Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions I’m amazed that in 2013, we can still be smacked upside the head and reminded of how little we know about our universe. Even the most basic things about it. Like, how old it is. The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has collected 15.5 months worth of data on the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (What’s that? Click here), and today they released the most detailed map ever of those oldest remnants of the Big Bang. It says that our universe is almost perfect. Almost.  The highlights from this new map include the finding that the universe is almost certainly 13.81 billion years old, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. And we got better estimates for the stuffness of stuff: 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy. The universe is expanding, which is the whole reason that the CMB even exists, but this new map says it’s expanding slower than we thought.  The coolest part, though? The “almost perfect” part. The radiation that became the CMB was just sort of randomly splattered out, like we’d expect (and the randomness of the dots on the map above show that). But those little fluctuations aren’t the same everywhere! The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. The ESA folks say we may need “new physics” to explain why. Nice to know you cosmologists of the future will have something to work on :) Of course, all of this just goes for the observable universe. The rest, whatever it may be (or not be), has NO EDGE. Just like Hank Green reminds us. Phil Plait has tons more dirty details behind the Planck news at Bad Astronomy.
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Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions

I’m amazed that in 2013, we can still be smacked upside the head and reminded of how little we know about our universe. Even the most basic things about it. Like, how old it is.

The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has collected 15.5 months worth of data on the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (What’s that? Click here), and today they released the most detailed map ever of those oldest remnants of the Big Bang. It says that our universe is almost perfect. Almost. 

The highlights from this new map include the finding that the universe is almost certainly 13.81 billion years old, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. And we got better estimates for the stuffness of stuff: 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy. The universe is expanding, which is the whole reason that the CMB even exists, but this new map says it’s expanding slower than we thought. 

The coolest part, though? The “almost perfect” part. The radiation that became the CMB was just sort of randomly splattered out, like we’d expect (and the randomness of the dots on the map above show that). But those little fluctuations aren’t the same everywhere! The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. The ESA folks say we may need “new physics” to explain why. Nice to know you cosmologists of the future will have something to work on :)

Of course, all of this just goes for the observable universe. The rest, whatever it may be (or not be), has NO EDGE. Just like Hank Green reminds us. Phil Plait has tons more dirty details behind the Planck news at Bad Astronomy.

What Is The Universe?

Minutephysics takes a mind-bogglingly fun look at what “everything” is.

Do unknown knowns and known unknowns still count? Does something that’s unobservable or hasn’t happened yet still exist in the universe? And what if there’s many universes? How does that change your definition of what “everything” even means?

Thinking about awesome questions is really the best exercise you can get.

Source: youtube.com

Does the Universe Have a Purpose? I have about 200 unanswered questions in my Inbox, but this one jumped right to the top. I’m pretty flattered that someone thinks I’m qualified to offer an opinion on the subject, actually. So let me tap my chin like people do when thinking about Big Questions™ and take a swing… If the universe does have a purpose, we certainly aren’t at the center of it. We’re not even in coach class on this ship. We’d be down in steerage, with the rats and the stowaways. The cosmic cocktail party has been rolling along for 13.7 billion years, while our dusty little corner of it has been around for about four and a half of those. We humans, were we part of any greater plan or blueprint, certainly took our sweet time arriving. Imagine someone showing up to a party at your house two minutes before it ended and shouting: “Look at this great party in my honor! I’m here! You can all have fun now!” That person wouldn’t get invited to many parties, and they’d certainly insult all the other guests who had been there, happily, for hours before them. But perhaps, you say, there can still be some purpose out there, one that doesn’t involve us, or Earth? Not likely. Like Neil Tyson said in his answer to the same question, a purpose implies intent. This implies that the universe is going, well, somewhere … and meaning to do so.  Sure, the universe is coming from somewhere (the Big Bang) and it’s expanding outward over time (and accelerating). And from what we know about it, after 10^10^120 years, the universe will reach a state of calm, when entropy is no longer increasing, and all matter is in equilibrium. On that scale of immeasurable time, it is likely that everything that can happen will have happened, which is the sort of thought that makes people’s brains hurt. It means that matter will have, just by chance, taken on nearly every conformation allowed by physics. This even includes the spontaneous creation of an apple pie from individual atoms, as Carl Sagan once imagined. On a time scale that large, the possibilities truly are endless. And that is where the idea of purpose comes crashing down. If everything can happen, and does happen, then intent vanishes. Having seen no evidence to prove that a purpose does not exist, I can’t say for sure that it doesn’t. But for as long as humans have been curious about the world around them, and applying the principles of science to answer fundamental questions about the universe, we have never seen proof of a higher purpose. Unanswered questions remain about how it all works, but the absence of an answer does not mean that science is insufficient, only incomplete. I think instead we should ask if we might be able to create a purpose for our existence, if no greater one exists. Perhaps we are insignificant to the cosmos. But by applying our incredible curiosity and intellect to understanding the workings of the world around us, and beyond, we can make the cosmos significant to us. I think that’s a fine purpose. Right Steve?
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Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

I have about 200 unanswered questions in my Inbox, but this one jumped right to the top. I’m pretty flattered that someone thinks I’m qualified to offer an opinion on the subject, actually. So let me tap my chin like people do when thinking about Big Questions™ and take a swing…

If the universe does have a purpose, we certainly aren’t at the center of it. We’re not even in coach class on this ship. We’d be down in steerage, with the rats and the stowaways. The cosmic cocktail party has been rolling along for 13.7 billion years, while our dusty little corner of it has been around for about four and a half of those. We humans, were we part of any greater plan or blueprint, certainly took our sweet time arriving.

Imagine someone showing up to a party at your house two minutes before it ended and shouting: “Look at this great party in my honor! I’m here! You can all have fun now!” That person wouldn’t get invited to many parties, and they’d certainly insult all the other guests who had been there, happily, for hours before them.

But perhaps, you say, there can still be some purpose out there, one that doesn’t involve us, or Earth? Not likely. Like Neil Tyson said in his answer to the same question, a purpose implies intent. This implies that the universe is going, well, somewhere … and meaning to do so. 

Sure, the universe is coming from somewhere (the Big Bang) and it’s expanding outward over time (and accelerating). And from what we know about it, after 10^10^120 years, the universe will reach a state of calm, when entropy is no longer increasing, and all matter is in equilibrium. On that scale of immeasurable time, it is likely that everything that can happen will have happened, which is the sort of thought that makes people’s brains hurt. It means that matter will have, just by chance, taken on nearly every conformation allowed by physics. This even includes the spontaneous creation of an apple pie from individual atoms, as Carl Sagan once imagined. On a time scale that large, the possibilities truly are endless.

And that is where the idea of purpose comes crashing down. If everything can happen, and does happen, then intent vanishes. Having seen no evidence to prove that a purpose does not exist, I can’t say for sure that it doesn’t. But for as long as humans have been curious about the world around them, and applying the principles of science to answer fundamental questions about the universe, we have never seen proof of a higher purpose. Unanswered questions remain about how it all works, but the absence of an answer does not mean that science is insufficient, only incomplete.

I think instead we should ask if we might be able to create a purpose for our existence, if no greater one exists. Perhaps we are insignificant to the cosmos. But by applying our incredible curiosity and intellect to understanding the workings of the world around us, and beyond, we can make the cosmos significant to us.

I think that’s a fine purpose. Right Steve?

Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers the Big Enchilada Question, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”

To say that the universe has a purpose implies that there is a destination or a goal. If that purpose exists, it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with us, the Johnny-come-latelys of the human race. Does the universe have a purpose? There’s a heck of a case to be made that it doesn’t. 

But don’t despair in that view. Purpose or not, we are here, and we can discover our place in the larger extent of the cosmos even if we can’t fully describe why it’s all here.

Narrated by the great Neil deGrasse Tyson for the Templeton Foundation, and animated by Henry from MinutePhysics, this is one of the greatest things you’ll watch all week.

(via Open Culture)

Source: openculture.com

The Universe Is Almost Done Making Stars Looks like the cosmos may now be about as stellar as it’s going to get. The rate of new star formation has slowed considerably over the past few billion years, and the universe, like a Florida winter, is now dominated by the old and decaying. How researchers figured this out is especially cool.  The picture up top there is from the Hubble telescope’s Extreme Deep Field (XDF) survey. That’s not how they did it. But the XDF is the sum of almost 10 years of Hubble exposures that peer back 13.2 billion years into the universe’s history. The universe itself is only about 13.7 billion years old (the time since the Big Bang). The oldest stars and galaxies in the XDF are 13.2 billion light years away, which means we are looking at the universe as it was 13.2 billion years ago. The new study took pictures of the universe 2, 4, 6 and 9 billion years ago, and discovered that more than half of our stars are more than 9 billion years old. And the sooner to “now” that you look, the fewer new stars you see. Popular Science has some more info about this sobering tale of star birth. Looks like the universe is more a place of decay these days than it is creation. Hurry! Go look at the stars while you can! We only have several billion years before they burn out!!
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The Universe Is Almost Done Making Stars

Looks like the cosmos may now be about as stellar as it’s going to get. The rate of new star formation has slowed considerably over the past few billion years, and the universe, like a Florida winter, is now dominated by the old and decaying.

How researchers figured this out is especially cool. 

The picture up top there is from the Hubble telescope’s Extreme Deep Field (XDF) survey. That’s not how they did it. But the XDF is the sum of almost 10 years of Hubble exposures that peer back 13.2 billion years into the universe’s history. The universe itself is only about 13.7 billion years old (the time since the Big Bang). The oldest stars and galaxies in the XDF are 13.2 billion light years away, which means we are looking at the universe as it was 13.2 billion years ago.

The new study took pictures of the universe 2, 4, 6 and 9 billion years ago, and discovered that more than half of our stars are more than 9 billion years old. And the sooner to “now” that you look, the fewer new stars you see.

Popular Science has some more info about this sobering tale of star birth. Looks like the universe is more a place of decay these days than it is creation. Hurry! Go look at the stars while you can! We only have several billion years before they burn out!!

Source: popsci.com

The Known Universe/The Amazing Journey

The American Museum of Natural History takes you on a trip from the here and the now, to a time and place beyond the distant edge of the universe, a view existing only in the eye of the mind of a single species on a speck of illuminated dust playing the role of anchor in this cosmic journey of scale.

This is a four-dimensional experience, and your soundtrack is Hans Zimmer, remixed. This journey through time and space is best experienced in full-screen 1080p and with those headphones cranked.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the corner with my happy science tears.

(fantastic work by stormeindustries)

Source: youtube.com