The Crab Nebula, left over after the chaotic explosion of a Type 1a supernova. Precise measurements of many of these objects led the astronomers to conclude the universe's expansion was accelerating.
Credit: NASA
STOCKHOLM: A trio of astronomers have won the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a finding that implies the cosmos will one day end with a whimper.
The three are Australian Brian Schmidt, originally from the United States and now a professor at the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra – along with Americans Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess.
They were honoured for findings that were - by their own admission - both a complete surprise and a little scary. The trio looked at so-called type 1a supernovae to set down a benchmark for the movement of light on a cosmological scale.
To their astonishment, they found through observations of more than 50 distant supernovae that light from the dying stars was weaker than expected.
After checking and rechecking data they thought must be wrong, they concluded that the only explanation was that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate after the Big Bang that created it some 13.7 billion years ago.
"The discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding," the Nobel jury said. "If the expansion will continue to speed up the universe will end in ice."
What may drive the acceleration is an enigmatic force called dark energy, thought to constitute about three-quarters of the universe.
"The findings have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science," the committee said.
Perlmutter, born in 1959, who heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the Berkeley National Laboratory in California, won half of the 10 million Swedish kronor (US$1.48 million) prize.
Schmidt, 44, who heads the High-z Supernova Search Team at the Australian National University, shared the other half with Riess, born in 1969 and a professor of Astronomy and Physics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
When hearing the news, Schmidt said winning "sort of feels like when my children were born."
He told Swedish public broadcaster SVT by phone from Australia that he was "weak in the knees, really excited, and somewhat, I guess, amazed by the situation. It's been a pretty exciting last half-hour."
Referring to the discoveries, Schmidt said that he and Riess, 41, "were working very closely, talking on the phone all the time, trying to figure out this crazy result.
"We were frantically trying to sort out where we had gone wrong. So it was a with a fair bit of trepidation that we wound up telling our group that the Universe seems to be speeding up. We were hoping everyone would be nice to us. It seemed too crazy to be right. We were a little scared."
Last year's Nobel for physics went to two Russian-born scientists, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for pioneering work on graphene, an ultra-thin carbon structure touted as the wonder material of the 21st century.
This year's trio will receive their prize at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
Overnight, Bruce Beutler of the United States, Luxembourg-born Frenchman Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman of Canada shared the Nobel medicine award for insights into immunology.
But the jury was caught off guard when it discovered hours after announcing the prize that Steinman had died of pancreatic cancer on Friday aged 68.
According to prize regulations, the award cannot be given posthumously. But ultimately, the Nobel Assembly declared Steinman would remain a laureate given the 'unique' situation.
2011 Physics Nobel?
EOTOE, Some Implications (I)
(recapitulation)
A.
EOTOE is an Embarrassingly Obvious Theory Of Everything.
In essence it states that all things in the universe, nouns and verbs objects and processes, originate and derive from the energy-mass dualism.
The origin and essence of this derivation are expressed mathematically by
E=Total[m(1+ D)] (D = distance travelled by mass since singularity)
Which suggests that the universe cycles between two poles: singularity/all-mass , and maximum-expanded/nearly-all-energy.
The “nearly” all-energy leaves behind some mass formats that begin consolidating by gravity, when it eventually overcomes expansion as the mass fueling the expansion is nearly depleted, becoming very small m multiplied by very large D = E .
B.
Thus the essence/definition of gravitation is:
“Gravitation Is the propensity of energy reconversion to mass”.
Gravitation is the “monotheism” and the “ genesis” of the universe. Singularity, at D = 0, is the very brief all-mass pole of the universe. The Big-Bang-inflation did not produce matter or anti-matter. It was the beginning of mass reconversion into energy, of increasing D fueled by decreasing m.
The conjectured gravitons, smallest basic particles, most probably do exist, but must be with mass, and each graviton must “big-bang” during the on-going expansion at a resolution of its energy-mass superposition.
This is rationally commonsensical, therefore it is scientifically probable.
Inflation started with the whole universe m shattering into fragments that evolved into, became, the galaxy clusters. The clusters expansion is fed at a constant rate by m-fuel. Since expansion accelerates, since the clusters depart from each other at an ever increasing velocity, we learn that the rate of m-to-E reconversion in the universe is constant. The accelerated expansion derives from the ever decreasing m of each cluster.
C.
Thus the essence/definition of evolution, natural selection is:
Mass formats attaining temporary augmented energy constraint in their successive generations, with energy drained from other mass formats, to temporarily postpone, survive, the reversion of their own constitutional mass to the pool of cosmic energy fueling the galactic clusters expansion.
This explains why black holes and humans, in fact all mass formats, must feed themselves in order to survive.
This explains that the essence of quantum mechanics of all processes is the detailed procession steps, the evolution details, between physical states ordained for natural selection.
D.
Thus comes to light the universe inspected progressively in greater detail.
Science reveals the universe’s nature-scope and directing drive, followed by technology studying its evolution details-aspects, followed by engineering exploitation of the attained information. This suggests the specific weight, importance, of science, technology and engineering in considering of research or enterprise plans and implementation.
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
http://universe-life.com/
PS1:
Definitely: Dark energy and dark matter YOK! Universe's m reconverts to E at a constant rate…
Universe expands per Newton's motion laws, obviously…
Also, universe physics constants should vary, probably slightly, between galaxies clusters due to different clusters...
Also, the clusters formed by dispersion at inflation…
PS2:
The singularity constituents must have been the smallest elementary particles. They may be designated gravitons, but they MUST HAVE MASS. They were born at the energy-mass superposition resolution, together with the fragments that became galaxies clusters.
At expansion D increases, therefore m decreases, which per Newton mandates mass and matter acceleration. This goes on, most probably, at a constant rate of mass-to-energy reconversion, at an energy-mass resolution. And this resolution is, for each graviton, most probably in a format of a minuscule big-bang.
This is a lesser fantasy than the dark matter and energy fantasy. Such mass-energy gravitons may be omnipresent within each galaxies cluster, maintaining each cluster as a primordial Newtonian body and being the fuel-driver of expansion.
DH
Which translates to, "the
Which translates to, "the universe is big".
Which translates to "update some basic concepts..."
On Light And Dark Mass And Energy
http://universe-life.com/2011/10/03/on-light-and-dark-mass-and-energy/
Most probably wrong common statements :
1) “ …could help solve mysteries such as the nature of the dark energy that is accelerating the expansion of the universe.”
2) “ Light has no resting mass, just energy. Gravity is a bend in space, therefore Gravity does not pull at light but the light 'bends' with space.
Most probably right :
1) The present universe expansion is an accelerating separation of galaxy clusters, fueled by singularity’s mass reconverting to energy since Big Bang. In the present universe nearly all mass formats are destined to reconvert to energy. The attempts to postpone this reconversion are termed evolution/natural selection. The accelerating pace of expansion is Newtonian.
2) Light has mass. Every object and every process in the universe is a progeny, consequence, derivative of singularity, energy-mass superposition, dualism. Gravity is NOT “a bend in space”. It is the propensity to natural-selection, to delay reconversion to energy, to maintain the energy in mass format. Light bends by gravity when gravity’s pull does not suffice to overcome light’s momentum. However, light’s momentum is no match for black-hole’s gravity…
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
http://universe-life.com/
http://universe-life.com/2011/10/14/eotoe-some-implications-2/
http://universe-life.com/2011/10/02/neutrino-velocity-light-velocity/
Dark Energy
When a theoretical concept is supported by only a single experiment, even repeated a lot, it is unsupportable. You need two quite independent experiments to make such a conclusion.
The only support for dark energy is that supernova Type Ia events lie uniformly slightly above the Hubble curve. We forget that the Hubble Law is simply the expression that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving as seen by increased redshift. When applied to Chephids that are reasonably nearby, the fit is +-10%. We then use this relationship for objects that do not have known brightness.
The extension of the distance scale using Type Ia standard candles lets us go much farther out. However, I do not detect any use of combination of errors as we move outward step by step, to obtain more reasonable error bars, which seem to be stuck at 10% and should be larger.
Eric Lerner implies that the basic brightness data for Type Ia measurements have been corrected for the assumed uniform expansion of the universe, and if not done, the points would have been unremarkable instead of implying acceleration. The real question is whether or not uniform expansion is correct!
When looking at the deep redshift pencil surveys in 6 directions (Broadhurst, Koo, et al) one sees that the distribution of galaxies is spherically symmetric about an origin about 70 MLY in the direction of Virgo, decreases as approximately 1/r-squared from that origin, and is periodic with a period of about 400 MLY. This distribution, and indeed the entire Sloan Survey does not correspond to the General Relativity Model of the Big Bang at all!
I conclude that the interpretation of the data does not support dark energy at all. The concept is nonsense, as is the idea that 96% of the universe is unseen and undetected matter or energy.
Emeritus, UVA