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I might make a thread to place controversy science topics
'Cosmology' is a controversial subject by itself but within Cosmology are topics which are even more controversial
'Strings' ← for example
another new finding from JWST is now hinting that some of our Cosmological Science books may be 'wrong'...it has lead people to now explore other almost forgotten ideas and topics such as 'Tired Light', Discrepancies between local and early measurements of expansion rate, questions such as will humans conquer the Galaxy or will they be robots or post-human, Silurian hypothesis? other Hypothetical topics might rise again or ideas challenged, if WIMPs or Machos are real, string theory and eleven dimensions the coming out of fire ekpyrotic universeThe idea of phantom energy as a solution to Dark Energy and could cause the expansion of the universe to accelerate so quickly that a scenario known as the Big Rip instead of a Big Crunch. The plane of our Solar System and CMB maybe an unexplained violation of the Copernican principle? Self sustaining universe cycles and M-theory M-branes collide periodically in a higher-dimensional space. With quintessence energy or another form of dark energy, Phantom dark energy fragments universe into large number of disconnected patches. The idea of a Multiverse ambiplasma and a Cellular universe, expanding by means of matter–antimatter annihilation , the Baryon asymmetry where is the Anti-Matter? The Galaxy rotation problem, finding Dyson Spheres or Kardashev scale civilizations, the Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). New exotic use of matter or exotic energies which may be violations of the first and second law of thermodynamics. The question of when the Earliest Universe happened, the Dark Ages of the Universe and age of the Earliest stars, oldest Galaxy, the 'Ether' the question if Aliens had AI and if Aliens died would their AI machines survive. Wormholes are probably still controversial, different parallel timelines or timelike paths, supersymmetry, whatever social media debate is happening this year Eric Weinstein battle Brian Greene etc Compatability of the 1 eV sterile neutrino evidence with CMB and BBN data, Kilonova and strontium emerging from a neutron star merger, do firewalls exist around black holes?general non-standard physicist theories like FTL quantum entanglement 'warp' or the graviton particle or possible new ways to observe blackholes or measurement of gravitational waves, inflation theory and the age of the universe, the Hubble Tension and is CMB dipole purely kinematic. Other controversial written rules of dark matter and dark energy are said to account for 95% of the energy matter content of the universe, yet we do not know what they are.
Few of these controversial topics have found any evidence for their existence in Fermilab or CERN experiments or Hubble observations, however we have found gravity waves. Gravitational waves are thought to be waves of the intensity of gravity that are generated by the motions of huge gravitating masses, or sometimes the merge of neutron stars and are now believed to propagate as 'waves' outward from their source at the speed of light. This is not to be confused with weather gravity waves which are a mechanism that produce the transfer of momentum from the troposphere to the stratosphere and mesosphere in astronomy 'Gravitational Waves' or the ideas to build a gravity wave Observatory are now becoming accepted mainstream science and the first direct observation of gravitational waves was made in 2015, when a signal generated by the merger of two black holes was received by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors in Livingston, Louisiana, and in Hanford, Washington, Gravitational waves are expected to have frequencies 10−16 Hz < f < 104 Hz and maybe wavelengths longer than our planet Earth a ripple produced might be as small as one thousandth of the width of a proton.
What Is a Gravitational Wave?
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/gravitational-waves/en/
The Short Answer:
A gravitational wave is an invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space. Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). These waves squeeze and stretch anything in their path as they pass by.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-03-23 11:43:46)
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https://www.realclearscience.com/video/ … 17254.html
(via Sabine Hossenfelder) String theory was a beautiful idea, the best contender for a theory of everything that we have seen so far. Thousands of physicists spend decades trying to work it out. But it didn’t quite go according to plan. String theory became extremely controversial during what's been dubbed the “String Wars” about 20 years ago. Then it kind of disappeared. What happened? What were the string wars? And what are string theorists doing now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRzQDyw5C3M
Red Giants With Deep Voices Could Resolve Cosmology’s Confusion
https://www.iflscience.com/red-giants-w … sion-73419
Their booming stellar song could tell us how fast the universe is expanding, and either resolve the contradiction between other forms of measurement or deepen it.
Our Universe Has No Dark Matter, New Research Suggests
https://greekreporter.com/2024/03/16/un … rk-matter/
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-03-23 09:13:35)
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Scientists propose a new way to search for dark matter
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Scie … r_999.html
Ever since its discovery, dark matter has remained invisible to scientists, despite the launch of multiple ultra-sensitive particle detector experiments around the world over several decades.
Now, physicists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are proposing a new way to look for dark matter using quantum devices, which might be naturally tuned to detect what researchers call thermalized dark matter.
Most dark matter experiments hunt for galactic dark matter, which rockets into Earth directly from space, but another kind might have been hanging around Earth for years, said SLAC physicist Rebecca Leane, who was an author on the new study.
"Dark matter goes into the Earth, bounces around a lot, and eventually just gets trapped by the gravitational field of the Earth," Leane said, bringing it into an equilibrium scientists refer to as thermalized. Over time, this thermalized dark matter builds up to a higher density than the few loose, galactic particles, meaning that it could be more likely to hit a detector. Unfortunately, thermalized dark matter moves much more slowly than galactic dark matter, meaning it would impart far less energy than galactic dark matter - likely too little for traditional detectors to see.
physicsforums confusion and questions?? Was Electroweak Symmetry Breaking in the Early Universe Controversial?
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/w … l.1051463/
The anatomy of electroweak symmetry breaking: Tome I: The Higgs boson in the Standard Model
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a … 7307004334
Anti-time: A Negative Directional Dimension of Time From The Big Bang
https://medium.com/@curiositybender/ant … db8b9ae9ed
Reversing the direction of time
THE notion of time dictates that events move from the past to the future, following an arrow of time. However, some theoretical frameworks suggest that time’s arrow could be reversible. If time can reverse its direction, we could witness effects seemingly moving backward in time, akin to a rewind button for the universe. Leaving questions about ‘causality’, that of cause being followed by effect.
Higgs Field as the New Ether
https://www.independent.com/2012/07/20/ … new-ether/
The ether is generally described, along with things like phlogiston, as one of science’s big screw-ups. We know now, the story goes, that there is no ether. Einstein dispelled this myth, right? Wrong.
"aether theories"
Æther, a.k.a. ether is the element proposed by Dmitri Mendeleev, the creator of the Periodic Table, to be the "element" that composes empty space. Sometimes called Element X, it was believed to flow through all materials regardless of the materials and was thought to be inert.
https://fandomium.fandom.com/wiki/%C3%86ther
Aether (element)
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Aether_(element)
Higgs Condensate as a Quantum Liquid
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 … 20-04589-9
The Higgs field a new Luminiferous aether?
https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest … ous-aether
Cosmology at times sometimes seems to enter the realm of scifi and math speculation?
perhaps Cosmology has given entertainment writers a magic new plot device particle to fix writers block
are some of Cosmology's more fringe ideas and better feats simply contributions to scifi
Theoretical short cuts past light speed, theory on FTL
Woodward Effect claims that his hypothesis predicts physical forces that he calls Mach effects but are also referred to as the Woodward effect. He says that his hypothesis is based on Mach's principle that posits inertia, the resistance of mass to acceleration, is a result of the mutual gravitational attraction of all matter in the universe. There have been ideas to use anti-matter, exotic drives, EM drives, Dynamical Casimir Effect, some type of 'Free Energy' recycling thruster. There are theories on Zero Point Energy and Vacuum Drive Reactive Devices, most seems like philosophy, however they say if the graviton exist and anti-matter and matter are made of the same thing: energy and according to Einstein the spaceship can’t travel faster than light. Others say that using massive objects in Warping spacetime creating something like a Wormhole has nothing to do with entanglement. Mike McCulloch's quantised inertia theory https://quantizedinertia.com/ says there's a possibility for near instantaneous back and forth Hubble scale communication across the width of the Milky Way galaxy and further. Matter pushed the extreme video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-FqE81rhqA there have also been suggestions of using Quantum Entanglement for FTL Communication or building Wormholes in the future or Quantum Entanglement for Spaceflight Purposes, Star Trek style beam me up teleportation or a faster than light transmission of information. An entangled photon pair will - when measured - have 'opposite' states
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/dec … ation.html
Sabine Hossenfelder on FTL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-jIplX6Wjw
I Think Faster Than Light Travel is Possible. Here's Why.
Star Trek is known to have more 'technobabble' than other scifi shows
a quote from the above Trek links
The science behind Star Trek technobabble
Boldly dive into the world of gravitons, tachyons, and antimatter.
maybe art imitates life imitates art imitates life and science people who got into Cosmology got influence from fictional scifi events, culture influences on our view of the world around us.
in order to categorize and separate the Fantasy/Fictional element of scifi with Science the scifi genre has been now ranked by its hardness
There are ways a story is almost physically pushed forward by a writer the plot mechanism is any technique, stone or device in a narrative used to move the plot forward. Special Rocks in fiction, a special device or gizmo, special stones, a magic button or plot device piece of clothing, an Artifact of Doom, the Uber Superman or Wonder Woman Mary Sue, the cartoon or video game character who breaks the laws of physics, the Infinity Gauntlet, Batman's Utility Belt, the Chekhov's Gun, a superpowered unbeatable person beat by something that depowers the hero, example kryptonite or a special gun or technobabble physics, sometimes backing up a little and making a mockery of it all with irony or Lampshade Hanging, a magic machine might solve and fix everything in a scifi movie or books. Quote - Applied Phlebotinum can be directly described as a substance that is believed to reveal the truth. In narrative terms many stories have seen this substance in the form of, for example, a crystal ball in a fantasy novel that reveals a moment either in the past, present, or future.
https://www.raseandavontejohnson.com/ne … elebotinum
Screen writing Common Plot Devices
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/co … ur-writing
Basic Fiction Plot Devices
https://rightingprocess.com/blog/unders … on-writing
Plot Device is any narrative technique that a writer uses to advance the plot of their story in some way. There are Plot Devices that exist as actual physical objects in the world of the story
https://film-and-television.fandom.com/wiki/Plot_device
They even call the cartoonish video game fake math and fake physics of the day Applied Phlebotinum is the rule of the day, often of the Nonsensoleum kind, you can have somewhat real-ish characters or concepts like Batman or Ironman but next to them magic, 'super' alien people like Superman who fly for no reason with no propulsion or magical Doctor Strange Green Rocks gain New Powers as the Plot Demands, 'The Force' and other ideas in Star Wars, Japan Anime the Futurama toon, The DC and Marvel universes, most comicbooks, video games, scifi cartoons and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fall in this class
are these magic particles in scifi used to fix a plot so different to almost magic fixes in Cosmology
2001 Space Odyssey and Blade Runner would rank much higher on the hardness scale or Mohs Scale of Scifi Hardness, the movie Gattaca, The Three-Body Problem story by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin or Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress fall into higher ranks on this higher scifi hardness class.
What are the criteria for defining "hard" science fiction?
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questio … ce-fiction
Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness.
https://scifithenandnow.blogspot.com/20 … dness.html
Science fiction is broken up into tons of smaller subgenres. I could go on all day about different subgenres, examples, the things I like best about each, and so on and so forth. I’ll spare everyone that. Instead I want to talk about the distinction between two kinds of science fiction: hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi. This distinction goes hand in hand with the ideas some people have about the hard (natural) sciences and the soft (social) sciences.
Hard sci-fi is concerned with science. Here the science and technological aspects of the world are the main focus. These are the stories that are likely to be more predictive as they’re built on actual physical laws. Some authors are so dedicated to the rigidity of logic that the science they write into their stories, while fictional, is based entirely on actual science of our world. It is also the case that there are plenty of hard sci-fi stories that deal with totally fictional science, but within the confines of the universe they’re writing treat it as actual fact.
An example of hard sci-fi would be Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”. The science of space travel within the story is 100% pertinent to the plot. It deals with the idea that space travel is so exact that a ship can only carry exactly what it needs to get to a destination. There are no extra supplies and not even extra fuel. In the story the pilot finds a stowaway and has to figure out what to do to save them from running out of fuel. If the shuttle was made to carry extra fuel then the additional weight from Marilyn then there would be no conflict.
Most visualizations for FTL is stories is not based on science it seems to have come from scifi, the Star Wars hyperdrive and Hyperspace idea or Star Trek warp engine Warp Drive or Warp Speed Concept. Some believe in theory that in our real world maybe a black hole or a supermassive object can somehow be used to change space, exotic matter used but somehow manipulated, hawking radiation or maybe with plasma fields to change space time itself? some visualize space as how the 'ether' was thought of prior to quantum mechanics and general relativity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwhKZ3fd9JA
Spooky Action at a Distance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuvK-od647c
the Alcubierre drive which is requires the negative energy to expand/contract space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ed4v_T6YM
space distance and time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkAAbXPEAtU
The tachyon a time travler or tachyonic particle you might expect to find in a Dr Who episode is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Back in 2011, it was reported, in a major release by CERN, that a tau neutrino had traveled faster than the speed of light; however, later updates from CERN on the OPERA experiment indicate that the faster-than-light readings were due to a faulty element device giving false readings.
Tachyons are flashy in popular culture
https://www.1e.com/blogs/tachyons-are-f … r-culture/
. You’ve no doubt heard them being referenced in Star Trek, but here are some other fun examples of tachyons in science fiction, movies, and art.
sometimes a mix of scifi and math nonsense for a science fiction tv show, the incomprehensible technical jargon, Technobabble has become something the viewer will 'believe' if the writers, actors, maquette models and cgi images and sounds put on a 'good show'
https://mashable.com/article/star-trek- … hnobabble/
The Tachyon Drive
https://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw61.html
Spacetime, Tachyons, Twins and Clocks
https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teachi … index.html
Detailed pictures show galaxy growth in the early universe was much faster than first thought
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-pictures- … verse.html
What is emergent gravity, and will it rewrite physics?
https://news.yahoo.com/emergent-gravity … 28892.html
Verlinde's theory is based on what Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein observed in the 1970s: Many properties of black holes can be expressed in terms of the laws of thermodynamics. However, the laws of thermodynamics are themselves emergent from microscopic processes. To Verlinde, this was more than a mere coincidence and indicated that what we perceive as gravity may be emerging from some deeper physical process.
In 2009, he published the first version of his theory. Crucially, we do not need to know what those deeper processes are, since we already have the tool kit — statistical mechanics — for describing emergent properties. So Verlinde applied these techniques to gravity and arrived at an alternate formulation of gravity. And because gravity is also tied to our concepts of motion, inertia, space and time, this means our entire universe is also emergent from those same deeper processes.
At first, not much came of this; rewriting a known law of physics, while interesting, doesn't necessarily provide deeper insights. But in 2016, Verlinde expanded his theory by discovering that a universe containing dark energy naturally leads to a new emergent property of space, thus allowing it to push inward on itself in regions of low density.
This discovery led to a flurry of excitement, as it provided an alternative explanation for dark matter. Currently, astronomers believe that dark matter is a mysterious, invisible substance that makes up the bulk of all the mass of every galaxy. While that hypothesis has been able to explain a vast wealth of observations, from the rotation rates of stars within galaxies to the evolution of the largest structures in the cosmos, we have yet to identify the mysterious particle.
In Verlinde's picture of emergent gravity, as soon as you enter low-density regions — basically, anything outside the solar system — gravity behaves differently than we would expect from Einstein's theory of general relativity. At large scales, there is a natural inward pull to space itself, which forces matter to clump up more tightly than it otherwise would.
This idea was exciting because it allowed astronomers to find a way to test this new theory. Observers could take this new theory of gravity and put it in models of galaxy structure and evolution to find differences between it and models of dark matter.
Over the years, however, the experimental results have been mixed. Some early tests favored emergent gravity over dark matter when it came to the rotation rates of stars. But more recent observations haven't found an advantage. And dark matter can also explain much more than galaxy rotation rates; tests within galaxy clusters have found emergent gravity coming up short.
Exotic particles which have yet to show up
Cern however has found no 'Dark Energy' it also has found no sign of 'Strings' CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has made several significant discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), discovery of four brand new particles in addition to the Nobel prize-winning Higgs boson, Signs of new physics or unknown mathematical descriptions of the universe, coordinated motion of quark-gluon plasma, identification of tetraquarks, a tetraquark is an exotic meson composed of four valence quarks, a state long been suspected to be allowed by quantum chromodynamics, the tetraquark state is an example of an exotic hadron, Fermilab also seems to confirm Cern and announced that they have discovered a particle temporarily which may also be a tetraquark
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/18 … e-physics/
Why the universe might be a hologram
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-universe-hologram.html
It's one thing to cast problems of physics in a new language, even a new set of dimensions, to make them easier to solve. After all, physics abounds with such mathematical tricks and games that practitioners employ to solve challenging problems and move on to the next one. But the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the more general holographic principle that it represents, is so much more than a mathematical curiosity.
Remember that the essential goal here is to describe gravity, which for centuries we believed to be just another force of nature, just one more interaction that entities in the cosmos can use to interact with each other. But gravity does stand alone and unique among all the forces, even beyond its quantum intractability.
Gravity is the only force emitted and felt by every single entity in the cosmos. Anything with mass, anything with energy, creates a gravitational influence around it. And so too does anything with mass, anything with energy, anything with what we call existence respond to that gravitational influence.
Social media
“String Theory is absolutely…the most likely to be true set of ideas about what sits at the intersection of the Standard Model and quantum gravity.”
https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/stat … 7544470529
Eric Weinstein said he will debate anyone from String Theory and trash it but there is one person he is afraid to debate because he might make Eric feel stupid, Edward Witten an American mathematical and theoretical physicist, he was also known in journalist and political circles a long time ago, Witten sits on the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now he helped in George McGovern unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign against Nixon, Edward Witten he is considered the practical founder of M-theory.
In String Theory a brane is a physical object that generalizes the notion of a point particle to higher dimensions a point particle can be viewed as a brane of dimension zero, while a string can be viewed as a brane of dimension one
pdf
https://www.ams.org/notices/200502/what-is.pdf
A fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics, it has a half-odd-integer spin: spin 1/2, spin 3/2, etc particles obey the Pauli exclusion principle, a fermion will include all quarks and leptons and all composite particles made of an odd number
https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/1 … .87.055003
Quantum Gravity, theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics, science breaks down going back to the Big Bang or in Blackholes, Quantum Gravity attempts to explain these issue and other compact astrophysical objects, such as neutron stars.
https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401
Matrix theory and mirror symmetry the Matrix Theory is a quantum mechanical model proposed in four authors it is also known as BFSS matrix model, after the authors' initials, the low energy limit of this matrix model is described by eleven-dimensional supergravity some aspects of matrix models and M-theory are described by a noncommutative quantum field theory, a new special kind of physics mathematical physical theory, mirror symmetry is a relationship between geometric objects called Calabi–Yau manifolds, important mathematical applications of mirror symmetry belong to the branch of mathematics called enumerative geometry, there is a physical object that generalizes the notion of a point particle to higher dimensions.
Extra dimensions are additions of space or time dimensions beyond the (3 + 1) typical of observed spacetime, such as the first attempts based on the Kaluza–Klein theory.
https://archive.org/details/arxiv-hep-ph0409309
Calabi–Yau manifolds are complex manifolds generalizations of K3 surfaces in any number of complex dimensions, the Calabi–Yau manifold, also known as a Calabi–Yau space, is a particular type of manifold which has properties, such as Ricci flatness, mathematical field of differential geometry, Ricci-flatness is a condition on the curvature, Many pseudo-Riemannian manifolds are constructed as homogeneous mathematical spaces. The K3 surface is a complex shape and has real dimension 4, playing an important role in the study of smooth 4-manifolds. K3 surfaces have been applied to Kac–Moody algebras, mirror symmetry and string theory
http://www.th.physik.uni-bonn.de/th/Supplements/cy.html
Compactifications
https://stringwiki.org/wiki/Compactifications
pdf
https://indico.cern.ch/event/927781/con … Review.pdf
String Theory - The Alternative
https://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbarchers/html/A416747
Having completed extensive research on the theory of theories, I have determined that 'String Theory - The Alternative' spontaneously sprang into existence to explain all the other theories, and tie up all those annoying loose ends.
Gravity experiments on the kitchen table: Why a tiny, tiny measurement may be a big leap forward for physics
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-gravity-k … y-big.html
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-03-31 10:05:37)
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For Mars_B4_Moon re #3
Thanks for finding and showing the link to the "kitchen table experiment" article!
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-gravity-k … y-big.html
This experiment apparently allows measurement of the force of gravity at a small scale.
What is impressive (to me at least) is that the implication is that the experiment might be available to average citizens, although it is possible the cost of the equipment may be out of reach.
In the first impression I get from first reading of the article, it is possible to detect the movement of a single atom.
That is similar to the atomic force microscope display of atoms arranged in a surface, as was first done by IBM many decades ago.
The ability to "see" atoms is likely to be helpful to enable students to find evidence in support of the theory of atoms as fundamental components of matter, although we (humans) now know there is a zoo's worth of particles below atoms.
(th)
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The universe's accelerated expansion might be slowing down
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_ … n_999.html
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The Strange Case of the Zero Energy Universe
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Some have claimed Stars fueled by self-annihilation of dark matter has already been spotted by JWST
'Dark stars': Dark matter may form exploding stars, and observing the damage could help reveal what it's made of
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-dark-stars-reveal.html
Unlike WIMPs, which cannot "stick" together to form small objects, axions can do so. Because they are so light, a huge number of axions would have to account for all the dark matter, which means they would have to be crammed together. But because they are a type of subatomic particle known as a boson, they don't mind.
In fact, calculations show axions could be packed so closely that they start behaving strangely—collectively acting like a wave—according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the theory which governs the microworld of atoms and particles. This state is called a Bose-Einstein condensate, and it may, unexpectedly, allow axions to form "stars" of their own.
This would happen when the wave moves on its own, forming what physicists call a "soliton", which is a localized lump of energy that can move without being distorted or dispersed. This is often seen on Earth in vortexes and whirlpools, or the bubble rings that dolphins enjoy underwater.
The new study provides calculations which show that such solitons would end up growing in size, becoming a star, similar in size to, or larger than, a normal star. But finally, they become unstable and explode.
The energy released from one such explosion (dubbed a "bosenova") would rival that of a supernova (an exploding normal star). Given that dark matter far outweighs the visible matter in the universe, this would surely leave a sign in our observations of the sky. We have yet to find such scars, but the new study gives us something to look for.
New JWST images suggest our understanding of the cosmos is flawed
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jws … nt-tension
If the result is correct, we might need new physics to explain the universe
The discrepancy is known as the Hubble tension, and new JWST data hasn’t done anything to ease it (SN: 7/30/19). The telescope took images of the same stars as the Hubble telescope and calculated a very similar Hubble constant. Although the Planck number disagrees from the Hubble telescope and JWST number by less than 10 percent, the discrepancy in the measurements implies that there’s something terribly wrong with our understanding of the universe. Unless an error turns up in one of the measurements, it will take strange new physics to explain the tension.
“Papers in the literature over the last 10 years have invoked anything from weird dark matter to weird dark energy, to another [exotic] particle, to a magnetic field in the early universe to a new field, all kinds of things” to explain the Hubble tension, says cosmologist Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University.
Some of these explanations “look semi-successful, some of them look like failures, some of them would cause other problems,” he says. Developing a theory that might resolve the tension “is still very much in the skunkworks [or extremely speculative] stage of trying to understand what [the tension] could mean.
James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe
https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmo … e-universe
Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.
Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.
This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.
Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.
"We wouldn't call it a tension or problem, but rather a crisis," David Gross, a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, said at a 2019 conference at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in California.
Initially, some scientists thought that the disparity could be a result of a measurement error caused by the blending of Cepheids with other stars in Hubble's aperture. But in 2023, the researchers used the more accurate JWST to confirm that, for the first few "rungs" of the cosmic ladder, their Hubble measurements were right. Nevertheless, the possibility of crowding further back in the universe's past remained.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-04-06 14:54:26)
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We've glimpsed something that behaves like a particle of gravity
https://www.newscientist.com/article/24 … f-gravity/
Gravitons, the particles thought to carry gravity, have never been seen in space – but something very similar has been detected in a semiconductor
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Top Astronomers Gather to Confront Possibility They Were Very Wrong About the Universe
https://futurism.com/the-byte/astronome … t-universe
"More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers."
Notice how the article suggests a class gap within the sciences, the use of the word(s) like Respected-Astronomers and not 'Cosmologist' or Theorist
As The Guardian reports, the luminaries of cosmology will be re-examining some basic assumptions about the universe — right down to the over-a-century-old theory that it's expanding at a constant rate. "We are, in cosmology, using a model that was first formulated in 1922," coorganizer and Oxford cosmologist Subir Sarkar told the newspaper, in an apparent reference to the year Russian astronomer Alexander Friedmann outlined the possibility of cosmic expansion based on Einstein's general theory of relativity. "We have great data, but the theoretical basis is past its sell-by date," he added. "More and more people are saying the same thing and these are respected astronomers."
A number of researchers have found evidence that the universe may be expanding more quickly in some areas compared to others, raising the tantalizing possibility that megastructures could be influencing the universe's growth in significant ways. Sarkar and his colleagues, for instance, are suggesting that the universe is "lopsided" after studying over a million quasars, which are the active nuclei of galaxies where gas and dust are being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole
'high-profile astronomers are set to convene at London's Royal Society to question some of the most fundamental aspects of our understanding of the universe.'
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-04-21 01:54:52)
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Laser excitation of Th-229 nucleus: New findings suggest classical quantum physics and nuclear physics can be combined
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Every pulled or maybe pushed direction of the constellation of Centaurus there is a 'Something' which is pulling a Supercluster of galaxies that includes our own Galaxy the Milky Way galaxy, as well as about 100,000 other galaxies. The math of it all will not add up, the galaxy superclusters can spans across 500 million light years but at the same time not dense enough to be gravitationally bound? There have been all kinds of speculations 'The Great Wall' which there now seems to be more than one of, some time of exotic energy or exotic matter a type of anti gravity dipole repeller or 'Dark Flow' philosophy mathematics hypothesis to explain certain non-random measurements of peculiar velocity of galaxy clusters, matter causing net motion is outside the range, it would be hidden outside our visible universe the Planck space telescope showed no evidence of "dark flow" however some other guy says he seen 'Dark Flow' inside both Planck and WMAP data.
The mysterious 'Great Attractor' pulling the Milky Way galaxy off course
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/11989099 … way-galaxy
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Testing the quantumness of gravity without entanglement
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Test … t_999.html
Gravity, a fundamental force in our everyday lives, continues to puzzle scientists: Is it a geometric force as Einstein suggested, or does it follow quantum mechanics? Researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Ulm have introduced an innovative experiment to explore this, avoiding the challenges of previous methods that required entangling massive objects, which often lose their quantum properties and behave classically.
Merging quantum mechanics with gravitational physics remains a daunting challenge. Experiments combining quantum and gravitational effects are scarce, and the theoretical understanding is incomplete. Nobel laureate Roger Penrose questioned whether a unified theory would necessitate a 'quantisation of gravity' or a 'gravitisation of quantum mechanics'. Is gravity inherently a quantum force affecting the minutest scales, or is it classical with a macroscopic geometric description?
The cornerstone for resolving these questions has been the quantum phenomenon of entanglement. Ludovico Lami of the University of Amsterdam and QuSoft explains, "The central question, initially posed by Richard Feynman in 1957, is to understand whether the gravitational field of a massive object can enter a so-called quantum superposition, where it would be in several states at the same time. Prior to our work, the main idea to decide this question experimentally was to look for gravitationally induced entanglement - a way in which distant but related masses could share quantum information. The existence of such entanglement would falsify the hypothesis that the gravitational field is purely local and classical."
Previously, attempts to create 'delocalised states' with heavy objects have been impractical. The heaviest object observed in quantum delocalisation is a large molecule, significantly lighter than any mass with a detectable gravitational field. This has delayed experimental progress by decades.
Lami and his team propose a novel approach that does not rely on generating entanglement. They suggest using massive 'harmonic oscillators', like those in Cavendish's 1797 experiment, to demonstrate gravitational quantumness. "We design and investigate a class of experiments involving a system of massive 'harmonic oscillators' - for example, torsion pendula, essentially like the one that Cavendish used in his famous 1797 experiment to measure the strength of the gravitational force. We establish mathematically rigorous bounds on certain experimental signals for quantumness that a local classical gravity should not be able to overcome. We have carefully analysed the experimental requirements needed to implement our proposal in an actual experiments, and find that even though some degree of technological progress is still needed, such experiments could really be within reach soon," says Lami.
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