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POPSCopernican principle re-examined: We might be living in a giant cosmic bubble Clifton, along with Oxford researchers Pedro G. Ferreira and Kate Land, say that in coming years we may be able to distinguish between dark energy and the void. They point to the upcoming Joint Dark Energy Mission, planned by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy to launch in 2014 or 2015. The satellite aims to measure the expansion of the universe precisely by observing about 2,300 supernovae. The scientists suggest that by looking at a large number of supernovae in a certain region of the universe, they should be able to tell whether the objects are really accelerating away, or if their light is merely being distorted in a void.
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POPS50 Billion Suns! -The Biggest Single Object in the Universe Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.
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POPSIs our universe fine-tuned for life? The Anthropic Principle Under Scrutiny Adams selected a range of possible values for each of these constants, then put them into a computer model that created a multitude of universes, or a virtual "multiverse". Each universe within the multiverse used different values for the three constants and was subject to slightly different laws of physics. About a quarter of the resulting universes turned out to be populated by energy-generating stars. "You can change alpha or the gravitational constant by a factor of 100 and stars still form," Adams says, suggesting that stars can exist in universes in which at least some fundamental constants are wildly different than in our universe.
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POPSMassive Radio-telescope in China to Explore 'Dark Age' of Early Universe The new study is part of a broader effort to understand the early years of the universe, after the big bang using computer simulations can help scientists understand events like the birth of the first stars in the universe. During much of the universe's first billion years, the awesome brilliance born of the big bang faded to black. This dark age represents the least-understood chapter in the history of the cosmos scientists have compiled.
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POPSAn Exceptionally Simple "Theory of Everything" Awesome!! "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'" --------- So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?"
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POPSIs a 'Dark Force' Pushing the Universe Apart? Astronomers now recognize that the eventual fate of the universe is inextricably tied to the presence of dark energy and dark matter.The current standard model for cosmology describes a universe that is 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter, and only 5 percent normal matter.
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POPSHow did the Universe Begin ? The no-boundary wave function also states that space-time was not what we see today at the outset of universal expansion. “When the universe started out,” Hartle explains, “there wasn’t ordinary space-time. Instead of three space directions, as we have now, there were four space directions. At some point, a transition was made to ordinary space-time.”
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POPSDark, Perhaps Forever - Clueless about the universe Whatever proposal is eventually selected, the dark energy satellite will return a tidal wave of data about the universe and its weird denizens, both visible and invisible. This data is likely to transform astronomy in unpredictable ways, but there is no guarantee that it will nail the mystery of dark energy. “We really need new theory, and we have none,” Dr. Krauss said.
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POPSBefore the beginning of the universe Alan Guth of MIT, who first proposed the inflation theory nearly three decades ago, says he suspects “the reported lopsidedness will more likely turn out to be a fluke.” However, he adds, “the concept of inflation is really only the framework of a theory, and so far experiment has given us very little guidance in trying to fill in the details.
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POPSOrigins of Chess Sort of bullshit article about cosmology and chess, but I liked the parts about the historical variants and their similarities.
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POPSwhat is time? the big bang is easier to understand if it is not the beginning of everything but just one of those things that happens from time to time.
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POPSNew twist to matter-antimatter mystery Here is an "almost breakthrough" A major mystery of modern physics is why normal matter particles are the building blocks of the observable universe. Why are we not made of antimatter? Or pure energy? Scientists speculate that a tiny imbalance in the early universe allowed a small fraction of normal matter – one particle for every one billion – to avoid annihilation and survive to form stars, planets, and humans. When we come to know that we don't know, there is a new place for hope...
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POPSWhat is a Large Hadron Collider ? 'Rock Star Physicist' Brian Cox explains what The large Hadron Collider is, how it works what it does and what we may discover with it. How they can get subatomic particles to go at 99..99999% of the speed of light around the 27km circumference collider ,11,000 times a second. - and what happens when they smash into each other while going in opposite directions. He also gives a description of the 'holy grail' of physics, the 'Hick Boson' the yet undiscovered particle that theoretically gives the universe 'weight' The Hadron Collider helps provide a link between theories, and discoveries in both particle physics, and cosmology, something Einstein was searching for to complete his 'Grand Universal Theory'
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POPSBefore the Big Bang - the Big Bounce Now, however, Dr Bojowald and fellow physicists are exploring territory unknown even to Einstein - the time before the Big Bang - using his new theory, called Loop Quantum Cosmology. An analysis of this, one of a series of newly-emerging theories which combine Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity) with that of the subatomic world (quantum theory), "is supposed to provide a non-singular framework in which one could address the question of what was there before the Big Bang," he says.
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POPSElectricity is the Divine Power It's all about quantum mechanics now. But thought it amusing to see how our nineteenth century ancestors harnessed eleectricity and magnetism as manifestations of divinity. Think they also used it to sell miracle cures.
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