OneWingedBird
Beloved of Ra
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Pity there weren't any tritones. That would have been one in the eye for the Catholic church...
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'Birth cry' of the cosmos
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Long article here...
Stephen Hawking's explosive new theory
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 26/06/2008
Prof Stephen Hawking has come up with a new idea to explain why the Big Bang of creation led to the vast cosmos that we can see today.
Astronomers can deduce that the early universe expanded at a mind-boggling rate because regions separated by vast distances have similar background temperatures.
They have proposed a process of rapid expansion of neighbouring regions, with similar cosmic properties, to explain this growth spurt which they call inflation.
But that left a deeper mystery: why did inflation occur in the first place?
etc....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... ing126.xml
Stephen Hawking's explosive new theory
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 26/06/2008
Prof Stephen Hawking has come up with a new idea to explain why the Big Bang of creation led to the vast cosmos that we can see today.
Astronomers can deduce that the early universe expanded at a mind-boggling rate because regions separated by vast distances have similar background temperatures.
They have proposed a process of rapid expansion of neighbouring regions, with similar cosmic properties, to explain this growth spurt which they call inflation.
But that left a deeper mystery: why did inflation occur in the first place?
etc....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... ing126.xml
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- Aug 7, 2001
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- 54,631
TV tonight, 9:00pm to 10:00pm:
Horizon: What Happened Before...
BBC2
Series exploring topical scientific issues. Where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning; our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation. Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang.
(And no doubt on iPlayer too...)
Horizon: What Happened Before...
BBC2
Series exploring topical scientific issues. Where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago. But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning; our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation. Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang.
(And no doubt on iPlayer too...)
Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
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- Location
- Inside a starship, watching puny humans from afar
Watching it right now...
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
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- 54,631
Cosmos may show echoes of events before Big Bang
By Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Evidence of events that happened before the Big Bang can be seen in the glow of microwave radiation that fills the Universe, scientists have asserted.
Renowned cosmologist Roger Penrose said that analysis of this cosmic microwave background showed echoes of previous Big Bang-like events.
The events appear as "rings" around galaxy clusters in which the variation in the background is unusually low.
The unpublished research has been posted on the Arxiv website.
The ideas within it support a theory developed by Professor Penrose - knighted in 1994 for his services to science - that upends the widely-held "inflationary theory".
That theory holds that the Universe was shaped by an unthinkably large and fast expansion from a single point.
Much of high-energy physics research aims to elucidate how the laws of nature evolved during the fleeting first instants of the Universe's being.
"I was never in favour of it, even from the start," said Professor Penrose.
"But if you're not accepting inflation, you've got to have something else which does what inflation does," he explained to BBC News.
"In the scheme that I'm proposing, you have an exponential expansion but it's not in our aeon - I use the term to describe [the period] from our Big Bang until the remote future.
"I claim that this aeon is one of a succession of such things, where the remote future of the previous aeons somehow becomes the Big Bang of our aeon."
This "conformal cyclic cosmology" (CCC) that Professor Penrose advocates allows that the laws of nature may evolve with time, but precludes the need to institute a theoretical beginning to the Universe.
Professor Penrose, of Oxford University, and his collegue Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan State University in Armenia, have now found what they believe is evidence of events that predate the Big Bang, and that support CCC.
They looked at data from vast surveys of the cosmic microwave background - the constant, nearly uniform low-temperature glow that fills the Universe we see.
They surveyed nearly 11,000 locations, looking for directions in the sky where, at some point in the past, vast galaxies circling one another may have collided.
The supermassive black holes at their centres would have merged, turning some of their mass into tremendous bursts of energy.
The CCC theory holds that the same object may have undergone the same processes more than once in history, and each would have sent a "shockwave" of energy propagating outward.
The search turned up 12 candidates that showed concentric circles consistent with the idea - some with as many as five rings, representing five massive events coming from the same object through the course of history.
The suggestion is that the rings - representing unexpected order in a vast sky of disorder - represent pre-Big Bang events, toward the end of the last "aeon".
"Inflation [theory] is supposed to have ironed all of these irregularities out," said Professor Penrose.
"How do you suddenly get something that is making these whacking big explosions just before inflation turns off? To my way of thinking that's pretty hard to make sense of."
Shaun Cole of the University of Durham's computational cosmology group, called the research "impressive".
"It's a revolutionary theory and here there appears to be some data that supports it," he told BBC News.
"In the standard Big Bang model, there's nothing cyclic; it has a beginning and it has no end.
"The philosophical question that's sensible to ask is 'what came before the Big Bang?'; and what they're striving for here is to do away with that 'there's nothing before' answer by making it cyclical."
Professor Cole said he was surprised that the statistical variation in the microwave background data was the most obvious signature of what could be such a revolutionary idea, however.
"It's not clear from their theory that they have a complete model of the fluctuations, but is that the only thing that should be going on?
"There are other things that could be going on in the last part of the previous aeon; why don't they show even greater imprints?"
Professors Penrose and Cole both say that the idea should be shored up by further analyses of this type, in particular with data that will soon be available from the Planck telescope, designed to study the microwave background with unprecedented precision.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11837869
By Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Evidence of events that happened before the Big Bang can be seen in the glow of microwave radiation that fills the Universe, scientists have asserted.
Renowned cosmologist Roger Penrose said that analysis of this cosmic microwave background showed echoes of previous Big Bang-like events.
The events appear as "rings" around galaxy clusters in which the variation in the background is unusually low.
The unpublished research has been posted on the Arxiv website.
The ideas within it support a theory developed by Professor Penrose - knighted in 1994 for his services to science - that upends the widely-held "inflationary theory".
That theory holds that the Universe was shaped by an unthinkably large and fast expansion from a single point.
Much of high-energy physics research aims to elucidate how the laws of nature evolved during the fleeting first instants of the Universe's being.
"I was never in favour of it, even from the start," said Professor Penrose.
"But if you're not accepting inflation, you've got to have something else which does what inflation does," he explained to BBC News.
"In the scheme that I'm proposing, you have an exponential expansion but it's not in our aeon - I use the term to describe [the period] from our Big Bang until the remote future.
"I claim that this aeon is one of a succession of such things, where the remote future of the previous aeons somehow becomes the Big Bang of our aeon."
This "conformal cyclic cosmology" (CCC) that Professor Penrose advocates allows that the laws of nature may evolve with time, but precludes the need to institute a theoretical beginning to the Universe.
Professor Penrose, of Oxford University, and his collegue Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan State University in Armenia, have now found what they believe is evidence of events that predate the Big Bang, and that support CCC.
They looked at data from vast surveys of the cosmic microwave background - the constant, nearly uniform low-temperature glow that fills the Universe we see.
They surveyed nearly 11,000 locations, looking for directions in the sky where, at some point in the past, vast galaxies circling one another may have collided.
The supermassive black holes at their centres would have merged, turning some of their mass into tremendous bursts of energy.
The CCC theory holds that the same object may have undergone the same processes more than once in history, and each would have sent a "shockwave" of energy propagating outward.
The search turned up 12 candidates that showed concentric circles consistent with the idea - some with as many as five rings, representing five massive events coming from the same object through the course of history.
The suggestion is that the rings - representing unexpected order in a vast sky of disorder - represent pre-Big Bang events, toward the end of the last "aeon".
"Inflation [theory] is supposed to have ironed all of these irregularities out," said Professor Penrose.
"How do you suddenly get something that is making these whacking big explosions just before inflation turns off? To my way of thinking that's pretty hard to make sense of."
Shaun Cole of the University of Durham's computational cosmology group, called the research "impressive".
"It's a revolutionary theory and here there appears to be some data that supports it," he told BBC News.
"In the standard Big Bang model, there's nothing cyclic; it has a beginning and it has no end.
"The philosophical question that's sensible to ask is 'what came before the Big Bang?'; and what they're striving for here is to do away with that 'there's nothing before' answer by making it cyclical."
Professor Cole said he was surprised that the statistical variation in the microwave background data was the most obvious signature of what could be such a revolutionary idea, however.
"It's not clear from their theory that they have a complete model of the fluctuations, but is that the only thing that should be going on?
"There are other things that could be going on in the last part of the previous aeon; why don't they show even greater imprints?"
Professors Penrose and Cole both say that the idea should be shored up by further analyses of this type, in particular with data that will soon be available from the Planck telescope, designed to study the microwave background with unprecedented precision.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11837869
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- Messages
- 11,990
The Five Thousand Spirits of the Layers of the Onion.
The rings are quite possibly, a 2D cross section of a multi dimensional, interference, diffraction pattern.
Welcome to the holographic Universe.
The rings are quite possibly, a 2D cross section of a multi dimensional, interference, diffraction pattern.
Welcome to the holographic Universe.
OneWingedBird
Beloved of Ra
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- Aug 3, 2003
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- 15,431
Easy there on the Grant Morrison, now you'll have me pulling my ISB albums out later! :lol:
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
A better description of Penrose's theory:
Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang?
Alasdair Wilkins
The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.
The Big Bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. Before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing - indeed, it's not clear whether one can even use the term "before" in reference to a pre-Big-Bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. In the current model, the universe began with the Big Bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.
Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. He points out that the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place. His objection is that the Big Bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution - that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each Big Bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before.
How does this help? Well, Penrose posits the end of each universe will involve a return to low entropy. This is because black holes suck in all the matter, energy, and information they encounter, which works to remove entropy from our universe. (Where that entropy might go is another question entirely.) The universe's continued expansion into eventual nothingness causes the black holes themselves to evaporate, which ultimately leaves the universe in a highly ordered state once again, ready to contract into another singularity and set off the next Big Bang.
As alternative theories go, it's not without its merits, but there's no evidence to support it...until now. He says he's found evidence for his ideas in the cosmic microwave background, the microwave radiation that permeates the universe and was thought to have formed 300,000 years after the Big Bang, providing a record of the universe at that far distant time. Penrose and his colleague Vahe Gurzadyan have discovered clear concentric circles within the data, which suggests regions of the radiation have much smaller temperature ranges than elsewhere.
So what does that mean? Penrose believes these circles are windows into the previous universe, spherical ripples left behind by the gravitational effects of colliding black holes in the previous universe. He also says these circles don't work well at all in the current inflationary model, which holds all temperature variations in the CMB should be truly random.
Here's where the fun begins. If the circles are really there and are really doing what Penrose says they're doing, then he's managed to overthrow the standard inflationary model. But there's a long way to go between where we are now and that point, assuming it ever happens.
The inflationary model has become the consensus for a good reason - it's the best explanation we've got for the universe we have now - and so cosmologists will examine any results that appear to disprove it very critically. There are also a couple key assumptions in Penrose's theory, particularly that all particles will lose their mass towards the end of the universe. Right now, we don't know whether that will actually happen - in particular, there's no proof that electrons ever decay.
http://io9.com/5694701/does-cosmic-back ... e-big-bang
Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang?
Alasdair Wilkins
The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.
The Big Bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. Before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing - indeed, it's not clear whether one can even use the term "before" in reference to a pre-Big-Bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. In the current model, the universe began with the Big Bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.
Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. He points out that the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place. His objection is that the Big Bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution - that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each Big Bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before.
How does this help? Well, Penrose posits the end of each universe will involve a return to low entropy. This is because black holes suck in all the matter, energy, and information they encounter, which works to remove entropy from our universe. (Where that entropy might go is another question entirely.) The universe's continued expansion into eventual nothingness causes the black holes themselves to evaporate, which ultimately leaves the universe in a highly ordered state once again, ready to contract into another singularity and set off the next Big Bang.
As alternative theories go, it's not without its merits, but there's no evidence to support it...until now. He says he's found evidence for his ideas in the cosmic microwave background, the microwave radiation that permeates the universe and was thought to have formed 300,000 years after the Big Bang, providing a record of the universe at that far distant time. Penrose and his colleague Vahe Gurzadyan have discovered clear concentric circles within the data, which suggests regions of the radiation have much smaller temperature ranges than elsewhere.
So what does that mean? Penrose believes these circles are windows into the previous universe, spherical ripples left behind by the gravitational effects of colliding black holes in the previous universe. He also says these circles don't work well at all in the current inflationary model, which holds all temperature variations in the CMB should be truly random.
Here's where the fun begins. If the circles are really there and are really doing what Penrose says they're doing, then he's managed to overthrow the standard inflationary model. But there's a long way to go between where we are now and that point, assuming it ever happens.
The inflationary model has become the consensus for a good reason - it's the best explanation we've got for the universe we have now - and so cosmologists will examine any results that appear to disprove it very critically. There are also a couple key assumptions in Penrose's theory, particularly that all particles will lose their mass towards the end of the universe. Right now, we don't know whether that will actually happen - in particular, there's no proof that electrons ever decay.
http://io9.com/5694701/does-cosmic-back ... e-big-bang
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2001
- Messages
- 5,823
Iteresting documentary on the subject...
http://tiny.cc/bcjsi
http://tiny.cc/bcjsi
kamalktk
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2011
- Messages
- 7,220
"A rapidly expanding ring of ultracold atoms mimics the physics just after the Big Bang"
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/early-universe-bose-einstein-condensate?tgt=nr
--------------------------------------------
For their stand-in, the scientists created a Bose-Einstein condensate — a state of matter in which atoms are chilled until they all take on the same quantum state. Shaped into a tiny, rapidly expanding ring, the condensate grew from about 23 micrometers in diameter to about four times that size in just 15 milliseconds. The behavior of that widening condensate re-created some of the physics of inflation, a brief period just after the Big Bang during which the universe rapidly ballooned in size (SN Online: 12/11/13) before settling into a more moderate expansion rate.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/early-universe-bose-einstein-condensate?tgt=nr
--------------------------------------------
For their stand-in, the scientists created a Bose-Einstein condensate — a state of matter in which atoms are chilled until they all take on the same quantum state. Shaped into a tiny, rapidly expanding ring, the condensate grew from about 23 micrometers in diameter to about four times that size in just 15 milliseconds. The behavior of that widening condensate re-created some of the physics of inflation, a brief period just after the Big Bang during which the universe rapidly ballooned in size (SN Online: 12/11/13) before settling into a more moderate expansion rate.
AlchoPwn
Public Service is my Motto.
- Joined
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One in the eye? Phrasing ! LOL Cosmic bukkake for Mother Church apparently. Perish the thought! Dreadful ! I'm so offended ( I hear being offended is the new drug of choice).
:bish:
:covers:
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When did the universe 'wake up'?
Source: space.com
3 February, 2020
Distant, ancient galaxies could help scientists understand how the universe turned back into plasma.
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and "Space Radio," and author of "Your Place in the Universe." Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
It was a big moment for our cosmos when the first stars awoke, but it's an elusive one for scientists.
In new research, however, a team of astronomers has identified some of the oldest galaxies ever seen. These objects were already fully formed when the universe was just 680 million years old, according to the scientists, who also found evidence that these galaxies were flooding their surroundings with extreme ultraviolet radiation.
That flood formed gigantic bubbles, where the neutral gas became energized and ionized, offering astronomers the first direct image of a major transformational epoch in our universe.
Before the dawn
A long time ago, there wasn't a single star shining across the universe. In the early days of our cosmos, everything was pretty uniform: just about the same average density from place to place. A bit boring, really.
It was also depressingly neutral, quite a change from the first days of the universe. Even earlier, in the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, our universe was so dang hot and dense that it was plasma; the constant cheek-to-jowl jostling had ripped apart atoms into their constituent electrons and nuclei.
But all that chaos ended when the universe turned a ripe old 380,000 years old. That's when things were spread out enough, and the temperatures were low enough, for the electrons to combine with their nuclear families and form the first atoms of hydrogen and helium. With that event came the release of a tremendous amount of radiation that we still know and love today: the cosmic microwave background.
https://www-space-com.cdn.ampprojec...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
Source: space.com
3 February, 2020
Distant, ancient galaxies could help scientists understand how the universe turned back into plasma.
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and "Space Radio," and author of "Your Place in the Universe." Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
It was a big moment for our cosmos when the first stars awoke, but it's an elusive one for scientists.
In new research, however, a team of astronomers has identified some of the oldest galaxies ever seen. These objects were already fully formed when the universe was just 680 million years old, according to the scientists, who also found evidence that these galaxies were flooding their surroundings with extreme ultraviolet radiation.
That flood formed gigantic bubbles, where the neutral gas became energized and ionized, offering astronomers the first direct image of a major transformational epoch in our universe.
Before the dawn
A long time ago, there wasn't a single star shining across the universe. In the early days of our cosmos, everything was pretty uniform: just about the same average density from place to place. A bit boring, really.
It was also depressingly neutral, quite a change from the first days of the universe. Even earlier, in the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, our universe was so dang hot and dense that it was plasma; the constant cheek-to-jowl jostling had ripped apart atoms into their constituent electrons and nuclei.
But all that chaos ended when the universe turned a ripe old 380,000 years old. That's when things were spread out enough, and the temperatures were low enough, for the electrons to combine with their nuclear families and form the first atoms of hydrogen and helium. With that event came the release of a tremendous amount of radiation that we still know and love today: the cosmic microwave background.
https://www-space-com.cdn.ampprojec...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
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How the Tiniest Particles in Our Universe Saved Us from Complete Annihilation
To overcome a complete annihilation, researchers say, the universe must have turned a small amount of anti-matter into matter, creating an imbalance between them
Source: Lab Manager
Date: 4 February, 2020
KAVLI INSTITUTE FOR THE PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS OF THE UNIVERSE
Recently discovered ripples of spacetime called gravitational waves could contain evidence to prove the theory that life survived the Big Bang because of a phase transition that allowed neutrino particles to reshuffle matter and anti-matter, explains a new study by an international team of researchers.
How we were saved from a complete annihilation is not a question in science fiction or a Hollywood movie. According to the Big Bang theory of modern cosmology, matter was created with an equal amount of anti-matter. If it had stayed that way, matter and anti-matter should have eventually met and annihilated one to one, leading up to a complete annihilation.
But our existence contradicts this theory. To overcome a complete annihilation, the universe must have turned a small amount of anti-matter into matter, creating an imbalance between them. The imbalance needed is only a part in a billion. But it has remained a complete mystery when and how the imbalance was created.
"The Universe becomes opaque to light once we look back to around a million years after its birth. This makes the fundamental question of 'why are we here?' difficult to answer," says paper co-author Jeff Dror, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and physics researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Since matter and anti-matter have the opposite electrical charges, they cannot turn into each other, unless they are electrical neutral. Neutrinos are the only electrical neutral matter particles we know, and they are the strongest contender to do this job. A theory many researchers support is that the Universe went through a phase transition so that neutrinos could reshuffle matter and anti-matter.
https://www.labmanager.com/news/how...rse-saved-us-from-complete-annihilation-21646
To overcome a complete annihilation, researchers say, the universe must have turned a small amount of anti-matter into matter, creating an imbalance between them
Source: Lab Manager
Date: 4 February, 2020
KAVLI INSTITUTE FOR THE PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS OF THE UNIVERSE
Recently discovered ripples of spacetime called gravitational waves could contain evidence to prove the theory that life survived the Big Bang because of a phase transition that allowed neutrino particles to reshuffle matter and anti-matter, explains a new study by an international team of researchers.
How we were saved from a complete annihilation is not a question in science fiction or a Hollywood movie. According to the Big Bang theory of modern cosmology, matter was created with an equal amount of anti-matter. If it had stayed that way, matter and anti-matter should have eventually met and annihilated one to one, leading up to a complete annihilation.
But our existence contradicts this theory. To overcome a complete annihilation, the universe must have turned a small amount of anti-matter into matter, creating an imbalance between them. The imbalance needed is only a part in a billion. But it has remained a complete mystery when and how the imbalance was created.
"The Universe becomes opaque to light once we look back to around a million years after its birth. This makes the fundamental question of 'why are we here?' difficult to answer," says paper co-author Jeff Dror, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and physics researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Since matter and anti-matter have the opposite electrical charges, they cannot turn into each other, unless they are electrical neutral. Neutrinos are the only electrical neutral matter particles we know, and they are the strongest contender to do this job. A theory many researchers support is that the Universe went through a phase transition so that neutrinos could reshuffle matter and anti-matter.
https://www.labmanager.com/news/how...rse-saved-us-from-complete-annihilation-21646
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Thought this was a fascinating article, worth highlighting.
Don't Believe These 5 Myths About The Big Bang
Source: Forbes (editor's pick)
Date: 6 February, 2020
The Universe we know today, filled with stars and galaxies across the great cosmic abyss, hasn’t been around forever. Despite the fact that there are approximately 2 trillion galaxies visible to us spanning distances of tens of billions of light-years, there’s a limit to how far away we can look. That isn’t because the Universe is finite — in fact, it may well be infinite after all — but because it had a beginning that occurred a finite amount of time ago: the Big Bang.
The fact that we can look at our Universe today, see it expanding and cooling, and infer our cosmic origins is one of the most profound scientific achievements of the 20th century. The Universe began from a hot, dense, matter-and-radiation filled state some 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding, cooling, and gravitating ever since. But the Big Bang itself doesn’t work the way most people think. Here are the top 5 myths that people believe about the Big Bang.
https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproje...yths-you-probably-believe-about-the-big-bang/
Don't Believe These 5 Myths About The Big Bang
Source: Forbes (editor's pick)
Date: 6 February, 2020
The Universe we know today, filled with stars and galaxies across the great cosmic abyss, hasn’t been around forever. Despite the fact that there are approximately 2 trillion galaxies visible to us spanning distances of tens of billions of light-years, there’s a limit to how far away we can look. That isn’t because the Universe is finite — in fact, it may well be infinite after all — but because it had a beginning that occurred a finite amount of time ago: the Big Bang.
The fact that we can look at our Universe today, see it expanding and cooling, and infer our cosmic origins is one of the most profound scientific achievements of the 20th century. The Universe began from a hot, dense, matter-and-radiation filled state some 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding, cooling, and gravitating ever since. But the Big Bang itself doesn’t work the way most people think. Here are the top 5 myths that people believe about the Big Bang.
https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproje...yths-you-probably-believe-about-the-big-bang/
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These 4 Pieces Of Evidence Have Already Taken Us Beyond The Big Bang
Source: Forbes
Date: 21 February, 2020
Perhaps the most compelling part of any remarkable story is its origin: how it all began. We can take that question back as far as we want, asking what came before and gave rise to whatever we were asking about previously, until we find ourselves pondering the origin of the Universe itself. This is perhaps the greatest origin story of all, which occupied the minds of poets, philosophers, theologians and scientists for countless millennia.
It was only in the 20th century that science began to make progress on that question, however, eventually resulting in the scientific theory of the Big Bang. Early on, the Universe was extremely hot and dense, and has expanded, cooled, and gravitated to become what it is today. But the Big Bang itself wasn’t the beginning, after all, and we have four independent pieces of scientific evidence that show us what came before it and set it up.
https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproje...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
Source: Forbes
Date: 21 February, 2020
Perhaps the most compelling part of any remarkable story is its origin: how it all began. We can take that question back as far as we want, asking what came before and gave rise to whatever we were asking about previously, until we find ourselves pondering the origin of the Universe itself. This is perhaps the greatest origin story of all, which occupied the minds of poets, philosophers, theologians and scientists for countless millennia.
It was only in the 20th century that science began to make progress on that question, however, eventually resulting in the scientific theory of the Big Bang. Early on, the Universe was extremely hot and dense, and has expanded, cooled, and gravitated to become what it is today. But the Big Bang itself wasn’t the beginning, after all, and we have four independent pieces of scientific evidence that show us what came before it and set it up.
https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproje...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
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The antimatter factory about to solve the universe's greatest mystery
Why is there something rather than nothing? We’re finally making enough antimatter to extract an answer – and it might reveal the dark side of the universe too
Source: newscientist.com
Date: 26 February, 2020
SURE, the big bang is cool, in a hot sort of way. The beginning of all things. Space, time, matter and energy bursting into existence from a pinprick of infinite temperature and density. Space racing away from itself faster than the speed of light. Maybe even the making of a multiverse.
But a second moment shortly afterwards doesn’t get half the press. Perhaps that is because it is when precisely nothing happened. Call it an anti-moment.
It is when all the matter that suddenly and inexplicably came into being in the big bang equally suddenly and inexplicably failed to go out of being again. When it didn’t cease to be available to create stars, galaxies, planets, an unquantified quantity of questioning life and, on one world at least, some highly embarrassed physicists who predicted exactly that. “The fact that we are a world completely dominated by matter is completely un-understood,” says Chloé Malbrunot at particle physics lab CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. “Theory says we shouldn’t be here.”
After decades trying to understand why we are here, we could now be nearing a breakthrough on multiple fronts. And the answer probably isn’t the one we first thought of. There is even a slim chance it could explain not only what happened after the big bang, but also great mysteries of our universe today, such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy. “We are just one experiment away from a revolution in our understanding,” says Jeffrey Hangst at CERN. “That’s what makes this so cool.”
https://www-newscientist-com.cdn.am...bout-to-solve-the-universes-greatest-mystery/
Why is there something rather than nothing? We’re finally making enough antimatter to extract an answer – and it might reveal the dark side of the universe too
Source: newscientist.com
Date: 26 February, 2020
SURE, the big bang is cool, in a hot sort of way. The beginning of all things. Space, time, matter and energy bursting into existence from a pinprick of infinite temperature and density. Space racing away from itself faster than the speed of light. Maybe even the making of a multiverse.
But a second moment shortly afterwards doesn’t get half the press. Perhaps that is because it is when precisely nothing happened. Call it an anti-moment.
It is when all the matter that suddenly and inexplicably came into being in the big bang equally suddenly and inexplicably failed to go out of being again. When it didn’t cease to be available to create stars, galaxies, planets, an unquantified quantity of questioning life and, on one world at least, some highly embarrassed physicists who predicted exactly that. “The fact that we are a world completely dominated by matter is completely un-understood,” says Chloé Malbrunot at particle physics lab CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. “Theory says we shouldn’t be here.”
After decades trying to understand why we are here, we could now be nearing a breakthrough on multiple fronts. And the answer probably isn’t the one we first thought of. There is even a slim chance it could explain not only what happened after the big bang, but also great mysteries of our universe today, such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy. “We are just one experiment away from a revolution in our understanding,” says Jeffrey Hangst at CERN. “That’s what makes this so cool.”
https://www-newscientist-com.cdn.am...bout-to-solve-the-universes-greatest-mystery/
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How the Cosmic Dark Ages Snuffed Out All Light
Source: quantamagazine.org
Date: 2 March, 2020
Darkness isn’t always the absence of light. It can also be the inability of light to get very far.
And just as the brightest headlight can be blocked by a thick fog, the first stars in the universe were shrouded by their immediate surroundings. Astronomers call this time period the cosmic dark ages, and they are slowly unraveling the mystery of how and when it ended.
The obvious challenge is that astronomers rely on light. Without it, direct observational evidence of anything is hard to come by. Even so, new findings, presented in January at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society, show the earliest direct evidence to date of the time when the cosmic fog lifted, allowing light from the infant universe to travel unimpeded.
What Made the Fog?
When light encounters matter, a number of things can happen. The light can bounce back off as if the matter were a mirror, or the light can pass straight through as if through glass, or in some special cases it can get absorbed. The special cases occur when the energy of the light corresponds exactly to an energy transition in the atom it is encountering. When that happens, the atom absorbs a photon of light and uses that energy to boost the energy of its own electron.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-cosmic-dark-ages-snuffed-out-all-light-20200302/
Source: quantamagazine.org
Date: 2 March, 2020
Darkness isn’t always the absence of light. It can also be the inability of light to get very far.
And just as the brightest headlight can be blocked by a thick fog, the first stars in the universe were shrouded by their immediate surroundings. Astronomers call this time period the cosmic dark ages, and they are slowly unraveling the mystery of how and when it ended.
The obvious challenge is that astronomers rely on light. Without it, direct observational evidence of anything is hard to come by. Even so, new findings, presented in January at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society, show the earliest direct evidence to date of the time when the cosmic fog lifted, allowing light from the infant universe to travel unimpeded.
What Made the Fog?
When light encounters matter, a number of things can happen. The light can bounce back off as if the matter were a mirror, or the light can pass straight through as if through glass, or in some special cases it can get absorbed. The special cases occur when the energy of the light corresponds exactly to an energy transition in the atom it is encountering. When that happens, the atom absorbs a photon of light and uses that energy to boost the energy of its own electron.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-cosmic-dark-ages-snuffed-out-all-light-20200302/
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Although written some time previously, I found this to be quite informative:
Alternatives to the Big Bang Theory Explained (Infographic)
Source: space.com
Date: 21 February, 2014
Nearly 14 billion years ago, there was nothing and nowhere. Then, due to a random fluctuation in a completely empty void, a universe exploded into existence. Something the size of a subatomic particle inflated to unimaginably huge size in a fraction of a second, driven apart by negative-pressure vacuum energy. Scientists call this theory for the origin of the universe the Big Bang.
What we call the "observable universe" (or the "Hubble Volume") is the spherical region, about 90 billion light-years in diameter, that is centered on any given observer. This is the only part of the universe in which light has had time to reach the observer in the 13.8 billion years since the universe began.
Since the universe's expansion is accelerating, objects are being dragged out of Earth's Hubble Volume and will become undetectable to humans of the future.
The Hubble Volume is more than 13.8 billion light-years in radius because the expansion of space has increased distances between objects faster than light can travel.
[...]
Implications found in quantum gravity and string theory tantalizingly suggest a universe that is in reality nothing like how it appears to human observers. It may actually be a flat hologram projected onto the surface of a sphere, for example. Or it could be a completely digital simulation running in a vast computer.
https://www.space.com/24781-big-bang-theory-alternatives-infographic.html
Alternatives to the Big Bang Theory Explained (Infographic)
Source: space.com
Date: 21 February, 2014
Nearly 14 billion years ago, there was nothing and nowhere. Then, due to a random fluctuation in a completely empty void, a universe exploded into existence. Something the size of a subatomic particle inflated to unimaginably huge size in a fraction of a second, driven apart by negative-pressure vacuum energy. Scientists call this theory for the origin of the universe the Big Bang.
What we call the "observable universe" (or the "Hubble Volume") is the spherical region, about 90 billion light-years in diameter, that is centered on any given observer. This is the only part of the universe in which light has had time to reach the observer in the 13.8 billion years since the universe began.
Since the universe's expansion is accelerating, objects are being dragged out of Earth's Hubble Volume and will become undetectable to humans of the future.
The Hubble Volume is more than 13.8 billion light-years in radius because the expansion of space has increased distances between objects faster than light can travel.
[...]
Implications found in quantum gravity and string theory tantalizingly suggest a universe that is in reality nothing like how it appears to human observers. It may actually be a flat hologram projected onto the surface of a sphere, for example. Or it could be a completely digital simulation running in a vast computer.
https://www.space.com/24781-big-bang-theory-alternatives-infographic.html
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SCIENTISTS MAY BE CLOSE TO UNDERSTANDING WHY THE UNIVERSE EXISTS
Source: futurism.com
Date: 23 April, 2020
Scientists think that they’ve taken a step toward finally understanding one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: why it exists in the first place.
When the universe formed, it created both antimatter and matter, which destroy each other when they meet. So why there’s enough matter left to form all the galaxies, stars, and worlds out there is a key question.
Now, Scientific American reports that scientists have made substantial progress toward providing an answer.
The theory, called leptogenesis, posits that the Big Bang spewed out a massive number of subatomic particles called neutrinos. When those neutrinos eventually broke apart, leptogenesis suggests that they happened to form more matter byproducts than antimatter ones.
New findings out of Japan’s Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) experiment, which were published last week in the journal Nature, aren’t definitive evidence of the leptogenesis theory. But, pending the many follow-up experiments and analyses that would be necessary to actually make that declaration, SciAm SciAm reports that the findings do seem to strongly suggest that leptogenesis is on to something.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-close-understanding-why-universe-exists
Source: futurism.com
Date: 23 April, 2020
Scientists think that they’ve taken a step toward finally understanding one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: why it exists in the first place.
When the universe formed, it created both antimatter and matter, which destroy each other when they meet. So why there’s enough matter left to form all the galaxies, stars, and worlds out there is a key question.
Now, Scientific American reports that scientists have made substantial progress toward providing an answer.
The theory, called leptogenesis, posits that the Big Bang spewed out a massive number of subatomic particles called neutrinos. When those neutrinos eventually broke apart, leptogenesis suggests that they happened to form more matter byproducts than antimatter ones.
New findings out of Japan’s Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) experiment, which were published last week in the journal Nature, aren’t definitive evidence of the leptogenesis theory. But, pending the many follow-up experiments and analyses that would be necessary to actually make that declaration, SciAm SciAm reports that the findings do seem to strongly suggest that leptogenesis is on to something.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-close-understanding-why-universe-exists
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What happened before the Big Bang?
The Big Bounce theory was once thought impossible. But two physicists have just resurrected it.
Source: livescience.com
Date: 23 April, 2020
In the beginning, there was an infinitely dense, tiny ball of matter. Then, it all went bang, giving rise to the atoms, molecules, stars and galaxies we see today.
Or at least, that's what we've been told by physicists for the past several decades.
But new theoretical physics research has recently revealed a possible window into the very early universe, showing that it may not be "very early" after all. Instead it may be just the latest iteration of a bang-bounce cycle that has been going on for … well, at least once, and possibly forever.
Of course, before physicists decide to toss out the Big Bang in favor of a bang-bounce cycle, these theoretical predictions will need to survive an onslaught of observation tests.
https://www.livescience.com/what-came-before-big-bang.html
The Big Bounce theory was once thought impossible. But two physicists have just resurrected it.
Source: livescience.com
Date: 23 April, 2020
In the beginning, there was an infinitely dense, tiny ball of matter. Then, it all went bang, giving rise to the atoms, molecules, stars and galaxies we see today.
Or at least, that's what we've been told by physicists for the past several decades.
But new theoretical physics research has recently revealed a possible window into the very early universe, showing that it may not be "very early" after all. Instead it may be just the latest iteration of a bang-bounce cycle that has been going on for … well, at least once, and possibly forever.
Of course, before physicists decide to toss out the Big Bang in favor of a bang-bounce cycle, these theoretical predictions will need to survive an onslaught of observation tests.
https://www.livescience.com/what-came-before-big-bang.html
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Big Bounce Simulations Challenge the Big Bang
Detailed computer simulations have found that a cosmic contraction can generate features of the universe that we observe today.
CHARLIE WOOD
August 4, 2020
www.quantamagazine.org
The standard story of the birth of the cosmos goes something like this: Nearly 14 billion years ago, a tremendous amount of energy materialized as if from nowhere.
In a brief moment of rapid expansion, that burst of energy inflated the cosmos like a balloon. The expansion straightened out any large-scale curvature, leading to a geometry that we now describe as flat. Matter also thoroughly mixed together, so that now the cosmos appears largely (though not perfectly) featureless. Here and there, clumps of particles have created galaxies and stars, but these are just minuscule specks on an otherwise unblemished cosmic canvas.
That theory, which textbooks call inflation, matches all observations to date and is preferred by most cosmologists. But it has conceptual implications that some find disturbing. In most regions of space-time, the rapid expansion would never stop. As a consequence, inflation can’t help but produce a multiverse — a technicolor existence with an infinite variety of pocket universes, one of which we call home. To critics, inflation predicts everything, which means it ultimately predicts nothing. “Inflation doesn’t work as it was intended to work,” said Paul Steinhardt, an architect of inflation who has become one of its most prominent critics.
In recent years, Steinhardt and others have been developing a different story of how our universe came to be. They have revived the idea of a cyclical universe: one that periodically grows and contracts. They hope to replicate the universe that we see — flat and smooth — without the baggage that comes with a bang.
To that end, Steinhardt and his collaborators recently teamed up with researchers who specialize in computational models of gravity. They analyzed how a collapsing universe would change its own structure, and they ultimately discovered that contraction can beat inflation at its own game. No matter how bizarre and twisted the universe looked before it contracted, the collapse would efficiently erase a wide range of primordial wrinkles.
“It’s very important, what they claim they’ve done,” said Leonardo Senatore, a cosmologist at Stanford University who has analyzed inflation using a similar approach. There are aspects of the work he hasn’t yet had a chance to investigate, he said, but at first glance “it looks like they’ve done it.”
[...]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/big-bounce-simulations-challenge-the-big-bang-20200804/
I was first aware of this theory, from a related research paper published a few years ago.
Personally, I liked it then and even more so now, given this further development.
So no need anymore for our, 'big bang theory'?
:btime:
What started, 'the big bounce'...
Detailed computer simulations have found that a cosmic contraction can generate features of the universe that we observe today.
CHARLIE WOOD
August 4, 2020
www.quantamagazine.org
The standard story of the birth of the cosmos goes something like this: Nearly 14 billion years ago, a tremendous amount of energy materialized as if from nowhere.
In a brief moment of rapid expansion, that burst of energy inflated the cosmos like a balloon. The expansion straightened out any large-scale curvature, leading to a geometry that we now describe as flat. Matter also thoroughly mixed together, so that now the cosmos appears largely (though not perfectly) featureless. Here and there, clumps of particles have created galaxies and stars, but these are just minuscule specks on an otherwise unblemished cosmic canvas.
That theory, which textbooks call inflation, matches all observations to date and is preferred by most cosmologists. But it has conceptual implications that some find disturbing. In most regions of space-time, the rapid expansion would never stop. As a consequence, inflation can’t help but produce a multiverse — a technicolor existence with an infinite variety of pocket universes, one of which we call home. To critics, inflation predicts everything, which means it ultimately predicts nothing. “Inflation doesn’t work as it was intended to work,” said Paul Steinhardt, an architect of inflation who has become one of its most prominent critics.
In recent years, Steinhardt and others have been developing a different story of how our universe came to be. They have revived the idea of a cyclical universe: one that periodically grows and contracts. They hope to replicate the universe that we see — flat and smooth — without the baggage that comes with a bang.
To that end, Steinhardt and his collaborators recently teamed up with researchers who specialize in computational models of gravity. They analyzed how a collapsing universe would change its own structure, and they ultimately discovered that contraction can beat inflation at its own game. No matter how bizarre and twisted the universe looked before it contracted, the collapse would efficiently erase a wide range of primordial wrinkles.
“It’s very important, what they claim they’ve done,” said Leonardo Senatore, a cosmologist at Stanford University who has analyzed inflation using a similar approach. There are aspects of the work he hasn’t yet had a chance to investigate, he said, but at first glance “it looks like they’ve done it.”
[...]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/big-bounce-simulations-challenge-the-big-bang-20200804/
I was first aware of this theory, from a related research paper published a few years ago.
Personally, I liked it then and even more so now, given this further development.
So no need anymore for our, 'big bang theory'?
:btime:
What started, 'the big bounce'...
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Big Bounce Simulations Challenge the Big Bang
Detailed computer simulations have found that a cosmic contraction can generate features of the universe that we observe today.
CHARLIE WOOD
August 4, 2020
www.quantamagazine.org
The standard story of the birth of the cosmos goes something like this: Nearly 14 billion years ago, a tremendous amount of energy materialized as if from nowhere.
In a brief moment of rapid expansion, that burst of energy inflated the cosmos like a balloon. The expansion straightened out any large-scale curvature, leading to a geometry that we now describe as flat. Matter also thoroughly mixed together, so that now the cosmos appears largely (though not perfectly) featureless. Here and there, clumps of particles have created galaxies and stars, but these are just minuscule specks on an otherwise unblemished cosmic canvas.
That theory, which textbooks call inflation, matches all observations to date and is preferred by most cosmologists. But it has conceptual implications that some find disturbing. In most regions of space-time, the rapid expansion would never stop. As a consequence, inflation can’t help but produce a multiverse — a technicolor existence with an infinite variety of pocket universes, one of which we call home. To critics, inflation predicts everything, which means it ultimately predicts nothing. “Inflation doesn’t work as it was intended to work,” said Paul Steinhardt, an architect of inflation who has become one of its most prominent critics.
In recent years, Steinhardt and others have been developing a different story of how our universe came to be. They have revived the idea of a cyclical universe: one that periodically grows and contracts. They hope to replicate the universe that we see — flat and smooth — without the baggage that comes with a bang.
To that end, Steinhardt and his collaborators recently teamed up with researchers who specialize in computational models of gravity. They analyzed how a collapsing universe would change its own structure, and they ultimately discovered that contraction can beat inflation at its own game. No matter how bizarre and twisted the universe looked before it contracted, the collapse would efficiently erase a wide range of primordial wrinkles.
“It’s very important, what they claim they’ve done,” said Leonardo Senatore, a cosmologist at Stanford University who has analyzed inflation using a similar approach. There are aspects of the work he hasn’t yet had a chance to investigate, he said, but at first glance “it looks like they’ve done it.”
[...]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/big-bounce-simulations-challenge-the-big-bang-20200804/
I was first aware of this theory, from a related research paper published a few years ago.
Personally, I liked it then and even more so now, given this further development.
So no need anymore for our, 'big bang theory'?
:btime:
What started, 'the big bounce'...
A Big Drunk Bloke from Leeds called Alan challenges both the Big Bounce Theory and the Big Bang Theory saying "it was just me" and he has Physicists intrigued.
Michio kaku and Neil De Grasse say it is "entirely possible" that the universe was created by a big fat bloke called Alan drinking too much beer and falling over in a kitchen in a parallel universe that created our own universe as we know it.
https://www.fatblokecreatesuniverse-honest.com
Brian Cox was asked to comment - "It's all amazing and wonderful and do you like my hair?"
Viz - give me a call I can do this all day.
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Gravity causes homogeneity of the universe
Source: phys.org
Date: 24 September, 2020
Gravity can accelerate the homogenization of space-time as the universe evolves. This insight is based on theoretical studies of the physicist David Fajman of the University of Vienna. The mathematical methods developed within the research project allow to investigate fundamental open questions of cosmology such as why the universe today appears so homogeneous. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review.
The temporal evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, is described by Einstein's field equations of general relativity. However, there are still a number of open questions about cosmological dynamics, whose origins lie in supposed discrepancies between theory and observation. One of these open questions is: Why is the universe in its present state so homogeneous on large scales?
[...]
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-gravity-homogeneity-universe.amp
Source: phys.org
Date: 24 September, 2020
Gravity can accelerate the homogenization of space-time as the universe evolves. This insight is based on theoretical studies of the physicist David Fajman of the University of Vienna. The mathematical methods developed within the research project allow to investigate fundamental open questions of cosmology such as why the universe today appears so homogeneous. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review.
The temporal evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, is described by Einstein's field equations of general relativity. However, there are still a number of open questions about cosmological dynamics, whose origins lie in supposed discrepancies between theory and observation. One of these open questions is: Why is the universe in its present state so homogeneous on large scales?
[...]
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-gravity-homogeneity-universe.amp