Cosmology – Page 30

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The Cause of a Teapot: Can Physics Explain Design?

June 8, 2005

George F. R. Ellis (U. of Cape Town) wrote a Concepts piece in Nature1 this week that asks fundamental questions about ordinary things, particularly, can we get from fundamental physics to complex hierarchical structures through a chain of cause and effect? A simple statement of fact: there is no physics theory that explains the nature […]

Cosmology

Variable Constants Dept.

April 11, 2005

Is nothing sacred? EurekAlert reported that the fine structure constant alpha may have changed from its once-thought invariable value, based on new observations from the Keck telescope. “Sacred constant might be changing,” it says. Another study, by contrast, shows no change in the fine structure constant, according to a press release from UC […]

Astronomy

Late Stars Found Early On

April 6, 2005

A press release from the Spitzer Space Telescope team reports that the oldest, most distant galaxies ever seen already had well-developed stars. It claims that the light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. “It seems that in a couple of cases these early galaxies are nearly as massive as galaxies we see around […]

Cosmology

Baloney Detecting Exercise for Students

March 17, 2005

Jeff Barbour’s brief history of everything was published on Universe Today. His essay, entitled “Where does intelligent life come from?” paints a short but sweeping panorama from the Big Bang to humans. Its style is somewhat like watered-down Carl Sagan or gilded Neil deGrasse Tyson (see 09/29/2004 entry). Here’s a sample about the origin of […]

Cosmology

Complex at the Beginning: Distant Galaxy Cluster Highly Developed

March 10, 2005

Observations from the European Southern Observatory have pointed to a “surprise” discovery: a cluster of galaxies 9 billion light-years away that is “in a very advanced state of development.” The press release points to just how surprising is this find: “The discovery of such a complex and mature structure so early in the […]

Cosmology

State of the Cosmos Address Offered

February 21, 2005

On the occasion of the centennial of Einstein’s theory of relativity, Alan Guth, the father of inflationary cosmology, with colleague David I. Kaiser of MIT, took stock of cosmological theories in the Feb. 11 issue of Science.1 How has inflation fared since its controversial but hopeful proposal in 1981? “Inflation was invented a quarter of […]

Cosmology

Galaxy Evolution Explorer Finds Living Fossils

December 21, 2004

Some galaxies are 10 times brighter in ultraviolet than others, and are thought to be “young” galaxies undergoing violent star formation with frequent supernova explosions. In theory, they populated the early universe but should have quieted down by now. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an ultraviolet wide-field orbiting telescope, launched April 2003, has just made a […]

Cosmology

Are Local Microwaves Cooking the Cosmic Background?

December 6, 2004

Science Now has a surprising announcement that may alter astronomers’ confidence in the structure of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Since the WMAP probe data was analyzed (see 09/20/2004 headline), cosmologists have boasted that the high resolution detections of fluctuations in the temperature supported their models of big bang inflation and dark matter / […]

Cosmology

Cosmology Mavericks Turn On the Red Light

December 6, 2004

According to the majority of astronomers, redshifts are “cosmological”: that is, they represent the effect on spectral light of the expansion of the universe. A minority group of astronomers, however, claims otherwise, that at least a component of redshift represents intrinsic motion effects of rapidly moving objects irrespective of cosmic expansion. For evidence, they point […]

Cosmology

Modern Cosmology Is Clueless, Astronomy Columnist Says

October 6, 2004

A letter to the editor in the latest (November) issue of Astronomy tipped us off to something we missed in the July issue. The subscriber wrote, Kudos to Bob Berman for bringing up the slipperiness of modern cosmology in ‘Theory chaotic’ (July 2004). He must be one of the first to do so. As he […]

Cosmology

Cosmologist Squirms at Thought of Fine-Tuning

September 30, 2004

Lawrence Krauss (Case Western Reserve U, Ohio) meant to talk about prospects for distinguishing between sources of so-called dark energy, the mysterious force that appears to be accelerating the expansion of the universe. But in the process, he opened his soul and revealed feelings, dreams, and nightmares. First, he states the problem: Dark energy is […]

Cosmology

PBS Airs Another Evolution Series: Origins

September 29, 2004

PBS NOVA aired its latest installment on evolution, a 4-hour miniseries entitled Origins, on September 28 and 29. The website hype describes it as follows: Has the universe always existed? How did it become a place that could harbor life? What was the birth of our planet like? Are we alone, or are there alien […]

Astronomy

Multispectral Galaxy Studies Contradict Theories

August 27, 2004

The latest issue of Caltech’s magazine Engineering and Science1 has beautiful pictures of galaxies taken in ultraviolet by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), and in the infrared by Hubble’s sister, the Spitzer Space Telescope. Combining images of the same galaxy in visible, ultraviolet and infrared is helping astronomers figure out their structure, and as D. […]

Awards

Modern Cosmology Goes Schizophrenic

July 27, 2004

According to Charles Seife writing in Science,1 more cosmologists are taking parallel universes seriously. This is a consequence of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, one possible mathematical solution to the effects of quantum “weirdness.” If you think our headline is too harsh, read Seife’s opening in a Rod Serling voice while playing the […]

Astronomy

Infant Cosmos Was Already Elderly

July 8, 2004

At first, they weren’t sure it was real or they were just seeing things. Now, it’s inescapable. As far back as cosmologists can see, there were already mature galaxies. That’s the thrust of two papers in the July 8 issue of Nature1,2 and a commentary on them by Keck Observatory astronomer Greg Wirth3, who says […]

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