Astronomy and Cosmology

I just finished reading about New radio telescopes that could detect light sources billions of light years away that (it says) were produced at the time of the big bang. Ok...so if everything in the universe/cosmos was produced at the same time as the big bang happened, and expansion meant that we ended up where we are now, how come the light that also happened at the same time is still billions of miles behind us? Phil

I recently saw 'Stephen Hawking special- Did God create the universe? ' , a program in the Discovery channel. The great mind concluded that he believes there's no god, and before the big bang, there was no space or time to begin any creation. And that everything was made from "nothing". So i was thinking, okay, there may not be a God, but what was this "nothing"? If the Big Bang started from an atom sized thing, how did it appear in the first place? If space is not "nothing", then what is it? For those who want to watch the program, search the title in youtube. Thanks in advance

Yet another question from my reading: I read that in inflation, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. I know that there is evidence to support inflation but I was wondering how since I thought nothing could beat the speed of light? Also, if inflation happened and the universe really did expand faster than the speed of light at the near-beginning of time, then does that mean the light is still catching up to the edge of the universe? Or has there been enough time and slowing down of the universe's expansion for light to have already caught up? Thanks in advance!

Hi all! Just read Hawking's A Brief Time in History and starting on The Grand Design. I have to say my mind is blown! I never really understood what my physic's professor was really talking about until now. Anyway, I have a couple questions regarding the matter-antimatter asymmetry/CP violation. I read about how near the event horizon of black holes, one particle of the quark-antiquark pair fall into the black hole while the other particle can escape and as more mass is added to black holes, they can evaporate. I was wondering if there is a possibility that this black hole evaporation can cause matter-antimatter asymmetry if more quarks escape the event horizon as…

Hello I am programmer for 27 years, mostly in 3d graphics, games and ray-tracing visualizations of real world. Recently I started experimenting with simulating universe, rendering stars using star database that are freely available in the Internet. So far I came up with rendering Sirius, Orion, Betelgeuse stars which you can see below, renders and animation: Rendering in 3d without motion blur (zoom in to see stars): Full resolution is 2048 x 2048. Betelgeuse is pretty much in the center of this image. http://www.ultimate-theory.com/Graphics/Stars%201.png Rendering in 3d with motion blur: http://www.ultimate-theory.com/Graphics/Sta…

I finished launching my first ever Space Camera and it was a success until my camera crashed and sunk into the deep waters of Manila Bay, I was lucky that my mom suggested to use a water proof casing for the camera which helped a lot. Now I'm aiming to launch a DIY amateur Space Satellite that I can use for...well confidential purposes and as a means of winning a competition and hopefully this might help me getting accepted in MIT or CalTech next year since I'm turning 16 and I ain't getting any younger. Funding isn't a problem thanks to my parents, it's the liability, I'm always afraid that it might somehow crash and damage building or other satellites bec…

So I was just sitting one day when a sudden idea hit me. I have been wondering about it for some days now. We have always been taught that there were 3 dimensions in space. And then time was included as another dimension, creating the concept of SPACETIME. So the idea was that time is one dimension and space is another( not X, Y and Z). That gives us two dimensions. Now, forget about science for a moment. Consider a situation when you hear about something that has occurred, suppose an event where a mouse killed a lion (I know it's insane, but just think of it.). When you hear about it, what will be your response? I'll tell you. You will ask, "When did it happen? Where did…

Ello, It isn't possible for there to be some sort of 'length dilation' under the conditions of a black hole is it? Then in those particles' frames of reference the space between them would be greater, possibly avoiding a collapse into each other's volumes. Sorry if this is riddled with conceptual errors, and if so please correct them. Thanks, Sato

Is the universe expanding,because it is collapsing from 4 dimensions to only 3 dimensions?

Im not a scientist (would v much like to be) but in the meantime can someone sketch out for me in simple terms how the universe came from nothing as I believe Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins assert, OR point me to any easy-to-understand papers I can read. Cheerz GIAN

The origin point of our universe is bound to be pumping out a vast amount of radiant light. (Or was perhaps) Yet space appears dark to us. Presuming that the material that make up our galaxy and those around us, were flung far from the point of origin and was done so at speeds we can hardly comprehend, then at some point, we (our known universe) a part of the original light producing energy of the universe, whom are decelerating should be eventually be over lapped by (younger?) light produced by the big bang or the origin point thereafter. So what happens when it does? If this questions been asked or answered before, please point me in the direction of where I can learn a…

Im making a sci-fi video game set in the not so distant future. In this future mankind has begun to set up settlements in moons in the "far rim" which is the nick name given to the planets outside of the asteroid belt. I want to have a couple of at least half accurate theories to Terra form various moons. Right now all I have is a settlement in Europa because it was the most obvious. Id also prefer if you tried to use more simple terms/explain your difficult terms, im no scientist Also try to think of resources that could be gained from the planet. For example on Europa there are facilities that use nuclear fission to tear H2O apart into oxygen and use it for future terr…

I recently watched a Discovery Channel documentary called 'Evacuate Earth' in which a neutron star is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth and we have to build a massive star ship to escape destruction. Anyway, in the documentary the neutron star is depicted as one might expect with the media, as a red-coloured star with a eerie-looking aura surrounding it. That got me wondering though, do we have any idea what a neutron star would actually look like? Would it emit light or would it be completely dark?

Hello everyone! Several days ago, I was flipping through pages in physics and chemistry for no particular reason and I stumbled upon a hypothesis: Is it possible for a high school student to create his own rocket and launch a satellite to space with it? Before we all start blowing our heads off, I am no astrophysicist or a prodigy in aerodynamics. And after seeing the Dragon from SpaceX, I realize that I can no where near accomplish that size and magnitude with the limited resources that I have: time, money, knowledge. But hypothetically speaking, is it possible to send a "ghetto" satellite into space and actually accomplish tasks with it, whether that be for photogra…

I have seen comments that galaxies should not exist with the expansion of space. I cornered some Cosmology instructors at Arizona State University and asked the this question: "Since photons expand because of the expansion of space, galaxies separate because of it, two stars in different galaxies separate BUT two stars in the same galaxies do NOT separate. How can that be?" The only answer I could get was that galaxies just hang together. I even mentioned the analogy of pennies on a balloon that is very weak logic. I said if the pennies were painted on the balloon the result would be very different. After a few iterations of the discussion I just said thank you a…

Has anyone seen this show on Science Channel? It was run several times. It tells of an effort to see the "shadow" of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. They are using giant radio telescopes all across the US and maybe other countries, and using a super computer to figure it out. This is also the program that I incorrectly thought I heard an astronomer say that past the event horizon matter is accelerated faster than light speed. What he actually said was space itself accelerates into the black hole faster than light speed. He also mentioned an "inner" event horizon in the black hole where matter crashes into space or matter, or whatever, …

When a massive star supernovas and the collapse is asymetric, it may kick the newly created neutron star away at over 600 miles per second. Could a larger asymetric collapse also create a black hole that takes off at hypervelocity?

On American cable and satellite TV there are a number of astronomy / cosmology programs speaking to the creation of our solar system, and various means of our eventual destruction. One method of destruction involves disturbing the Oort cloud, freeing a comet to fall in to the inner solar system and >BLAM< smash into the earth. If Jupiter doesn't catch it first, etc. OK, but how does the Oort cloud get so disturbed in the first place? This is where it gets annoying. One standard excuse on these TV shows is that a "passing star" disturbs the otherwise peaceful comet cloud. What exactly is a "passing star"? I'm going to assume it's a star that passes by the solar syst…

from here Why would the shadow of a space shuttle launch plume point toward the Moon? Followed by the explanation: Well that is all correct, except that the 2 terms " photogenic coincidence" and "the full moon happened to be" look misleading to me. The full moon is produced by the reflection of the light of the sun. It means that any object in the sky at that same instant at any random place (an airplane, a balloon, a bird) would produce a shadow pointing to the Moon. So the Moon didn't "happen to be there" in coincidence with the shadow. The shadow was "obliged" to point to the full Moon. Of course the shuttle was not "obliged" to take off at full Moon, …

It is almost universally (lol managed to use the word universe already) accepted that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Then why do i keep hearing sizes of 93 billion light years across (wikipedia), and 33 billion years radius from another documentary, and many more bizarre sizes. Doesnt this suggest alot of things are travelling faster than the speed of light? away from the "centre" of the universe which occurred 13.7 billion years ago. Does this mean that light from some galaxies has not reached us yet, which to me doesnt make much sense since we originated from a singularity, which kinda suggests we have always been receiving light from them, unless they …

What is the scientific definition of universe? What might divide ours from alternates?

Hello, I've been trying to understand the quantum fluctuation theory of the Big Bang lately. That's probably not the technical name of the theory, but it's the one that says the Big Bang is the result of a quantum fluctuation in the void--the spontaneous appearance of some particle or force or something that very quickly lead to a run-away inflation of spacetime and matter and energy. First of all, is there any credence to this theory among scientists? Second, what exactly "fluctuated"? Third, if from the Big Bang was create space a time, what time was there for any "fluctuation" to occur in such that it could give rise to time and everything else in it? …

Hi, Say the moon doubled in size magically, what would keep it from becoming part of the Earth again? I guess I'm asking what would have to happen to stabilze the orbit of the two objects if one just suddenly became larger ? Would one have to spin faster? or conversely move away from the other ?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/02/19/3693584.htm Apparently, the mass of the Higgs Boson has determined the fate of the universe. Submitted for your discussion.

Could anyone please explain to me how can an accelerated expansion take place in a homogenous & isotropic universe? I really can't figure that out - at all. Not only cannot happen radial, but not even linear. Unless I'm terribly wrong - and there's where you'll probably come in. If you even take the time for an (simple !) illustration, I would thank you even more. By the way, not only I cannot figure out dark energy, but I cannot imagine expansion even before DE - how could even a constant expansion, or a deccelerating one, could take place in a homogenous & isotropic three-dimensional universe? As soon as I think of several points in space and try …