Seeking the Cosmic Dawn

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Seeking the Cosmic Dawn

Astronomers detected a pattern in the afterglow of the Big Bang, called lensed B-modes, that might help reveal inflation's signature.

In a tiny fraction of a second, an outburst of energy propelled our universe from a hot, dense point to cosmic size. This theoretical outburst, called inflation, provides a fantastically accurate explanation of why the cosmos is the way it is. Among other things, it predicts the pattern of temperature blotches astronomers observe in their earliest view of the cosmos, the cosmic microwave background (CMB). But there’s still no conclusive evidence that inflation happened.

Now, a team of astronomers using the South Pole Telescope (SPT) in Antarctica has detected a pattern in the CMB that might help reveal inflation’s signature.

Read more...

[shrooma]

QUOTE-

In a tiny fraction of a second, an

outburst of energy propelled our

universe from a hot, dense point to cosmic size.

.

I've always wondered about that statement y'know Waspie.

dense, yes, but hot?

how can it have been hot?

if the point that the universe was before it expanded was just that, a point, then it can't have been hot as by it's very nature, heat, or to give it its proper name, electromagnetic radiation, needs to radiate, but if our universe was a single point, there was nothing and nowhere for the radiation to radiate into, so it can't have been hot!

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[StarMountainKid]

I read that an analogy of Inflation would be like inflating a basketball to the size of the visible universe in 10^-32 seconds.

[sepulchrave]

how can it have been hot?

By ``hot'', they just mean that large ensembles of matter (quarks, or atoms, or whatever state it was in) would have a net zero velocity (i.e. no coherent motion) but a relatively large kinetic energy compared to the available potential energy wells (probably strong nuclear force and electromagnetic force), so baryons (at very large temperatures), atoms (at somewhat lower temperatures), or molecules (at much lower temperatures) could not form, or if they did randomly form they would not be stable for very long.

[shrooma]

By ``hot'', they just mean that large ensembles of matter (quarks, or atoms, or whatever state it was in) would have a net zero velocity (i.e. no coherent motion) but a relatively large kinetic energy compared to the available potential energy wells (probably strong nuclear force and electromagnetic force), so baryons (at very large temperatures), atoms (at somewhat lower temperatures), or molecules (at much lower temperatures) could not form, or if they did randomly form they would not be stable for very long.

.

but could you hold it in your hand without gloves on....?!

.

(ignoring the whole 'there would've been nowhere for you to stand' thing of course. just say i'm wafting about in fields of potentiality when i spot it.....)

;-)