A few questions for physicists

[Kyriakos]

Hi...

The aim has been to try to find a residual marker for "inflation" - the idea that the cosmos experienced an exponential growth spurt in its first trillionth, of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.


Theory holds that this would have taken the infant Universe from something unimaginably small to something about the size of a marble. Space has continued to expand for the nearly 14 billion years since.

Can someone account in general for how this view is supposedly backed by the data from that telescope?

Cause the view itself seems to be the usual BB theory one, where the universe can be traced back supposedly to an incredibly minute state in a point of time infinitesimally after time "started". So i have to suppose that the data they gathered with the telescope has to be itself very impressive. Any knowledge of what that would be?

*

Btw, the idea that something (not just a universe, but a smaller distinct progression) "starts" with a massive increase in the very beginning, and then a less rapid increase, is neither new nor that unusual. Just about any spiral develops in that way, with rapidly getting from "zero" to the first point (usually 1), and then having less rapid increases, or some other parameter of it has analogous less rapid increase. By contrast the stable parameters (most of the time some irrational number like phi or pi) define states in those systems at an "infinite" point of their development.

 

[El_Machinae]

Tokala's second link was really informative.

 

[classical_hero]

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26605974

I can hear the religionists checking their holy creation stories now...

Daily News Headline:
"Scientists See God's Fingerprint On Early Universe!"

Sometimes I wish people were more careful with their words, but then I realize that at some point you can't be held responsible for how other people misconstrue your words.

Most definitely not. This is simply confirmation bias. http://creation.com/big-bang-smoking-gun

Far from being a definitive proof of either inflation or the big bang, this so-called ‘smoking gun’ is very ‘model-dependent’, which means it depends on unprovable assumptions—including that there was a big bang to begin with. Whereas even the idea that the CMB is the leftover echo of this alleged event has some serious and unresolved problems; for example, if the radiation really is coming from deep space, why is there no ‘shadow’ in it from objects supposedly in its foreground? See The big bang fails another test.

Consider for a moment something else, something consistent with all the observations, including these latest reports; namely, that the universe did not begin in a big bang, because the universe never started in a singularity. It began in time, yes, … but, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

 

[El_Machinae]

why is there no ‘shadow’ in it from objects supposedly in its foreground?

Buh?!? Wow. Your author is now officially stupid.

 

[Kyriakos]

Tokala's second link was really informative.

Thanks, i read it/tried to follow it. There are many physics terms there, but i suppose this is the core of his comments?

A map of CMB polarization takes the form of little line segments on the sky — the direction of the net oscillation in the electric field. If you just have polarization at one point, that’s all the information available; but if you have a map of polarization over some area, you can decompose it into what are called E-modes and B-modes. (See this nice article from Sky & Telescope.) The difference is that B-modes have a net twist to them as you travel around in a circle. That sounds a little loosey-goosey, but there is a careful mathematical way of distinguishing between the two kinds.

I am not sure what CBM means, but i suppose (?) that the telescope helps define linear patterns in the sky, and thus the difference between those of E type and those of B type (examples given in the article) are said to lead to the conclusion that the gravitational/other important powers involved at a very early stage were so phenomenally massive that what is now observed has to be a remain of them?

I really cannot comment on that, by itself, cause i never bothered much with physics (i like geometry and general math), however i will have to ask just how stable is the ground for using those E and B patterns to define such aspects of the entire universe.

Thanks for the links

 

[El_Machinae]

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was what the energy of the Big Bang turned into before it 'cooled' to become matter. Because we can only use 'light', this wave of light meant that we couldn't really see further back in time. By analogy, you cannot see what type of car has its headlight pointed at you when you're staring at at night. But, these B-modes are structures within the organisation of the light, waveform structures, that allow us to discern what type of energies were involved behind (in the time dimension) the opaque CMB wall.

It's similar to seeing specific ripples on a water surface and then being able to discern that there are fish under the surface causing those ripples. It's not easy, because water already has 'ripples' naturally due to waves and such.

 

[Kyriakos]

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was what the energy of the Big Bang turned into before it 'cooled' to become matter. Because we can only use 'light', this wave of light meant that we couldn't really see further back in time. By analogy, you cannot see what type of car has its headlight pointed at you when you're staring at at night. But, these B-modes are structures within the organisation of the light, waveform structures, that allow us to discern what type of energies were involved behind (in the time dimension) the opaque CMB wall.

It's similar to seeing specific ripples on a water surface and then being able to discern that there are fish under the surface causing those ripples. It's not easy, because water already has 'ripples' naturally due to waves and such.

Thanks I particularly liked the first metaphor of a light source which due to other conditions (in the parallelism lack of other lighting) makes it impossible to observe anything apart from the light emitted to your direction.

I suppose then (obviously) the issue is to examine how math-backed is the model presenting correlations/other links between those patterns and the actual time before the one dealed with in previous models. But i think from your answer you allude to some sort of continuation of the old models, with the expansion by the new data on the (with more crucial arrangement in regards to position, or other factors?) B patterns found now due to the research using that telescope.
Again it is too technical for myself to form a view cause the main parameters are unchecked as to their inherent correctness as models (from my side i mean)

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, me too. Word on the street is that there's gonna be some skepticism from the other experts for some time. They''l want to rederive the same results using different mathematical routes. But, apparently, this has the potential to be really important.

 

[tokala]

Oh, me too. Word on the street is that there's gonna be some skepticism from the other experts for some time. They''l want to rederive the same results using different mathematical routes. But, apparently, this has the potential to be really important.

Definitively. If confirmed, this will apparently shoot down quite a lot of the competing versions of the inflation model.

By the way, for anyone who hasn't already seen it, here's a video of breaking the news to the guy whose version of the inflation model is all but confirmed by those measurements after 30 years, and a nice article focusing more on the human angle rather than the physics:

 

[timtofly]

Is there an assumption that energy came first and then matter? What if matter came first and then energy?

There was tremendous expansion (of matter) up until recently. We have been told there is no longer any expansion. Yet the size of the universe is accelerating. If we do not allow for the inflation of dark matter, we have to either deny the early expansion, or deny the acceleration.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I too do not know why the theory (would seem to?) take for granted that the first stage(s) were less developed in terms of shapes/matter, while the latter stages were/are dominated by matter.

I suppose the very name of the theory hints that they have as a founding basis (and thesis) that something exploded/energy got released in some way. But surely the most common 'energy---matter' relation is when something more solid becomes less solid, or the means by which some event takes place (eg -do note that i am translating the terms for those in Greek, so they may differ in English in Mechanical Physics- positional energy or frictional energy or kinetic energy and so on).

While the universe is examined almost entirely in the macrocosmic level (in regards to theories of how it came to exist), the microcosmic level seems to be the center of the BB theory, due to the infinitesimal "matter" in the first given point in time that the models for that theory aim to present and push further back.

Personally i cannot say i am very happy with all that (by which i obviously mean my general view of what possibly the models and their prospects are even with the new data from the telescope announced), cause they seem to be a model seeking an answer that suits it, and not a pure quest for an answer. :\

 

[El_Machinae]

Is there an assumption that energy came first and then matter? What if matter came first and then energy?

The prior 'stuff' was neither what we think of as either matter or energy, but 'energy' is a closer metaphor, for sure.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I understand what you mean. You can't remove space, that's why space is not a real thing.
But let's consider the earth. Even without the sun and the stars or any other object we could measure it's rotation. It rotates in relation to space.

But does this make space a thing or does it make it a good lingustic/heuristic tool? Is space actually real, or is it something we can talk about as a way to explain what's real?

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, "space" can be just as "real" for another entity as water is for us. Just because some beings sense something as mostly a medium through which A and B are seperated or linked, it does not mean all entities sense it in the same way.

And "real" is not a term that originates (or ultimately extends to) anywhere else than the human beings who have formed it as a notion. It is part of the system of thought. One way to define real is through the Protagoric quote that "Man is the meter of all things, of those that exist that they exist, of those that do not exist that they do not exist". Another is to refer to the closed system of human thought, which makes the term "real" pretty much a limit over which by definition you cannot go (or up to which you cannot reach, alternatively).

 

[El_Machinae]

But does this make space a thing or does it make it a good lingustic/heuristic tool? Is space actually real, or is it something we can talk about as a way to explain what's real?

Space is real. Space is what adds time to the transit of photons from A to B.
edit: well, not to photons specifically. To traveling objects. I don't want a semantic debate as to whether space adds time to photon transit.

 

[peter grimes]

I thought photons don't experience time? They are emitted and subsequently absorbed instantaneously from their frame of reference?

But we massive beings experience them as moving through time?

Am I making sense?

 

[El_Machinae]

That's right. It's not easy to say that space affects the time that photons take to travel. I mean, it's just easier to say that space affects the time it takes for 'anything else to travel.

 

[madviking]

I thought photons don't experience time? They are emitted and subsequently absorbed instantaneously from their frame of reference?

this is still probably the hardest thing for my head to get around when talking about gr. it's just such a weird concept that i always forget it

 

[dutchfire]

Is there an assumption that energy came first and then matter? What if matter came first and then energy?

E = mc^2

 

[peter grimes]

That's not an assumption, though.