Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Current Events and General Interest Bits & Pieces -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (455)	2/12/2003 11:32:14 AM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 603

For Astronomers, Big Bang Confirmation nytimes.com [ This seems to be the big science news of the day, and quite a story too. ] The most detailed and precise map yet produced of the universe just after its birth confirms the Big Bang theory in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the early history of the cosmos, astronomers said yesterday. It reveals the emergence of the first stars in the cosmos, only 200 million years after the Big Bang, some half a billion years earlier than theorists had thought, and gives a first tantalizing hint at the physics of the "dynamite" behind the Big Bang. Advertisement Astronomers said the map results lent impressive support to the strange picture that has emerged recently: the universe is expanding at an ever-faster rate, pushed apart by a mysterious "dark energy." By comparing their data with other astronomical observations, the astronomers have also made far more precise calculations of the basic parameters that characterize the universe, including its age, geometry, composition and weight. In a nutshell, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4 percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter — presumably undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big Bang — and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically "flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over cosmic scales. The result, the astronomers said, is a seamless and consistent history of the universe, from its first few seconds, when it was a sizzling soup of particles and energy, to the modern day and a sky beribboned with chains of pearly galaxies inhabited by at least one race of puzzled and ambitious bipeds. The map, compiled by a satellite called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, shows the slight temperature variations in a haze of radio microwaves believed to be the remains of the fires of the Big Bang. Cosmologists said the map would serve as the basis for studying the universe for the rest of the decade. . . . Cosmologists hailed the new map and said it had exceeded their expectations. Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania, called the results "wild," and said they had put the ball in the court of regular astronomy to match its precision. "MAP will be the foundation of all cosmology in the next five years," he said. Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, hailed the results as having something for everyone, confirmation of the New Cosmology that his generation had put together and "hints of surprises" for the next generation to figure out. "This is a great time to be a cosmologist," he said. Dr. John Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., said the results were a "rite of passage" for cosmology from philosophical uncertainty to precision. "The motley mixture of strange elements that astronomers have put together over the last two or three decades is confirmed to remarkable accuracy," he said, referring to the entry of dark energy and dark matter into the astronomers' world. Dr. David N. Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and member of the WMAP team, said: "We've answered the set of questions that have driven the field of cosmology for the last two decades. How many atoms in the universe? How old is the universe?"