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Category: cosmology – Page 255

By Jeremy Batterson 11-09-2021

The equivalent of cheap 100-inch binoculars will soon be possible. This memo is a quick update on seven rapidly converging technologies that augur well for astronomy enthusiasts of the near future. All these technologies already exist in either fully developed or nascent form, and all are being rapidly improved due to the gigantic global cell phone market and the retinal projection market that will soon replace it. Listed here are the multiple technologies, after which they are brought together into a single system.

1) Tracking.
2) Single-photon image sensing.
3) Large effective exit pupils via large sensors.
4) Long exposure non-photographic function.
5) Flat optics (metamaterials)
6) Off-axis function of flat optics.
7) Retinal projection.

1) TRACKING: this is already being widely used in so-called “go-to” telescopes, where the instrument will find any object and track it, so Earth’s rotation does not take the object viewed out of the field of vision. The viewer doesn’t have to find the object and doesn’t have to set up the clock drive to track it. Tracking is also partly used in image stabilization software for cameras and smart phones, to prevent motion blurring of images.

2) SINGLE-PHOTON IMAGE SENSORS, whether of the single-photon avalanching diode type, or the type developed by Dr. Fossum, will allow passive imaging in nearly totally dark environments, without the use of IR or other illumination. This new type of image sensor will replace the monochromatic analogue “night-vision” devices, allowing color imaging at higher resolution than they can produce. Unlike these current devices, such sensors will not be destroyed by being exposed to normal or high lighting. Effectively, these sensors increase the effective light-gathering power of a telescope by at least an order of magnitude, allowing small telescopes to see what observatory telescopes see now.

Continue reading “SEVEN CONVERGING TECHNOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS WILL PERMANENTLY CHANGE CITIZEN ASTRONOMY” | >

A team of international scientists, including researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), have unveiled the largest number of gravitational waves ever detected.

The discoveries will help solve some of the most complex mysteries of the Universe, including the building blocks of matter and the workings of space and time.

The global team’s study, published on ArXiv, made 35 new detections of gravitational waves caused by pairs of merging or neutron stars and black holes smashing together, using the LIGO and Virgo observatories between November 2019 and March 2020.

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Theory of loop quantum cosmology describes how tiny primordial features account for anomalies at the largest scales of the universe.

While Einstein’s theory of general relativity can explain a large array of fascinating astrophysical and cosmological phenomena, some aspects of the properties of the universe at the largest-scales remain a mystery. A new study using loop quantum cosmology—a theory that uses quantum mechanics to extend gravitational physics beyond Einstein’s theory of general relativity—accounts for two major mysteries. While the differences in the theories occur at the tiniest of scales—much smaller than even a proton—they have consequences at the largest of accessible scales in the universe. The study, which was published online on July 29 2020, in the journal Physical Review Letters, also provides new predictions about the universe that future satellite missions could test.

While a zoomed-out picture of the universe looks fairly uniform, it does have a large-scale structure, for example because galaxies and dark matter are not uniformly distributed throughout the universe. The origin of this structure has been traced back to the tiny inhomogeneities observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)—radiation that was emitted when the universe was 380 thousand years young that we can still see today. But the CMB itself has three puzzling features that are considered anomalies because they are difficult to explain using known physics.

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The Big Bang still happened a very long time ago, but it wasn’t the beginning we once supposed it to be.

Where did all this come from? In every direction we care to observe, we find stars, galaxies, clouds of gas and dust, tenuous plasmas, and radiation spanning the gamut of wavelengths: from radio to infrared to visible light to gamma rays. No matter where or how we look at the universe, it’s full of matter and energy absolutely everywhere and at all times. And yet, it’s only natural to assume that it all came from somewhere. If you want to know the answer to the biggest question of all — the question of our cosmic origins — you have to pose the question to the universe itself, and listen to what it tells you.

Today, the universe as we see it is expanding, rarifying (getting less dense), and cooling. Although it’s tempting to simply extrapolate forward in time, when things will be even larger, less dense, and cooler, the laws of physics allow us to extrapolate backward just as easily. Long ago, the universe was smaller, denser, and hotter. How far back can we take this extrapolation? Mathematically, it’s tempting to go as far as possible: all the way back to infinitesimal sizes and infinite densities and temperatures, or what we know as a singularity. This idea, of a singular beginning to space, time, and the universe, was long known as the Big Bang.

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Our universe started with the big bang. But only for the right definition of “our universe”. And of “started” for that matter. In fact, probably the Big Bang is nothing like what you were taught.
A hundred years ago we discovered the beginning of the universe. Observations of the retreating galaxies by Edwin Hubble and Vesto Slipher, combined with Einstein’s then-brand-new general theory of relativity, revealed that our universe is expanding. And if we reverse that expansion far enough – mathematically, purely according to Einstein’s equations, it seems inevitable that all space and mass and energy should once have been compacted into an infinitesimally small point – a singularity. It’s often said that the universe started with this singularity, and the Big Bang is thought of as the explosive expansion that followed. And before the Big Bang singularity? Well, they say there was no “before”, because time and space simply didn’t exist. If you think you’ve managed to get your head around that bizarre notion then I have bad news. That picture is wrong. At least, according to pretty much every serious physicist who studies the subject. The good news is that the truth is way cooler, at least as far as we understand it.

Check out the new Space Time Merch Store!

Continue reading “Did Time Start at the Big Bang?” | >

Have you ever seen the popular movie called The Matrix? In it, the main character Neo realizes that he and everyone else he had ever known had been living in a computer-simulated reality. But even after taking the red pill and waking up from his virtual world, how can he be so sure that this new reality is the real one? Could it be that this new reality of his is also a simulation? In fact, how can anyone tell the difference between simulated reality and a non-simulated one? The short answer is, we cannot. Today we are looking at the simulation hypothesis which suggests that we all might be living in a simulation designed by an advanced civilization with computing power far superior to ours.

The simulation hypothesis was popularized by Nick Bostrum, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, in 2003. He proposed that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power may run simulations of their ancestors. Perhaps to learn about their culture and history. If this is the case he reasoned, then they may have run many simulations making a vast majority of minds simulated rather than original. So, there is a high chance that you and everyone you know might be just a simulation. Do not buy it? There is more!

According to Elon Musk, if we look at games just a few decades ago like Pong, it consisted of only two rectangles and a dot. But today, games have become very realistic with 3D modeling and are only improving further. So, with virtual reality and other advancements, it seems likely that we will be able to simulate every detail of our minds and bodies very accurately in a few thousand years if we don’t go extinct by then. So games will become indistinguishable from reality with an enormous number of these games. And if this is the case he argues, “then the odds that we are in base reality are 1 in billions”.

There are other reasons to think we might be in a simulation. For example, the more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at MIT argues that our universe is exactly like a computer game which is defined by mathematical laws. So for him, we may be just characters in a computer game discovering the rules of our own universe.

Continue reading “The Simulation Hypothesis | Is Anything ‘Real’” | >

It’s awe-inspiring to realize that there is a complex intelligence in every living cell. Two questions arise: Is it the intelligence of the cell? That seems inconsistent with how we usually use the word “intelligence.” If we see that a one-celled life form functions with lot of intelligence, perhaps it is more like a book that contains great ideas. Paper doesn’t create ideas; neither, by itself, does protoplasm. Something else is at work.

If the cell itself does not create the intelligence it embodies, what does? Panpsychists argue that all of nature participates in some way in consciousness and humans are the most highly developed example. Theists argue that only a mind outside the universe could create something like human consciousness.

As we learn more and more about the intricate complexities of nature, perhaps debates over the origin of life, intelligence, consciousness, and similar topics will increasingly be between panpsychists and theists rather than materialists and theists. A whole new environment.

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Sabine Hossenfelder, Anil Seth, Massimo Pigliucci & Anders Sandberg discuss whether humanity is stuck in the matrix.

If you enjoy this video check out more content on the mind, reality and reason from the world’s biggest speakers at https://iai.tv/debates-and-talks?channel=philosophy%3Amind-a…the-matrix.

00:00 Introduction.
02:21 Anders Sandberg | We could be living in a superior race’s simulation.
04:16 Sabine Hossenfelder | The simulation hypothesis is pseudoscience.
06:20 Anil Seth | Is whether we are a simulation even important?
09:29 Massimo Pigliucci | The mind is too complex to be replicated.
13:14 Is it reasonable to question the existence of reality?
23:55 How do we define reality?
29:34 Are we victim to Hollywood fantasy?

Are we living in a computer simulated reality? Until recently the possibility that we are living in a computer simulation was largely limited to fans of The Matrix with an over active imagination or sci-fi fantasists. But now some are arguing that strange quirks of our universe, like the indeterminateness of quantum theory and the black hole information paradox are evidence that our reality is in actuality a created simulation. Moreover, tech guru Elon Musk has come out supporting the theory, arguing that ““we are most likely in a simulation””.

Continue reading “Does reality exist? | Anil Seth, Sabine Hossenfelder, Massimo Pigliucci & Anders Sandberg” | >

NASA /ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features the galaxy NGC 6,984 an elegant spiral galaxy in the constellation Indus roughly 200 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy is a familiar sight for Hubble, having already been captured in 2013. The sweeping spiral arms are threaded through with a delicate tracery of dark lanes of gas and dust, and studded with bright stars and luminous star-forming regions.

These new observations were made following an extremely rare astronomical event — a double supernova in NGC 6984. Supernovae are unimaginably violent explosions on a truly vast scale, precipitated by the deaths of massive stars. These events are powerful but rare and fleeting — a single supernova can outshine its host galaxy for a brief time. The discovery of two supernovae at virtually the same time and location (in astronomical terms) prompted speculation from astronomers that the two supernovae may somehow be physically linked. Using optical and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 astronomers sought to get a better look at the site of the two supernovae, hopefully allowing them to discover if the two supernova explosions were indeed linked. Their findings could give astronomers important clues into the lives of binary stars.

As well as helping to unravel an astronomical mystery, these new observations added more data to the 2013 observations, and allowed this striking new image to be created. The observations — each of which covers only a narrow range of wavelengths — add new details and a greater range of colors to the image.

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