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Cosmology

Antimatter Or Anti-Consensus?
November 1, 2008
Where’s the antimatter?  If the universe began in a big bang, there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter.  Instead, there is only regular matter as far as our telescopes can see.  (If antimatter were present, the annihilation of antimatter and matter would give a characteristic gamma-ray signature.)  This is a big matter; the […]
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Cosmology

Science Cannot Validate Itself
October 16, 2008
Science is an unbiased, objective, disciplined, cooperative method for progressively uncovering truth about the natural world.  That’s the way most of us were taught to think about it in school.  Further reflection, however, produces a host of questions rarely discussed in science class.  How does science differ from other unbiased, objective, disciplined, cooperative methods of […]
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Cosmology

Dark Energy May Be an Optical Illusion
October 5, 2008
Cosmologists can get rid of the burden of their worst imponderable substance, dark energy, if they are willing to jettison the Copernican Principle.  Science Daily reported thinking by a team of Oxford physicists who make the apparent acceleration of the universe an artifact of our viewing position.  When distant galaxies are viewed without the assumption […]
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Astronomy

Bangin’ Around to Get Something New Under the Sun
October 3, 2008
You’ve heard of the Big Bang, and the Cambrian Explosion.  Now, to get the solar system started, astronomers have added a Little Bang to move things along in the naturalistic path from nothing to everything.  Science Daily, Space.com and PhysOrg all reprinted a press release from the Carnegie Institution claiming that a nearby supernova led […]
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Cosmology

Dark Matters, When All You Have Is Light
August 30, 2008
A cluster of galaxies equivalent to a thousand Milky Ways was observed at a distance of 7.7 billion light-years.  What does it mean?  According to astronomers mentioned in an article on Space.com, it can only mean one thing: dark energy makes up 70% of the universe.     “The existence of the cluster can only […]
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Cosmology

Early Magnetic Galaxies Surprise Astronomers
July 17, 2008
Astronomers reported in Nature that early galaxies have normal magnetic fields.1  That is surprising because magnetic fields were supposed to start small and strengthen over billions of years.     The team tried to be careful to distinguish intervening magnetic signatures from those in quasars.  Their measurements indicated that “organized fields of surprisingly high strengths […]
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Astronomy

What Mean These Stars?
July 12, 2008
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in current astronomical models.  Two articles recently underscored the fact that astronomers still have a lot to learn. Cluster generation conundrum:  The members of globular star clusters were long thought to be old stars of the same age, like seniors at a care […]
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Cosmology

Cosmology at the Outer Limits
June 30, 2008
Those who think cosmology could not get any weirder than it already is (01/15/2008) may want to take note of recent pronouncements by the gurus of universal physics.  Physics teachers in particular may feel an obligation to state Bob Berman’s disclaimer (10/06/2004) before class: viz, “Warning: The following contains contemporary cosmology.  Reading it can produce […]
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Cosmology

Divining the CMB
June 12, 2008
What do you see in this pattern?  Look very closely.  The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is a faint glow of electromagnetic radiation that pervades the universe.  What it means is a matter of intense and sometimes bizarre speculation by cosmologists.     The spectrum of the CMB matches almost perfectly that of an ideal radiator, […]
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Cosmology

Cosmology in Crisis Over Dark Energy
May 21, 2008
Ten years ago, cosmologists invented dark energy to explain certain features of the expansion of the universe that could not be reconciled with observations of supernova magnitudes.  Now, reported National Geographic News, dark energy remains the most profound problem in physics.  It’s like theory and observations are refusing to cooperate with an arranged marriage.   […]
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Astronomy

Star Light, Star Bright, I Wish I Knew What’s Going On
May 16, 2008
Astronomy is fun, if for no other reason than it gives one endless opportunities to be shocked and surprised. Pulsar outside the box:  Theory has it all laid out nice and neat.  Pulsars form when a red giant drops matter onto a binary companion, making it go boom in a supernova, leaving behind a spinning […]
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Astronomy

First Galaxies Fast and Compact
May 3, 2008
The old picture: after the big bang, matter is diffuse.  Out of the darkness, stars slowly begin to form, as the first galaxies take shape.  Galaxies start out large and slowly grow more dense and structured over billions of years.  The new picture: the first galaxies are very compact and dense, spinning rapidly, with stars […]
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Astronomy

Hubble Snaps Colliding Galaxies
April 24, 2008
A new catalog of colliding galaxy images has been released by the Hubble Space Science Institute.  The 59 images show “close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing sites of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes.”  The release coincided with the 18th anniversary of the Hubble Space […]
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Astronomy

Findings vs Surmisings in Astronomy
April 21, 2008
The Galex satellite (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) found “bright features” with an ultraviolet glow in the outskirts of a spiral galaxy, reported the BBC News.  What are they?  Scientists “think” they are large clusters of stars.  How much is known, and how much is interpreted?     The region imaged is the dark area around spiral […]
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Cosmology

Is Inflation Theory in Trouble?
April 18, 2008
For more than a quarter of a century, “inflation” has been viewed as the savior of the Big Bang theory.  The Big Bang was in trouble in the late 1970s because of the flatness problem and the horizon problem: our universe appeared to be too homogeneous and isotropic to be an accident.  If a runaway […]
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