Live data from Hacker News

Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

medium.com

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#21
post #14

It's interesting to me how many scientific breakthroughs we've seen in the past few years. I wonder if hard science hasn't been slowing down; but rather waiting on technological advances that would give them the data they needed to make the leaps. With technological catching up these leaps are now happening.

The pace of scientific "leaps" would be very hard to quantify, and it's certainly not my impression that it's "speeding up".

Rather, it's my impression that there's been a pretty consistent pace of scientific discoveries for the past 80 years. Advancing technology certainly helps, but technology has been advancing rapidly for quite some time.

The last 20 years hasn't been a big difference from the 20 before it on the hardware end of things.

Recent science has seen an increase in discoveries added by "big data" science (CERN, astronomy) but that's just one more tool in the researchers toolbelt.

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#22
I was super excited when I started reading this article, I thought they were talking about a direct measurement of the CNB.

Right now, the CMB is as far back as we can see in time. That radiation originates from a time when the Universe was around 380,000 years old. The CNB originates from when the Universe was two seconds old. A direct measurement of it would be an astounding achievement and would give us many new insights into how the Universe formed.

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#23
post #22

I was super excited when I started reading this article, I thought they were talking about a direct measurement of the CNB. Right now, the CMB is as far back as we can see in time. That radiation originates from a time when the Universe was around 380,000 years old. The CNB originates from when the Universe was two seconds old. A direct measurement of it would be an astounding achievement and would give us many new i…

Yeah, such a measurement is extraordinarily unlikely. Neutrinos are extremely hard to detect, but the thing is there are different temperatures of neutrinos, and their detectability scales extremely non-linearly with temperature. Even with extremely high energy/temperature neutrinos from supernovae or stellar fusion we still only detect the faintest fraction of the vast quantity that flows through the detectors. The CNB is at a temperature of only a few Kelvin, and is made of extremely low energy neutrinos that are effectively impossible for us to detect, let alone study with current technology.

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#24
WTF. I can only suggest this summery:

http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf

If your model is correct, it must explain everything, not just some or most of it. Money Quote:

Each of these sets of problems could be, and in fact often are, dismissed as mere “anomalies” in an otherwise well-supported theory. But taken collectively they contradict all the predictions of the theory, leaving no support at all. The response of supporters of the Big Bang theory has been to continually add “parameters” to the theory to account for new discordant data.

For me, this hole theory is as logical as the flat earth theory. Compressing the hole universe, which is so huge (see hubble deep field) into a single point is just absurd.

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#25
post #24

WTF. I can only suggest this summery: http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf If your model is correct, it must explain everything, not just some or most of it. Money Quote: Each of these sets of problems could be, and in fact often are, dismissed as mere “anomalies” in an otherwise well-supported theory. But taken collectively they contradict all the predictions of the theory, leaving no support at all. The…

http://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com/2005/05/alternative...

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#26
post #22

I was super excited when I started reading this article, I thought they were talking about a direct measurement of the CNB. Right now, the CMB is as far back as we can see in time. That radiation originates from a time when the Universe was around 380,000 years old. The CNB originates from when the Universe was two seconds old. A direct measurement of it would be an astounding achievement and would give us many new i…

Yeah, such a measurement is extraordinarily unlikely. Neutrinos are extremely hard to detect, but the thing is there are different temperatures of neutrinos, and their detectability scales extremely non-linearly with temperature. Even with extremely high energy/temperature neutrinos from supernovae or stellar fusion we still only detect the faintest fraction of the vast quantity that flows through the detectors. The…

It is something being worked on, though [0]. Extremely difficult does not equate to impossible :)

0: http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.03966

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#27
post #14

It's interesting to me how many scientific breakthroughs we've seen in the past few years. I wonder if hard science hasn't been slowing down; but rather waiting on technological advances that would give them the data they needed to make the leaps. With technological catching up these leaps are now happening.

The pace of scientific "leaps" would be very hard to quantify, and it's certainly not my impression that it's "speeding up". Rather, it's my impression that there's been a pretty consistent pace of scientific discoveries for the past 80 years. Advancing technology certainly helps, but technology has been advancing rapidly for quite some time. The last 20 years hasn't been a big difference from the 20 before it on the…

I perhaps quibble with the dates, but I think it's hard to underestimate how revolutionary and groundbreaking the preceding "30 Years That Shook Physics" were (http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-that-Shook-Physics/dp/048...). Perhaps 35, from Plank's late 1900 "there's quanta out there" to Yukawa's 1935 explication of the strong nuclear force, and don't forget Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in-between, it's still the best we have for gravity.

Since then, even with earth shattering developments like the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and what followed from that, things have been quite a bit slower in physics. Biology, though, certainly took up a lot of slack, we only really started getting a handle on its foundations in my lifetime.

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#28
post #24

WTF. I can only suggest this summery: http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf If your model is correct, it must explain everything, not just some or most of it. Money Quote: Each of these sets of problems could be, and in fact often are, dismissed as mere “anomalies” in an otherwise well-supported theory. But taken collectively they contradict all the predictions of the theory, leaving no support at all. The…

[deleted]

Re: Confirmed: The Last Great Prediction Of The Big Bang

#29
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, such a measurement is extraordinarily unlikely. Neutrinos are extremely hard to detect, but the thing is there are different temperatures of neutrinos, and their detectability scales extremely non-linearly with temperature. Even with extremely high energy/temperature neutrinos from supernovae or stellar fusion we still only detect the faintest fraction of the vast quantity that flows through the detectors. The…

It is something being worked on, though [0]. Extremely difficult does not equate to impossible :) 0: http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.03966

That's why I said "effectively" impossible. There are so many orders of magnitude between what we can detect and what would be needed to study the CNB. It's hard to have hope that we'll ever be able to overcome that, though it'd be awesome if we could.
Post reply on HN