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It's Official: You're Lost In a Directionless Universe (sciencemag.org)
Reader sciencehabit writes: Ever peer into the night sky and wonder whether space is really the same in all directions or if the cosmos might be whirling about like a vast top? Now, one team of cosmologists has used the oldest radiation there is, the afterglow of the big bang, or the cosmic microwave background (CMB), to show that the universe is 'isotropic,' or the same no matter which way you look: There is no spin axis or any other special direction in space. In fact, they estimate that there is only a one-in-121,000 chance of a preferred direction -- the best evidence yet for an isotropic universe. That finding should provide some comfort for cosmologists, whose standard model of the evolution of the universe rests on an assumption of such uniformity.
I guess my purpose is to lead a meaningless, directionless life.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
In fact, they estimate that there is only a one-in-121,000 chance of a preferred direction
So, you're saying there's a chance!
So you're tellin' me there's a chance!
...God is everywhere. Well at least there is a 1 in 121,000 chance He is. That is good enough for me!
What happened to the CMB Dipole? Did it vanish?
Neither "lost" nor seeing how the topology of the universe is pertinent in any sense to that.
Rather a long stretch from the science to a populist click-bait philosophical "conclusion"...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
This is what happens when you use Apple Maps for directions...
So, does this mean there is no Axis of Evil in the CMB radiation?
This seemed to be a thorny problem that wasn't going away as per many expert opinions not long ago, but now everything's fine again?
What if the observable universe (whose boundary is the CMB or maybe the cosmic neutrino background) is only a small tiny fraction of the actual universe, and it does have a direction, but that direction is so small on our scale that it isn't measureable and lost in the noise?
The final frontier.
This doesn't convince me that the universe isn't just a bunch of left over particulates from the power stroke of an ICE. A few hundred billion more years and we're probably going to start getting pushed out the exhaust valve.
When physicists talk about the universe, they usually talk about the observable universe, and we are right in the center of it, even more so now that we know it is directionless.
You are in a universe full of twisty little galaxies, all alike.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I know exactly where we are alright? The Phanerozoic Eon was just the first agnathan fishes, then after we did that I made a left turn near the Earliest salamanders, newts, cryptoclidids, elasmosaurid plesiosaurs, and cladotherian mammals...I stopped once to ask homo habilis for directions and the key to the bathroom but ill be damned if we stop again for homo sapiens to turn us back around another direction when weve got the muon detectors telling us the universe is infinitely expanding. Anatomically modern man my ass, that thing worships the higgs boson and launches garbage into its planetary orbit.
Good people go to bed earlier.
That the Earth "hangs upon nothing", and now we have rehabilitation of geocentrism (in the sense that the reference frame is arbitary, but then that's been established since Einstein)...
To name two.
I'm a scientician
Wouldn't this discount the possibility of a (multi-)toroidal-shaped universe?
Serious question here: does this discredit the idea of a big bang, or is there something I'm not intuitively getting about space-time expansion? I would think if there was some initial or source point, things wouldn't be isotropic. I'm too tired at the moment to figure it out or google it, and am hoping someone on Slashdot with more experience and knowledge of these things could explain it.
We're as lost as a biddy in tall grass.
Feel free to add your own . . .
2 directions. Inwards and outwards.
now it's just like minecraft!
Hey, you're not lost. Look on the bright side. You're always at the center of the universe. ;^)
If there were two counter-rotating ring-style space stations, but there was no other matter/energy anywhere else in the universe, would there be any way (assuming you have no knowledge of the past) of telling which was rotating and which was not, or whether both were to some degree?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
He had no mother. He was born from a jackel I believe. Jackel? Sort of like a hyena, only more like a dog, not a cat.
bull, there are people that believe in the theory of gravity and believe that earth is a globe spinning in space. And there are us that know earth is flat and stationary. We are not lost! We are right here! And I would love to see a video with earth spinning in space and so far NASA has failed to provide that!
"...they estimate that there is only a one-in-121,000 chance of a preferred direction -- the best evidence yet for an isotropic universe"
I thought that evidence is based upon empirical fact. How is an estimate empirical fact?
Almost everything in the universe is a blob and accretion disk. Atoms with electrons, Earth with moon, sun with planets, Milky Way with suns, many other galaxies with their suns. So why not the universe?
Did the original quantum dot not have a spin?
Or is there something else pulling on the structures of the universe to counter that spin?
What part does the "Great Attractor" play in this?
I think our puny universe is headed for a crash into a much bigger universe that is tearing ours apart (like the comet that hit Jupiter)
Seriously, just turn on your Universal Positioning System and stop trying to back seat drive.
Thanks for the blast from the past. Your post made me feel like I was in high school again.
Since then I learned that philosophical idealism has no scientific support, and it is, in fact, logically impossible to build scientific support for it. It is really popular among people who love the idea that they can get super-powers if they believe hard enough...the rationalizations they cook up are truly amazing.
But it is all just tripe at the end of the day. Ancient tripe, at that.
i.e. Newton and Leibniz both lived in a period during which the state-of-the-art of mathematics was primed for the discovery of calculus, and they were both doing work for which calculus was a natural solution, and they were both geniuses capable of making the logical leap, so they both did. This story is actually quite common, which creates a lot of fuss in patent law.
Anyway, if you prefer fairy tales to objectivity, there isn't anything an anonymous internet post can say to dissuade you. So...good luck.
...isn't this obvious?
I thought it was clear that the further you look, you're ultimately looking back in time.
Look far enough, and you could see the beginning point of the universe, no matter which direction you look.
Carl Sagan seemed pretty clear about that in the science shows of the 1970s.
-Styopa
Little galaxies in the universe,
Little galaxies made of ticky tacky,
Little galaxies in the universe,
Little galaxies all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same
While the CMB may be without spin, there are giant voids that appear to only exist in one direction. Saying "the universe is isotopic" implies that it's the same in all directions, and if there are giant voids in only one direction, then that's clearly false.
Now to state that the CMB is without direction inherent in it may well be a true statement, and it sounds much closer to what they actually showed. That, itself, is an interesting statement, and may well be true. The step from there to "the universe is without direction" appears false. Which is an interesting result, and may be significant. Somehow if cosmic inflation happened it allowed minor variations to be expanded into significant variations. (This has been proposed before as one of the reasons for believing in inflation.) But this would appear to imply that the CMB was set at a time before inflation. (I don't know whether this is standard theory or a new result.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They have measured x - and x show no indication of a preferred direction.
They also have estimated that with the error marginals of x, with the known factors that can influence it there is a 1:121000 chance the measurement is sufficiently wrong that there may be a preferred direction after all.
Pretty simple really.
According to Kurt Gödel, a rotating universe allows for time travel. Not sure if a directionless universe implies non-rotating, but I'd think so (otherwise the axis of rotation would be a privileged direction). So history is stuck with Hitler. Also no way to have a sex change and go fuck yourself.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I'm not lost. Wherever I am, there I am.
That the Earth "hangs upon nothing", and now we have rehabilitation of geocentrism (in the sense that the reference frame is arbitary, but then that's been established since Einstein)...
To name two.
I'm guessing that the above are being attributed to those in ancient times who actually dared to think for themselves and question what their elders decreed, and it does not include the "Earth is unmovable on its foundation" crowd?
This space unintentionally left blank.
So the mainstream cosmologists' viewpoint is based on the assumption of isotropy, and this result shows support for that. But what assumptions does this result rely upon, and what do you do with the 'intellectual ponzi scheme' problem of needing to rely on progressively more and more, deeper and deeper assumptions to back up your reasoning?
(I did my doctoral studies in the foundations of mathematics, and take a perverse interest in such intellectually subterranean stuff.)
John_Chalisque
The earth is at the center of the universe - the origin, the point of the original Big Bang! That would explain the universe expanding out in all directions from here...
Hmmm, how do you determine the direction of the universe of where a void is?
To my understanding, voids appear to correlate with the observed temperature of the CMB because of the Sachs–Wolfe effect. Colder regions correlate with voids and hotter regions correlate with filaments because of gravitational redshifting. What if galaxies and matter follow a gravitational path much like a meandering river follows the easiest path (in this case, the warmer path of sorts)? I'm no cosmologist or astrophysicist, just a curious mind.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
But there are so many more clever people posting to slash-dot these days that by the time I formulated my post multiple other slsshdotters had stolen my thunder.
Hmmm, how do you determine the direction of the universe of where a void is?
To my understanding, voids appear to correlate with the observed temperature of the CMB because of the Sachs–Wolfe effect. Colder regions correlate with voids and hotter regions correlate with filaments because of gravitational redshifting. What if galaxies and matter follow a gravitational path much like a meandering river follows the easiest path (in this case, the warmer path of sorts)? I'm no cosmologist or astrophysicist, just a curious mind.
Because Dark Matter. Dark Matter organizes the regular matter in the pattern we observe. The large scale structure is essentially the same in all directions [the distribution of void does not matter] implying that the properties of objects and the laws of physics are the same everywhere [that's Isotropy for you].
Not that there can't be both, what with one point not being enough to establish a coordinate system, but it's a good starting point for an otherwise arbitrary system.
An isotropic universe pretty much negates any idea of a Big Bang theory. A favorite model by most scientist. Of course if the Universe is to our perception nearly infinitely large, our little corner would indeed appear isotropic even if it were not. Then again, All things are Relative" ;-)
"Based on what we currently think about inflation, this means that the Universe is at least 10^(30) times the size of our observable Universe! "
http://scienceblogs.com/starts...
I remember the number being 10^28, but these are just guesses... but still, that puts the relative size of the "actual" and observable universe at almost the relative size between YOU and a PLANCK LENGTH. (well, 10^35, but close!)
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
You look. In the directions where you don't see stars, you say there's a void. (It's a bit more complicated, but that's the general approach.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I RTF-Abstract a couple of days ago, but decided against submitting it as bing probably a bit too esoteric for Slashdot. But most of the questions I've seen posted up-thread are covered in the actual paper - at least to the level that I can handle cosmology, which is not very deep.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What does this mean for Big Bang and Steady State?
There is an obvious direction. We call it "time".
Does it really matter - practicality-wise?
My guess is that we will all be looooong gone before we get -- there?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.