Posts Tagged ‘Big Bang’
Not with a bang, but a whimper…
Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end
By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.
Physorg reports that Dr. Shu’s model has four distinguishing features:
• The speed of light and the gravitational “constant” are not constant, but vary with the evolution of the universe.
• Time has no beginning and no end; i.e., there is neither a big bang nor a big crunch singularity.
• The spatial section of the universe is a 3-sphere [a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere], ruling out the possibility of a flat or hyperboloid geometry.
• The universe experiences phases of both acceleration and deceleration.
So, in the beginning there was… no beginning…
(TotH to reader M H-H)
As we paste together another Möbius strip, we might recall that it was this date in 1693 that is traditionally ascribed to Benedictine friar Dom Pérignon’s invention of Champagne.
In fact, the the good father didn’t actually invent sparkling wine: The oldest recorded sparkling wine is Blanquette de Limoux, which was apparently invented by a different bunch of Benedictines in the Abbey of Saint Hilaire near Carcassonne in 1531. Then, over a century later, the English scientist and physician Christopher Merret documented the addition of sugar to a finished wine to create a second fermentation– six years before Dom Perignon set foot in the Abbey of Hautvillers (where he did, in fact, make several improvements to the process of making bubbly) and almost 40 years before it was claimed that the famed Benedictine monk invented Champagne. Merret presented the Royal Society with a paper in which he detailed what is now called “méthode champenoise” in 1662.
Still, today’s a good day to raise a glass in thanks.
Remembrance of Things Vast…
From the Himalayas, through our atmosphere, then dark space all the way out– that’s to say, back– to the afterglow of the Big Bang: the American Museum of Natural History presents The Known Universe.
Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
For more information visit the Museum’s web site.
(ToTH to Jesse Dylan)
As we stand in the places we are, we might recall that it was on (or about, historians are imprecise) this date in 1232 that Pope Gregory IX sent the first Inquisition team to the Kingdom of Aragon, in Spain, to prosecute the Albigensian heresy.
Saint Raymond of Penyafort, who codified the Canon Law for Gregory IX
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