Astronomy and Cosmology

I am not sure whether to post this here or under quantum mechanics or under Astronomy, if I have posted it in the wrong place please move it!! One of the great victories of quantum mechanics was to prove, despite Einstein’s scoff to the contrary, that God does play dice with the world. Everything in the universe is in multiple states, but when a thing is measured it’s suddenly found to be in only one state (technically; a smaller set of states). Setting aside what a measurement is and what measurements do, the result of a measurement (the state that a thing will be found in) is often, but not always, fundamentally random and unpredictable. Quantum Mechanics have…

I heard that Einstein said that he believed in spinoza's God, the reasonhe said this because of the following statement he made "I see God as the way he shows himself in the laws of nature, the universe doesn't have to obey these laws, it doesn't have to have laws or it could have completely random laws" <-- could someone explain this to me please? So the universe doesn't have to behave this way? Meaning gravity doesn't have to exist, heat doesn't have to cause particles to vibrate, time doesn't have to move in a straight line, is it things like that? Could the universe just as easily had gravity as a force that pushed? could particles just as easily vibrated to …

Can you poke something that’s far away with a stick faster than it would take light to get there? If you had a really long (about 500,000 km) stiff stick, say made up of the stuff of a neutron star would one be able to hypothetically send information faster than light by moving it quickly by 1 cm and poking someone on the other side by pushing a button instantaneously on the other side. I know! I know! a silly question , but many uninformed people ask this question all the time, so let the forum put their confused minds to rest Alan

Why is our universe asymmetrical instead of symmetrical of which it should be due to the fact that equal amounts of antimatter and matter were created in the Big Bang. These two opposites’ states of matter should have annihilated each other in an explosion of unimaginable proportions leaving a dead universe seething with gamma ray energy But luckily for us somehow this did not happen and we now live to pose this enigma one to the other. What are your thoughts? Alan

In This Topic I would like to use an electronic element in order to get better understanding of the Big Bang starting point. The main Idea is that the Science have found a way to convert nothing into something!!! For the following question: "How can you agree that an energy came out of nothing???" I have got the following answer: "As long as the net energy of the universe is zero, and it may well be, there is nothing which prevents the universe from starting as a quantum fluctuation." So let's assume that the quantum fluctuation is a blackbox. As Electronic Engineer, I realy don't care how it works inside. This is the job for scientist. The most important iss…

Hello everyone I'm newbie here I think I have a very important question. There is the idea that Universe could pop out into existence from nothing. Due to the quantum fluctuation. No longer needed divine creators or any mediators to create the Universe. Laws of physics produced the universe. OK, I'm sure that idea of divine creators is pretty unlikely. I believe that the whole Universe (from creation until the end) must depend on Physical laws. but I have a question: Do we need some scene? Where can be happened anything? As I heard, some scientists claim that until big-bang nothing existed literally. If there was simply nothing, how could physical laws produ…

Stephen Hawking already conceded that he lost his bet that the Higgs would never be discovered. What are the implications to cosmology? Any spinoffs like atomic energy? Or is it just the satisfaction of knowing the standard model is correct? "Wednesday’s announcement was also an impressive opening act for the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest physics machine, which cost $10 billion to build and began operating only two years ago. It is still running at only half-power." "The December signal was no fluke, the scientists said Wednesday. The new particle has a mass of about 125.3 billion electron volts, as measured by the CMS group, and 126 billion ac…

Let’s try a thought experiment; of course you can use mathematics if you want to also. Let’s remove the earth and place it in another universe that is absolutely void and lacking energy of any type, absolute cold at absolute zero. How long do you think it would take the entire earth from atmosphere, oceans, crust right down to the very core to freeze solid (This might not be the right expression) or put another way, reach the now almost the absolute zero of the empty universe it now inhabits? Alan

I would like to know the range (of lengths and amplitudes) of the electromagnetic waves known and theoretically possible Could be between 10 exp -35 meters (Plack Dimension) and 10 exp +1 meters (radio waves).

We are trapped in our horizon, we can't see outside observable universe. Physicist says that universe can be finite or infinite. My Question is, we know that universe began 13.75 billion years ago. The universe isn't infinitely old, so how the universe can be infinitely big? If it had finite time until today? Also if the universe began with certain amount of energy and had a definite size how can be universe infinite?

Could anyone discuss the Helium dense zone of our Heliosphere, and its electromagnetic interaction with planetary magnetospheres (as they travel through the He-dense region) located at the 6 o'clock position of the Sun? I'll provide some links for review. Thanks. http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361:20035768&Itemid=129 http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/index.html?tof/Papers/PickupHe/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/f616976443102r5r/fulltext.pdf?MUD=MP

Hi All, The Arrow of time at the moment of the Big Bang. As it is well known and proved time slows relative to the force of gravity surrounding the object on which it is measured. Thus time moves a tiny bit less of Jupiter with a heavy gravity field than it does on earth with a lighter gravity field My question is at the moment of the Big Bang "gravity was infinite" because the singularity was an "infinite mass", thus according to the known laws of physics time should have stood still but luckily somehow it did not? What are your ideas or answers to this question? Regards Alan

I have a question as to the actual nature of cyclic models of the universe (e.g. Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology or the Ekpyrotic universe) - essentially where the universe has no beginning or end it simply goes through cycles eternally in both time directions. So in these situations would the entire history of the universe be considered to be mathematically an countably infinite or uncountably infinite as a set? That is, would each cycle (e.g. big bang to big crunch) be classed as an element of a countably infinite set or an uncountably infinite one? Furthermore, if the set of these cycles was countably infinite would that mean that each cycl…

the universe is killing people with a halo ring they use the attacks i have experienced so far is mindreading when mindreading happened it felt like time slowed down and i almost died from my chest they still use mind reading on me but does not have the same affect of time attacking--the next attack was aether an element found in space when they was using aether my neck would get tense and i would have trouble breathing and my throat would close up and i would have the death feeling on my chest again i found a way to ease the feeling and open up the airway in my throat to help me breathe i would find a tender spot on my leg and hit it and cause a little bit of pain this w…

some times a question comes to my mind please some one tell me example if i'm looking a star at night it's 10 light year distance from earth so realy i'm seeing what is ten years before. is im right ?.

I have two questions: 1. If I understand redshift properly, it is the result of expanding space "stretching out" a wavelength of light along its axis of propogation. Why wouldn't the wavelength of light be stretched out uniformly along all its axes? 2. If space is expanding uniformly, how could this expansion be observable from within a closed system? When I build a 3D model of a set of objects, and then scale them all uniformly, their size:distance relationships do not change. Were I to be inside the model and scale myself along with the rest of the model, I would not perceive any change had occurred, and be unable to measure the effect from within…

Cosmological computer simulations show, that large 'mother-ship' galaxies are accompanied by fleets of 'support craft' galaxies: And, indeed, local spiral galaxies have 100-500 GCs, and elliptical super-galaxies have over 10 thousand. Interpreting GCs, as 'mini-dwarf galaxies', goes far toward rectifying simulations w/ observations. If GCs typically mass [math]10^{4-5} M_{\odot}[/math], then, by the 0.1% rule, GCs should swarm around central BHs with masses of [math]10-100 M_{\odot}[/math]. According to the M-sigma relation: [math]log \left( \frac{M_{BH}}{M_{\odot}} \right) \approx 8 + 4 log \left( \frac{\sigma}{200 km s^{-1}} \right) [/math] such sys…

I am trying to get all the theories i can hear about dark energy. What are some you guys have heard? Do you have your own? Personally i don't assume them to be legit but have 2 theories that i think their could be something to. Could dark energy just be an illusion from light traveling faster in-between galaxies? Or could dark energy be something way more complex like other smaller universes attaching to our own in the low gravitational areas between galaxies? Maybe a combination of a few theories? Personally i end up coming to the conclusion of a combination of multiple theories when it comes to big questions like these. Were sapposed to get a big an…

Have you read about galileo galilei http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_galilei Astronomy before him was studied by nicholaus copernicus. Galileo other experiments were of studying varying time frequency amplitude between motion ranging between two pendulums compaired with varying swings!!! And laws of inertia. Then there were islamic scientists who too contributed in astronomy, of which one used to write trigonometry in 12th century!!!

Another idea I was thinking of for my alien character was that she is part of a new species created in a special laboratory, through the splicing of humans and another animal, so that whatever happens to us our genes will be carried on through them. They would need a planet to live on near Earth, so I was thinking Mars, because Mars would be easier to work with than Venus. How would we be able to terraform Mars, and when would we be able to do so? I was thinking that we could use a device to heat up the surface of Mars, melting the CO2 below the surface, freeing it back into the atmosphere, causing a greenhouse effect to get more heat from the sun, melting the…

I've recently been listening to some talks by Peter Atkins, a chemist and popular science writer, and I've heard him a couple of times talk about the beginning of the universe in terms of "nothing coming from nothing." This is because he says that current data in cosmology tentatively indicates that the universe might have a total energy of 0, and, therefore, the universe ought not be considered to be something coming from nothing, but nothing separating into its component, self-annihilating parts. Is there a name for this theory in physics? Does it have many proponents? Can anyone elaborate on it for me?

Haven't seen this discussed on the forum yet: NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy. By Joel Achenbach, Published: June 4 Blog post on using the new telescopes for planetary defense, asteroid prospecting, and Mars orbiter satellites: Low cost development and applications of the new NRO donated telescopes. http://exoscientist....plications.html Bob Clark

While on a train today, I came to a question I could not answer. It grew from recent talks on the Wheeler-deWitt (WDW) equation ... whilst I have pretty much advocated the idea over many years that we may actually live in a timeless universe (as many scientists have), it did cross my mind to believe that perhaps I have had it all wrong and that I must at least entertain the idea that the WDE-equation has it all wrong. I considered some reasons why this approach could be wrong and I came across a question I couldn't answer within myself. The WDW-equation is obtained from quantizing the Einstein Field Equations - the general relativistic equations which describe curvat…

Hi Basically I am on a mission to find papers which are AGAINST Dark Matter (and energy) and which have "scientific facts" behind them which could disprove Dark Mattter. I need them to be pretty good papers as I have to write a balenced argument about Dark Matter. I have been on a hunt but it is hard to find such things, I have posted on many other Forums but without success. They are very bias and just go "But Dark Matter does exist". Not helpful at all! Also, as it is only AS Level, the maths and facts do not have to be completly correct, I will accept papers which may have a slight error, the person who will be marking it will not notice at all and I s…

Hi, Im 13 and I'm wondering how I can go about learning getting into astrophysics. What should I learn before hand? Where can I learn the aforementioned? I'm no where near the educational year where we learn astrophysics and physics in general so I don't have a massive understanding of a lot of things and my teachers are often to lazy to help me learn this advanced stuff and they tend to suggest I 'Revise my knowledge of atomic structures' which I already know about anyway. Im just starting to do GCSE's and I'm already ahead of my class. While they're trying to comprehend the basic idea of Protons, Neutrons, Electrons etc. I have a solid knowledge of ionisation, isot…