Large Hardon Collider

[Mizango]

Also wanted to post this since it reminded me of a convo Woozie and I had back over the summer.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-...universes.html

Scientists find first evidence that many universes exist
December 17, 2010 by Lisa Zyga bubble collisions

(PhysOrg.com) -- By looking far out into space and observing what’s going on there, scientists have been led to theorize that it all started with a Big Bang, immediately followed by a brief period of super-accelerated expansion called inflation. Perhaps this was the beginning of everything, but lately a few scientists have been wondering if something could have come before that, setting up the initial conditions for the birth of our universe.

In the most recent study on pre-Big Bang science posted at arXiv.org, a team of researchers from the UK, Canada, and the US, Stephen M. Feeney, et al, have revealed that they have discovered four statistically unlikely circular patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The researchers think that these marks could be “bruises” that our universe has incurred from being bumped four times by other universes. If they turn out to be correct, it would be the first evidence that universes other than ours do exist.

The idea that there are many other universes out there is not new, as scientists have previously suggested that we live in a “multiverse” consisting of an infinite number of universes. The multiverse concept stems from the idea of eternal inflation, in which the inflationary period that our universe went through right after the Big Bang was just one of many inflationary periods that different parts of space were and are still undergoing. When one part of space undergoes one of these dramatic growth spurts, it balloons into its own universe with its own physical properties. As its name suggests, eternal inflation occurs an infinite number of times, creating an infinite number of universes, resulting in the multiverse.

These infinite universes are sometimes called bubble universes even though they are irregular-shaped, not round. The bubble universes can move around and occasionally collide with other bubble universes. As Feeney, et al., explain in their paper, these collisions produce inhomogeneities in the inner-bubble cosmology, which could appear in the CMB. The scientists developed an algorithm to search for bubble collisions in the CMB with specific properties, which led them to find the four circular patterns.

Still, the scientists acknowledge that it is rather easy to find a variety of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB. The researchers emphasize that more work is needed to confirm this claim, which could come in short time from the Planck satellite, which has a resolution three times better than that of WMAP (where the current data comes from), as well as an order of magnitude greater sensitivity. Nevertheless, they hope that the search for bubble collisions could provide some insight into the history of our universe, whether or not the collisions turn out to be real.

“The conclusive non-detection of a bubble collision can be used to place stringent limits on theories giving rise to eternal inflation; however, if a bubble collision is verified by future data, then we will gain an insight not only into our own universe but a multiverse beyond,” the researchers write in their study.

This is the second study in the past month that has used CMB data to search for what could have occurred before the Big Bang. In the first study, Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan found concentric circles with lower-than-average temperature variation in the CMB, which could be evidence for a cyclic cosmology in which Big Bangs occur over and over.

More information: Stephen M. Feeney, Matthew C. Johnson, Daniel J. Mortlock, and Hiranya V. Peiris. "First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation." arXiv:1012.1995v1 [astro-ph.CO]
via: The Physics arXiv Blog

© 2010 PhysOrg.com

[Kaylia]

That title is too catchy...incoming letdown.


[edit]
"Evidence"? Come on...that's a theory.



[edit]
And don't get me wrong, these rings in the cosmic background are giving me a huge hardon. It's the best thing that happened to physics in a while.

[Mizango]

Yeah misleading title is always misleading. But yes the rings and Penrose being in the news constantly the past few weeks definitely has my attention.

[Kaylia]

Yeah misleading title is always misleading. But yes the rings and Penrose being in the news constantly the past few weeks definitely has my attention.

Well, they had my attention they moment they announced them a few month ago. My fear is that it remain unexplained like universe expansion.

[Mizango]

Well, they had my attention they moment they announced them a few month ago. My fear is that it remain unexplained like universe expansion.

You're right, now that I think about it I am now depressed

[Altariel]

I meant to ask about these Penrose circles when the article was first posted. Since the image of the CMB is a just a 2d projection of a 3d universe, why would we expect this phenomenon to appear as circles at all rather than oblong ovals? Additionally if these actually manifestations of "something" from a previous aeon, would these disturbances not be propagating in all 3 of our directions? So why would we not expect "filled in" regions of variation as the sphere approached us rather than just outlines of circles? Next, isn't it a pretty strong assumption being made that the physics of a previous aeon would have physics like our own that would allow the formation supermassive black holes in the first place? That doesn't make mean the assumption is wrong, but is there really much of a solid footing for it? Finally, if spillover of "noise" from the previous aeon was taking place how do they explain what everything else points to as being a state of minimum entropy? I'm sure I didn't ask those things very clearly but maybe someone might take a stab at interpreting!

[Kaylia]

Next, isn't it a pretty strong assumption being made that the physics of a previous aeon would have physics like our own that would allow the formation supermassive black holes in the first place?

Newton's physics was a pretty strong assumption until they found otherwise. It's the same deal here. Einstein needed to postulate that physics constant and laws were constant accross space and time...and he might be wrong. Obviously, this is not a bad assumption in a normal universe, but it could still be wrong...hell, we already need 2 physics to describe everything and we are having hard time linking them together.


Now, the postulate itself is still pretty strong imo in its broad sense, you will always have a physics model that describe everything using a few constant, but we might need to generalize it for something for something else.


CMB actually has some depth. I know they can take the picture at different time. I'm not sure how they find the ring though.

[Eliseos]

Since the image of the CMB is a just a 2d projection of a 3d universe, why would we expect this phenomenon to appear as circles at all rather than oblong ovals?

This is a really good question and I hope one of you astrophysics nerds can explain that. The only thing I can think of is that the distance is so far away (ie the "edge" of the universe) that they are pretty much perfect circles.

[Max™]

The intersection of two spheres, when viewed from the origin of one of the spheres, with the origin of the other sphere lying along x, is a circle perpendicular to x.


Just to add, because I'm sure someone will pop up and go "NUH MAX, STFU, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT CAUSE YOU CALLED ME OUT ON A MISTAKE", the three dimensional intersection is a lens, but the 2D intersection would be the circle described above.

[Eliseos]

Yayuh

Hot on the heels of finding arsenic-loving life-forms, NASA astronomers have uncovered amino acids—the fundamental foundation for life—in a place where they shouldn't be.

The acids—precursors of proteins—have been unexpectedly found inside fragments of previously superheated meteorites that landed in northern Sudan in 2008, a new study says.

Amino acids have already been found in a variety of carbon-rich meteorites formed under relatively cool conditions. (See asteroid and comet pictures.)

But this is the first time the substances have been found in meteorites that had been naturally heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius). That extreme temperature which should have destroyed any hint of organic material inside, said study leader Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"Previously, we thought the simplest way to make amino acids in an asteroid was at cooler temperatures in the presence of liquid water," Glavin said in a statement. "This meteorite suggests there's another way involving reactions in gases as a very hot asteroid cools down."

The discovery also "provides additional support for the theory that life's ingredients were delivered to the Earth by asteroids," he said.

ET Amino Acids a "Big Deal"
The meteorites came from a 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) parent asteroid that entered an Earth-crossing orbit in 2008.
A collision about 15 million years ago sent the 59-ton asteroid closer to Earth—and provided scientists the first opportunity to observe a celestial object before it entered our atmosphere in October 2008.
(See "Meteorites in Africa Traced to Asteroid 'Parent.'")

During desert treks, scientists later recovered nearly 600 meteorite fragments from the meteor shower.
"Finding evidence for the extraterrestrial amino acids in this meteorite is a big deal," Glavin said, "since we can learn about the chemistry that took place in space prior to the origin of life on Earth."

Likewise, "these meteorites would have contributed to the amino acid inventory of the early Earth and other planets in our solar system, including Mars."
This may mean that organic compounds such as amino acids—delivered via asteroids—may have been much more pervasive throughout the solar system than thought, he said.

The new meteorite research is featured in 20 papers published this week in an issue of the Meteoritical Society's journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...space-science/

[Mizango]

Wow nice, I knew that there were certain amino acids in the past that we've found in other types of meteroites as well as some when we kamikaze'd in to Tempel-1 a few years back during the deep impact mission iirc. But wow, this is a hell of a find because I had always wondered and even discussed in class whether or not amino acids and/or rna constituents could survive a trip through our searing atmosphere and deal with space radiation.

I now have my answer, awesome.

[Mizango]

Interesting...

Japan bio-scientists produce 'singing mouse'

Japanese scientists said Tuesday they had produced a mouse that tweets like a bird in a genetically engineered "evolution" which they hope will shed light on the origins of human language.

A team of researchers at the University of Osaka created the animal in their "Evolved Mouse Project", in which they use genetically modified mice that are prone to miscopying DNA and thus to mutations.

"Mutations are the driving force of evolution. We have cross-bred the genetically modified mice for generations to see what would happen," lead researcher Arikuni Uchimura told AFP.

"We checked the newly born mice one by one... One day we found a mouse that was singing like a bird," he said, noting that the "singing mouse" was born by chance but that the trait will be passed on to future generations.

"I was surprised because I had been expecting mice that are different in physical shape," he said by telephone, adding that in fact the project had also produced "a mouse with short limbs and a tail like a dachshund".

The laboratory, directed by professor Takeshi Yagi at the Osaka University's Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences in western Japan, now has more than 100 "singing mice" for further research.

The team hopes they will provide clues on how human language evolved, just as researchers in other countries study songbirds such as finches to help them understand the origins of human language.

Scientists have found that birds use different sound elements, put them together into chunks like words in human languages and then make strings of them to sing "songs", that are subject to certain linguistic rules.

"Mice are better than birds to study because they are mammals and much closer to humans in their brain structures and other biological aspects," Uchimura said.

"We are watching how a mouse that emits new sounds would affect ordinary mice in the same group... in other words if it has social connotations," he said, adding that ordinary mice squeak mainly under stress.

Considering that mutant mice tweet louder when put in different environments or when males are put together with females, Uchimura said their chirps "may be some sort of expressions of their emotions or bodily conditions."

The team has found that ordinary mice that grew up with singing mice emitted fewer ultrasounds than others, which could indicate that communication methods can spread in the same group like a dialect.

Uchimura dreams of further "evolution" of mice through genetic engineering.

"I know it's a long shot and people would say it's 'too absurd'... but I'm doing this with hopes of making a Mickey Mouse some day," he said.

(c) 2010 AFP

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-...sts-mouse.html

[Mizango]

<3 the way evolution works. My dream of having an all rodent singing barbershop quartet is closer to fruition... excellent.

[Eliseos]

Singing mice scares the crap out of me. Do not want.

[Mizango]

Do want! You can get with this, or you can get with that... choose wisely BG, choose wisely.

[Woozie]

Holy crap I'm buying a Kia. Why haven't I ever seen that commercial before?

[Mizango]

Holy crap I'm buying a Kia. Why haven't I ever seen that commercial before?

hahaha idk man, its on TV everywhere.

[Eliseos]

Another reason to hate Kia, anthropomorphic rats are worse than aids.

[Max™]

The really fucked up part of that is the weird deja vu I got reading the story.

In the Exultant series of books, Baxter is giving an account of a new grunt who just got assigned to the groundpounder barracks in a hollowed out asteroid, and is kinda freaked out by the soft singing after everyone settled in to sleep.

His bunkmate explains that it is rats which adapted to the close quarters of life on spaceships with humans by developing an endearing talent, they sing instead of squeaking.


Hmmm, actual LHC news in the LHC thread?

http://io9.com/5714210/string-theory...erimental-test

String theory is one of the more popular candidates to combine quantum mechanics and relativity into a grand unified theory. But it had remained completely untestable until recent experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. The early results don't look good.
A few years ago, a group of physicists came up with an ingenious way to test for the existence of hidden dimensions, a key aspect of many string theory models. Basically, the experiment rests upon the existence of micro black holes, objects tinier than an atomic nucleus that could theoretically be produced by smashing together a pair of protons at tremendously high velocities.

This micro black hole would be very unstable and quickly decay, releasing lots of different subatomic particles. The physicists figured out the specific combinations of particles that would be created if the universe has 10, 11, or even more dimensions. The hope was that the Large Hadron Collider would be able to produce the massive energies required to create these micro black holes.

Well, they ran the experiment, and the results are less than encouraging. The LHC has completed an extensive search for these objects in high-energy proton collisions, and no evidence at all turned up for micro black holes between 3.5 and 4.5 tera-electron-volts. That's a massive energy level and pretty much the upper limit of what we can currently test. This more or less rules out versions of string theory that includes micro black holes at those energies.

Now, let's back up a bit. This isn't good news for string theorists, but it doesn't invalidate string theory either. The original idea for this experiment was always a bit of a long shot, more an attempt to come up with something - anything - that could be used to test aspects of string theory using today's technology.

Researchers hoped to find certain exotic phenomena that would likely exist in a world governed by string theory. Even a few small things can throw this off - the micro black holes might still exist, but they might be larger than the curvature of the hidden dimensions, which would mean they remain unaffected by the extra dimensions. Or it might be even simpler: the micro black holes just can't be found at these energy levels, and we need the next generation Hadron Collider - or even the one after that - to detect them.
String theory definitely lost this particular battle. But this setback isn't the end of the line - it just means the search for a grand unified theory won't be getting any easier. We probably shouldn't have expected anything else.

[Kryssan]

For those that care and are geeky enough:

NiF iPhones Application


Also, looks like ITER's money problems will be continuing for a while.

Article Link

Plans to rescue European finance for the Iter fusion project hit the buffers today with the European Parliament refusing to accept pressure from member states to reallocate €1.4 billion from unspent funds.

Iter was the victim of a political gambit in which a request to MEPs from the EU Council of Ministers (representing governments) to allow extraordinary spending on Iter in 2012-3 became tied to a request from MEPs to the council.

MEPs wanted emergency funds for unforeseen events, such as the global economic crisis, to be handled in future by transfers of new money from national capitals to Brussels – in contrast to present EU budget being fixed for seven years at a time.

However, member states on the Council of Ministers, many facing demands to reduce their budgets to slash deficits, rejected this proposal leaving the Iter's finance deal to fall with it. Under EU rules, the unused €1.4 billion will now return to hard-pressed national government treasuries.

European Parliament spokesman Ron Korver told World Nuclear News: "This means the matter will go back to member states. If there is the political will, it's a technical matter to get the money back to Brussels." However, that would have to happen via a special amendment to the 2011 budget, which would be debated early next year. And for that to happen, member states would have to support raising spending in 2011 above an agreed current budget increase of 2.91%. Given that governments such as the UK have said they will refuse to go above that ceiling, a special financing agreement on Iter could be tough to achieve.

Monetary and in-kind contributions to Iter come from all its participating parties: China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the USA and the EU. However, because it benefits from hosting the facility itself, the EU's share of construction costs is 45% of the total and this has more than doubled in the last two years.