bang by antiperimetaparalogo · · Score: 1

      is not scientific news, nor does the link point to any academic results. "Ask Ethan" is simply a popular-scientific discussion of results already known. So no News for Nerds, and hardly any Stuff that Matters, IMHO.

      While i can't disagree with you (althrough i find this "Ask Ethan" to be good written, and deep enough, stuff), you must agree that this story is at least one of the rare Slashdot stories about something other than the usual TOTALY unrelated to "news for nerds" - in the one month i am a "Slashdoter" i managed to make so many comments about religion (i am a/the religious guy!) or the Greek economy (i am Greek!) for example, but only few about something related to nerds (but even then i did not felt so good: e.g., i insulted all the anti-systemd fundamentalists, so i felt again like a religious Greek fighting the barbarians...).

      --
      Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
    7. Re:Starts with a Bang by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's a physics professor who has an exciting way of presenting what science currently knows about the universe. He does write about some major papers (for example regarding the supposed FTL neutrinos he cautioned skepticism). This is for science popularization geared to interested laypersons. I'm not a scientist so don't get much out of papers, but I am a geek who finds that stuff absolutely fascinating.

      Another very good resource is AstronomyCast.

    8. Re:Starts with a Bang by lgw · · Score: 1

      Shamefully, I actually read TFA. It has a lot of great background on the problem, and is a fine read for someone who hasn't ever looked into cosmology before, but it actually has less information than the Wikipedia article on using the 21cm "hydrogen line" to observe the "dark age" of the universe. Prettier pictures than Wikipedia, though.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    9. Re:Starts with a Bang by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keeps on going with the hipster-optimised unreadable crap website linkspam though. Dice is apparently so up for "content" that they keep on posting this shit. Slashdot is all but dead.

    10. Re:Starts with a Bang by Required+Snark · · Score: 1, Insightful
      You're absolutely right. Ever person who has read Slashdot since it started knows far more about astrophysics then that feeble Ethan guy. He's scientifically illiterate compared to the rest of us.

      We all just woke up one morning and said to ourselves "I'm going over to Wikipedia and read about the forbidden spin flip transition of hydrogen and it's relationship to the 'dark age' period when the expanding universe first became transparent to electromagnetic radiation." I know I did.

      You shouldn't hold back. Tell the full story. We all know at least as much as the authors of any author who is the subject of a Slashdot posting. Slashdot readers that that superior to everyone else.

      Since we are all so damned smart and know so much about everything, the only logical conclusion is that Slashdot should just shut down. It's beneath us. I'm so glad you pointed this out to everyone here. Even given our collective genus, you are slightly superior. I take my hat off to you, sir.

      Of course, there is a somewhat simpler solution that you could unilaterally execute that would solve the problem: never log into Slashdot ever again. It's an insult to those of true enlightenment and we should all immediately log off. Leave it to the cretins and let it die the natural death of the stupid. I'm taking your advice, and this is my last time here.

      Arrogant much?

      --
      Why is Snark Required?
  5. Why is the GoldenEye transmitter pictured? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    At the very bottom of the article there's a picture of the satellite transmitter from the GoldenEye James Bond movie made in the mid 90's.

    Why would a fictional installation from a goddamn James Bond movie of all places be in an article about science?!

    1. Re:Why is the GoldenEye transmitter pictured? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're.... you're not serious, are you?

      That's Aricebo Observatory, and it is a real live transmitter/receiver - the largest in the world.

      And, yes, parts of GoldenEye were filmed there - though, it doesn't actually fill with water.

    2. Re:Why is the GoldenEye transmitter pictured? by meerling · · Score: 1

      So, do you think the Golden Gate bridge is also a prop and fictional?
      After all, it too has been in a James Bond movie.
      Here's something to help you out, just look up Aricebo Observatory. It's probably the single most famous radio telescope/observatory in all of science. They've even done documentaries on it. Just look through the catalog of old NOVA episodes. Heck, there's even been research done on the positive impact it's had on the local wildlife by creating a rather interesting location where other human activity is banned.

      Just because Hollywood makes up a lot of B.S., it doesn't mean that everything, even if it's cool, is fictional.

    3. Re:Why is the GoldenEye transmitter pictured? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're.... you're not serious, are you? That's Aricebo Observatory, and it is a real live transmitter/receiver - the largest in the world.

      No, it is only the largest single-aperture radio telescope. The largest is the VLA.

  6. Cool story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Thanks for posting. I'll check it out later.

    1. Re:Cool story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      medium.com employees should just get banned from /.

      You're bringing nothing of interest with your spam here.

    2. Re: Cool story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a rude and callous presumption

  7. Gold Medal attempt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The forbidden Hydrogen spin-flip-transition was first banned at the Olympic Games of 13,299,999,996 BC due to a string of injuries. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off, although the judges may not be impressed by such an illegal maneuver, which will almost certainly result in an automatic disqualification. Still, they are choosing to make a statement of validity of the maneuver, even at the expense of a possible gold medal. Riveting. Simply riveting.

    1. Re:Gold Medal attempt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Right, but in order for the judges to even monitor the forbidden hydrogen spin-flip-transition, you need to correctly determine the quantum entanglement vector using the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, pass the result through Schrodinger's box, then re-integrate the polynomial (BTW it's over 9,000) and view the result using Google Cardboard.

  8. Re:matter, antimatter and everything else imaginab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Turtles. Billions and billions of turtles.
    And exactly one pony.

  9. Okay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yet the dark ages may not be totally invisible, as the forbidden spin-flip-transition of hydrogen may illuminate this time period after all.

    As long as this forbidden transition involve invoking Nyarlathotep, embracing Shub-niggurath and signing the book of Azathoth, I'm up for it. It's bound to work out okay this time.

  10. Dark? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is it "dark" when the universe is flooded with the CMB? I suppose no new light is being generated during the period, but literally everywhere was basking in the glow of the then far more energetic then now CMB.

  11. In Soviet Russia ... by PPH · · Score: 1

    ... Olympics judges flip you!

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  12. what? by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    Can someone explain "high-energy photons." The way I understand physics if you add energy to something it moves faster. Photons travel at one speed. The only other option is for them to appear to add mass to themselves when energy is applied. Photons don't have mass apparently. So what are the properties of a high energy photon and how is the energy not expressed as speed?

    1. Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You know that whole mass-equivalence equation Einstein is famous for? E=mc^2?

      That's a simplification.The expanded version is called the Energy-momentum relation:

      E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2

      p is momentum. When momentum is 0, you can simplify to:

      E = mc^2

      If you have a massless particle, such as a photon, m = 0. That make the whole equation simplify to:

      E = pc

      Thus, high energy photons have high momentum.

    2. Re:what? by Drumhellar · · Score: 4, Informative

      The energy is expressed as wavelength - higher energy photons have shorter wavelengths.

      And, if it helps, shorter wavelengths = higher frequency, if you choose to describe it that way (Since, the frequency in Hz of light, including radio, is the distance light travels in a second divided by the wavelength).

    3. Re:what? by HiThere · · Score: 2

      Higher energy photons are distinct from lower energy photons in having a shorter wavelength. They both travel at (about) the same speed. Presumably in a true vacum they would travel at exactly the same speed.

      Thus blue light is more energetic than red light, and has a shorter wave length. You measure the energy of the photons by absorbing a certain number and measuring the change in velocity or temperature of the thing that absorbed them. (Usually this is done by some sort of photocell arrangement were the absorbtion translates into electron volts, and that's what you actually measure. I believe that this has been done down to the single photon level, but I'm not sure.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re:what? by cfalcon · · Score: 3

      Blue light is higher energy than red light.

      X-Rays are higher energy than any visible light.

      Radio waves are lower energy than any visible light.

      Gamma rays are higher energy than X-Rays (and all other photons, because past a point, we call everything a gamma ray)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

      If you had enough energy to make one 350nm photon (a wavelength that just might be visible, maybe, as it is UV), you could instead make two 700nm photons with the same energy (which also might just barely be visible, as it is at the edge of infrared). More reasonably, if you had enough energy to make 3 blue photons, you could instead make 4 red ones with that same amount of energy.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
      http://www.chemteam.info/Elect...

    5. Re:what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Higher angular momentum.

  13. how dark is the universe now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just wondering. Would nighttime on Mars or the dark side of the moon have a similar light level compared to Earth?

    When we send various probes to other planets, is the photography entirely reliant on light reflected from the sun or is there enough light to see the dark side as well?

  14. Oh look by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A link to medium.com! And who is the author? Well none other than Ethan Seigel

    Every, single, fucking, day.

  15. 21 cm Protons! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    ... "emitting this characteristic 21 cm photon in the process."

    Duck!

    Preemption; I realize it's a 21 cm wavelength photon, troll!

  16. Re:matter, antimatter and everything else imaginab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I see your negative matter and rise one inverted mass anti-gravity negative antimatter

  17. Re:matter, antimatter and everything else imaginab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Marketing Dept. Sounds too much like invented matter.