Currently the speed of light in a vacuum is just a hair under 300,000 kilometers per second (more precisely 299,792,458 kps).
Because the speed of light (known as “c” to mathematicians and physicists) does not exactly match 300,000 kilometers per second, it makes calculations for physicists and mathematicians unnecessarily tedious.
Cosmology Professor Emeritus Jayant V. Narlikar
“To claim that you have simulated the Big Bang is like a schoolboy claiming after winning a high jump medal that he is close to jumping on to the moon.”
Esteemed Cosmologist Professor Emeritus Jayant V. Narlikar reports from a Cosmology Conference on the latest developments in Dark Matter, Gravitational Waves, FTL Neutrinos, Big Bang cosmologists hugely overstating their conclusions, and a few other topics. Continue reading
Cherenkov Radiation Credit: Wikipedia
A recent criticism of the apparently Faster-than-light (FTL) Neutrinos inspiring a lot of discussion is the claim that if Neutrinos are going FTL – they must cause Cherenkov radiation.
Why? That doesn’t make sense. And its never been observed so how would anyone test that?
Cherenkov Radiation Requires Charged Particles – But Neutrinos Have No Charge
The beautiful blue-violet glow of Cherenkov Radiation is only caused by charged particles, primarily electrons.
News Flash: (June 12, 2012) This article was just nominated as one of the best science blog articles of the past year at 3-Quarks Daily. In voting it just missed getting in the top 20 of the 107 articles nominated; proving more popular than several Scientific American articles.
Gamma Ray Burst Transiting Two Extremely Distant Galaxies
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) recently reported a surprise while observing two extremely distant galaxies; at a very high redshift (z = 3.57); so far away that they are seen as they were a long time ago: only 1.8 billion years after Big Bang.
The surprise was to discover that the cool gas in these presumably young galaxies was very rich in heavy elements (all called metals), a chemical composition usually only seen in older galaxies because it takes so long to make heavy elements.
ESO reports that an international team used the flash of a distant gamma-ray burst GRB 090323 as a probe to study the spectra of the two galaxies (G0 and G1). The bright light emitted by the burst was absorbed by the gas in both galaxies. The measured absorption spectrum allowed an evaluation of the density of heavy elements. Continue reading
Here’s a fun article comparing the claims that 96% of the Universe (matter and energy) is missing according to Big Bang conjecture and that 96% of the world’s cash that is missing due to derivatives.
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Apple Bitten: courtesy Wikimedia
It is difficult to test the flavor of an apple without biting it or taking some sample out of it. You or I can test or measure its flavor by taking a bite of it or taking a small piece for examination. Either method of testing changes the apple irreversibly. Testing which harms or changes the tested phenomena or materials is called “Destructive Testing.”
When I take a photograph inside a building, where the light is dimmer, I usually use a flash.
Using a flash intentionally affects the subject of the photograph in a demonstrable way (a flash changes how someone looks in a photograph), and also in an unintended way — some people react to a strong flash of light in their eyes.
By contrast – photography without a flash does not affect the “model,” at least not with light.
Similarly, while X-rays show us the inner workings of some things, they also harm living photography subjects by damaging the DNA of living tissue.
Regarding the potentially Faster than light Neutrinos, it is vital to realize that only about one (1) Neutrino is detected by Italy’s OPERA every hour; that’s one Neutrino per hour.
Compare that to how every square centimeter on Earth (facing the Sun) encounters some 65 billion solar neutrinos per second.
When that single neutrino hits in Italy, its timed arrival is associated (extrapolated back) to a recorded proton pulse at CERN by using the time it would take for a photon to travel the same distance.
Inflation Illustration
Credit: Jeb
Here’s a very clear article in (relatively) plain English explaining problems with the Cosmological Inflation conjecture by Sean Carroll in Discovery Magazine.
While I disagree with the author’s conclusion that the final ingredients of a “settled” cosmology hypothesis will include Inflation, this article is very well summarized, explained and organized.
This began as a simple question, but it has intrigued enough people that I decided to feature it as an article and expand it so we can have some fun.
“I have heard people say that there are more stars in the universe than there are the grains of sand ‘on the beach.’
What size is the beach and are the grains of sand coarse or fine? Or does the saying go “all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches,” something I simply can’t believe to be true.”
Carmel (Charmel) Beach has many more grains of sand than our Milky Way has Stars
Disclaimer —
You and I will work through to get an answer, but be warned — There will never be a definitive, conclusive, absolute, precise or final answer to this question.
For either counting stars or sand grains — there simply is no measurement, or accurate calculation or mathematical proof
Its even worse than that — we can’t even get approximate numbers with much confidence.
We can only roughly estimate the number of stars in our own galaxy. Estimates easily vary by 150 times (more than two orders of magnitude) and estimates of the number of grains of beach sand are even worse.
Muon vs Electron Neutrino Decay Tracks
Credit: Duke U. Saturday Academy
Neutrinos are fundamental particles, more closely related to Electrons than Neutrons because they are not made up of smaller particles (Neutrons are made up of 3 Quarks).
Here are some odd things about Neutrinos.
1. All three flavors (types) of Neutrinos have zero electric charge making them beyond invisible; nearly impossible to detect. They are only affected by the Weak force and Gravity; both effects are extremely difficult to detect at the atomic scale.
What makes Neutrinos unique among particles is that they seem to change structure or “flavor” (called oscillation) . . . in very short distances. (Kind of like the Transformer toys – except instead of changing shape, Neutrinos seem to change mass ! – both up and down – which of course violates the bedrock principle of conservation of mass-energy.)
Update: Added Glossary and Links to: the original paper, video talk, OPERA website; and step by step explanation of experiment details.
Neutrino Beam Path
Credit:OPERA
While working on another problem, a team of physics researchers at CERN and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy found a potentially revolutionary result seven months three years ago.
They have spent the subsequent seven months three years quietly verifying – that muon Neutrino particles seem to be traveling faster than the speed of light, called Superluminal Motion.
Prof. Dr. Antonio Ereditato, OPERA Spokesman
(A very happy) Team spokesman Prof. Dr. Antonio Ereditato said “We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing,” he said. “We now want colleagues to check them independently.” (Quote credit: Reuters reporter Robert Evans)
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Dark Matter Illuminated?
Credit: SymmetryMagazine.org
NewScientist reports that “NASA’s FERMI satellite has confirmed a previous hint that there is more antimatter than expected coming from space. The bad news is that the result strongly almost certainly rules out Dark Matter as the source.”
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Brünnhilde Singing
The voice you hear getting louder is Brünnhilde practicing Götterdämmerung. Thats because the search is all but over for “the most sought-after particle in modern physics” – the Higgs Boson.
Update: In March 2013, while there are a few loose ends, it appears that a Higgs Boson is detected. See “Closing in on Higgs Boson Certainty, But “Standard Model Higgs” Remains Distant“.
The most expensive science experiment in history, the Large Hadron Collider, has failed to find the Higgs Boson which is required for Big Bang and Expanding Universe ideas (as well as its role as a key component of particle physics “Standard Model“).
CERN Higgs Boson Experiment — Artist’s Simulation
Credit: Lucas Taylor, Wikipedia
The hypothesized particle was not (yet) found within the wide range of values for mass where it needed to show up.
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Map: Our Sun from 5,000 Light Years Away
Here you go — “Map of Our Universe”
(Update: July 20, 2011 – Today Mr. Siegel corrected his article where it had wrongly claimed my article had quoted Professor P.J.E. Peebles “out of context.”)
While Ethan Siegel generally does a good job illuminating science, he recently wrote a flawed critique of an article of mine “International Astronomical Union has no Definition for Big Bang.” This critique included a number of science errors.
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Imagine resolving details of nearby stars and their planets.
Sub-nano-arc second resolution should be possible with this proposal for a telescope that is composed of a set of three sets of two (six total) lens-sensor spacecraft systems that send images and data back to Earth from three baselines that can begin sending ground breaking data when the spacecraft are separated by 10 times Earth’s diameter. The baselines of the six spacecraft grow over some 100 to 200 years to about 100 billion miles (roughly 1100 AU, 2 hundredths of a light year or 160 terameters).
Solar Map
Credit: NASA
Six Directions for Six SpaceCraft
Three pairs of identical telescopes are launched in six X,Y,Z axis directions to escape our Solar System and return images from each of the three paired baselines. One axis is intended to be perpendicular to our galactic plane.
I just found a critique by Ethan Siegel implying that there is some flaw in my article explaining Big Bang’s lack of an adequate scientific definition and hypothesis (titled “International Astronomical Union has no Definition for Big Bang“).
While flattering (I’ve made mistakes before and far prefer to get them corrected quickly), the critique fails to identify any flaws in my article and contains a number of incorrect or misleading assertions — including the false claim that the complete quote by Professor Peebles is somehow out of context.
It also spends most of its extensive effort with an elaborate distraction where it tries but falls short of describing a complete hypothesis for Big Bang. Since the article is copied on other blogs, its errors need correcting. So, here are some responses to the dispute article’s ideas and quotes.
Here’s a fun article on possible identification of a new particle. FermiLab - Illinois
Update (July 2011): Unfortunately, this exciting potential evaporated under more rigorous scrutiny. But, that’s exactly the way science is supposed to work. We are supposed to abandon even our most treasured concepts when data can not support it, and embrace data even when it contradicts our wishes about natural phenomena.
Update (June 2011): Rats – verification by a second team failed; it shows no similar “bump” meaning that hope for the alleged new particle is evaporating, but not disappeared. Nevertheless, the amusing term remains :-)
It describes how the evidence is getting stronger – and we may have a new particle confirmed soon.
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Ever want to explore the whole night sky ?
Whole Night Sky
Here you go thanks to Nick Risinger—
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Live video of our Earth from orbit (from the International Space Station or ISS courtesy of NASA)
Earth from Orbit
Credit NASA
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iss-hdev-payload
And here’s the International Space Station ground tracking position to you can tell where on the earth it is. https://web.archive.org/web/20180509213552/http://iss.astroviewer.net/
Here’s a backup in case the NASA website is down: ISS Tracker
The new record for the farthest object whose distance was directly measured is 450 million light years with an uncertainty of no more than 9 percent.
Our Milky Way galaxy is only 100,000 light years across. 450 million light years is more than four thousand times the diameter of our galaxy. Our “local” Supercluster centered on Virgo is only 150 million light years across – one-third of the new distance measurement record.
This was set by the world’s largest telescope, the Very Large Baseline Array telescope (VLBA) which extends from Hawaii to New Hampshire, and boasts a resolution a hundred times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.
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(c) copyright 2011 David Dilworth
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“…the [Big Bang] definition is a mess.” – Prof. P. James E. Peebles, Princeton University, Feb. 2011
News: (Carmel, California) The world’s most widely respected astrophysics organization, the International Astronomical Union (or IAU), has affirmed that it has no definition for any Big Bang model.
News: A fundamental astrophysics distance tool called Cepheid stars are newly discovered to vary in brightness and mass with age.
Cosmological Distance Measuring Sticks “Ladder” and “Standard Candles”
“Everything crumbles in cosmology studies if you don’t start up with the most precise measurements of Cepheids possible,” said Cepheid research follow-up study lead author Pauline Barmby, of the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
MIRA (Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy) will hold their fabulous annual Holiday Party on December 12. During the fest / feast they are excited about me providing a 15-20 minute presentation titled “Ground Rules for Cosmology.” Come and join us.
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Spring 2010: Click here to read my conference astrophysics paper “Ground Rules for Cosmological Physics”, or
to read the definitive version of — “Ground Rules for Cosmological Physics” you can buy it by clicking here, for a nominal sum at Astronomical Society of the Pacific (and provide support for a most laudable organization).
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