There is new information on the WMAP website.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Hum,

"Scientists peering back to the oldest light in the universe have new evidence to support the concept of inflation. The concept poses the universe expanded many trillion times its size in less than a trillionth of a second at the outset of the big bang.

This finding, made with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), is based on three years of continuous observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the afterglow light produced when the universe was less than a million years old.
WMAP polarisation data allow scientists to discriminate between competing models of inflation for the first time. This is a milestone in cosmology. "

http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/results

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

This will take a while to evaluate. The "cosmological implications" manuscript alone runs to 80 page. I quickly note that they have beefed up a lot of the analysis techniques - notably, gotten rid of some kind of numerical sampling approximation that seems to have made some of the low-l amplitudes artificially high in the year-1 results. I need to go read up on some of the theory of the polarization intepretation...

Agreed. No comment from me for a few days. There's lots here.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Fascinating stuff. The third TT peak is well defined and it is tall - ruling out MOND at high confidence. Optical depth significantly reduced and is about two sigma away from 1-year data (now 0.09, was 0.17). Reionization redshift is halved (around 10 now), ergo the population III stars should be much closer to us (reionization epoch of about 400 Myr vs. 200 Myr after the Bang). Reionization epoch does not appear to have been as long as previously believed. Scale invariance ruled out at high confidence (four sigma), the spectral index being 0.95. More later.

For the non-wonks, the BA Blog has more accessible commentary: New WMAP results: quantum fluctuations, galaxies, and the first stars

Edit: And, a more poetic version at: The First Star Is Born for the Huffington Post.

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Posts about the latest results moved into a separate thread.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

SUMMARY: Scientists have gathered new evidence that supports the inflationary theory of expansion thanks new data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The spacecraft has been making continuous observations of the cosmic background radiation; the afterglow of the Big Bang. These latest observations produced a map of the sky so detailed that scientists were able to trace how microscopic fluctuations in the primordial Universe were magnified in a trillionth of a second of rapid expansion to create the stars and galaxies we see today.

View full article
What do you think about this story? post your comments below.

A third thread on the same subject.

great news !

I think the article title is a bit strong, "Early Universe's Rapid Expansion Confirmed", when the text says that there is "new evidence that supports the inflationary theory of expansion". (my emphasis).

Aurora's recent post on logical fallacies comes to mind.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

__________________
Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com

That's a good point. The title could have said "Early Universe's Rapid Expansion Supported." Most people think of confirm as meaning to validate a correct fact, but actually confirm is a bit weaker than asserting the truth of something:

1 : to make firm : strengthen (as a person) in resolution, conviction, loyalty, position
4 : to give new assurance of the truth or validity of : CORROBORATE <confirm a rumor> <confirm a hypothesis or diagnosis> <confirm a plane reservation>
5 : to make firmer or more settled in a conviction, purpose, or habit <the experience confirmed him in his dislike of foreign cooking>


Anyway, it's fascinating information!

__________________
Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

I'm guessing that the detailed papers on this will be available to the general public after they get presented by the WMAP team. Someone mentioned an 80-page paper on cosmological implications (the first one I'm going to read), but I can't find a link to it yet.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

here.

This story will run and run and run.

Here's the link to the main results page for Year 3 data. The Implications for Cosmology paper is among them.

__________________
"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

You can get the papers here.

The 80-page one is Implications for Cosmology.

The Temperature Results paper (93 pages!) includes updates on the low l (2 to 10) modes that were, perhaps, the subject of the greatest number of "what's going on here?" papers. In a nutshell, the three-year results confirmed most of the year-one results, though there are some important deltas (the 'axis of evil' is still there).

I've not even downloaded the Polarisation Analysis paper yet; this is completely new material (no such data in the first year results).

Much to talk about, but I noticed that a different statistical technique was used for part of the year-three analysis, and there's a lengthy explanation of what and why (together with comparison with the year one method).

[Edit: beaten to the punch by Hamlet!]

To me,the Universe looks more magical than some thirty years ago (when I started getting interested in Astronomy, "Viking"-wise). Yet, this magic is hard science, not superstition!

Moved to the Astronomy section.

This makes the best sense metaphysically as it takes away a lot of the erroneous comparisions that the Big Bang was like a real earthly explosion blasting matter out in all directions. At creation before there was "space" all proto matter was probably superimposed. not compressed thus nothing could happen or "time" did not exist. Expansion of space to the full size of the universe would be instantaneous as time did not yet exist. Perhaps there is no more current expansion of space but rather red shift is due to a condensing of matter in that older larger atoms generated larger wavelenghth photons than they do now.

I agree it looks magical, but it looks like funny science to me:

• The Big Bang, an action without a cause (new science, invisible, unfalsifiable)
• Black holes (new science, invisible, unfalsifiable)
• Dark matter (new science, invisible, unfalsifiable)
• Dark energy (new science, invisible, unfalsifiable)
• Neutron stars (new science, invisible, unfalsifiable)

Regards,
Ian Tresman

__________________
Ian Tresman
plasma-universe.com

Funny idea of what science is Ian.

• naive falisificationism - falsifiable, falsified (not even the original author - Popper - ended up supporting it)
• Big Bang Theory - matches observations to an astonishing extent; not even a competing theory, let alone one that also matched the obserations
• black holes - predicted by GR (itself tested to ~10 part per million), matches observations (SagA*, X-ray binaries, SNe, ....)
• DM - think, as an analogy, the neutrino, in between Pauli and Savannah River; matches observations in apparently unconnected domains to a 'shiver up your spine' level; no alternatives even worth mentioning
• DE - an enigma, but the WMAP results constrain its nature; combined with SNe data (which otherwise would seem to have no relevance), a consistent picture emerges, namely w = -1 {insert error bars here}
• neutron stars - predicted from both GR and QM (the most successful theories in physics today, QM matches lab experiments to ~12 decimal places; pulsars, magnetars, AXPs, SNe, .... all match what's expected (from the theory))
• perhaps most important of all - no alternative theories can match the mainstream theories to even a trivial extent, let alone provide serious competition.

That it's all somewhat unsettling may be true. But then, with the experimental resolution of the EPR paradox (Einstein lost, QM won), the universe is an exceedingly weird place, in every single atom of your body, let alone galaxies a long time ago and far, far away.

[Moderator note: if any reader wishes to ask about any of the items in these two lists, please start a thread in BAUT's Q&A section.]

This is an example of why I don't think we need any more sections on BAUT (except, perhaps for games). We're told to comment here, then you say to go talk about it there....I didn't get a chance to look at the Astronomy section today yet. Now you're saying to ask questions about your lists in the Q&A section.

I just want Fraser to know his articles are being read.

__________________
Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

I believe that nereid is asking people to discuss Ian's provocative statements about black holes, neutron stars, and dark matter in the Q&A section. This thread is about the WMAP Second Release discussion.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

I've read the implications for Cosmology paper, but I think I have to read it again. There are a few terms that I am unfamiliar with. I'll be asking for some help on a few of them.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

This WMAP result may suggests:
A. There was a mysterious rapid inflation in the begining of Big Bang.
B. There was a concentration of the energy in a certain volume and immediatelly transformation of this energy into a matter/antimatter - the Begining was due to the concentrated energy in non zero volume .
This "B" solution seems more realistic.

Ok, I've read most of the papers and it's time for some more comments. When combined with other recent data sets (CBI, VSA, BOOM, 2df, SDSS, etc.), the parameter constraints are INSANE. See

http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/...s/lcdm_all.cfm

and download the Postscript Parameter Table and look at the errors. Eg.

Spectral index n_s = 0.938 +0.013/-0.018 (n_s < 1 means that there is less power on small scales)
Optical depth tau = 0.069 +0.026/-0.029
Hubble parameter H0 = 71 km/s/Mpc +1/-2
Redshift of reionization Zr = 9.3 +2.8/-2.0

Unbelievable precision! And the spectral index from the combined data set is almost _five sigma_ away from unity at 0.938! This relatively large and statistically significant deviation from scale invariance is not only good news for simple inflation models because their prediction got verified, but it also means that gravitational waves should have a high amplitude that is just somewhat below our current detection threshold. Of course the claim that inflation was 'confirmed' with WMAP3 is not true and there were valid models (so called hybrid models) that predicted a spectral index that was greater than unity, but these models are more complicated and appear to be ruled out now. The stage is set for GW detection.

I am dissappointed that they made no attempt to explain or even quantify the 'axis of evil'. They merely briefly summarized the various 'claims' of the past few years and stated that most of them are probably still there because WMAP3 data is consistent with WMAP1.

I'm also somewhat disappointed that the best LCDM fit has a relatively modest probability of 13.9% based on 1468 chi squared for 1410 degrees of freedom. It is a reasonable fit and better than WMAP1 (that had a probability of 4.5%), but not something I would call 'excellent'. They had three years to work on it, but the TT curve still shows some nasty spikes before and around the first peak. Higher moments have seen a significant reduction in the spikes, but interestingly lower moments have not (see fig. 17 & fig. 20 in Hinshaw et al.). Is this a sign of oscillatory microstructure or something else? They test a couple such models, but get no major reduction in chi squared for the additional degrees of freedom.

I'm also disappointed that they didn't include the most recent CBI data from last September in their analysis (CBI from 2004 and Boomerang data from last July is included).

Hi,

The polarization found in the microwave background radiation is not necessarily caused by the inflation process which is thought to have taken place, as was proposed recently, some 13,7 billion years ago. There are many processes taking place in space which are able to polarize microwave radiation. I am afraid that the idea to use this polarization as a proof of an inflation process that took place at the beginning of the universe may end as a kind of wishful thinking.

We have just even started to look at the skys with our new powerful infrared, microwave, UV, X-ray and gamma satellites, and we should consider the findings of all these satellites from all over the heavens, and then lean back and evaluate them.

We have to deal with 140 billion galaxies, and vast spaces between them, filled with void, with hot intergalactic gas, with dust particles, powerful magnetic fields, fast electrons and protons, and radiation. There is a lot to watch and observe, just to gather the pieces of information which may finally give a comprehensive picture.

Let me put it this way: I think that the universe was not designed to be understood simply by the brightness of skilful human beings. The complexity may by far exceed any contemporary theory.
Theories may be brilliant, reasonable and beautyful. But that does not mean anything. We can only know whether the theories are right or wrong if we know all the facts, and we are still quite far from that. And thanks to the cuts in science projects, this is not very much likely to change...

Regards,

Günther

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...p_results.html

More support for the BB as well...

__________________
______________________________________________
“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”
Chinese proverb
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence - and then success is sure." - Mark Twain.

I'm not sure this belongs in ATM.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

We have existing threads on the subject here and here.

Moved from ATM to Astronomy.

Locked.