…cue the joke about Uranus 
Doesn’t sound possible that it would be the same quasar (especially since the universe is “flat”, not “closed”), but I did not see that article. Anyone else?
I have not seen the article in Time, but I can say that if they did see such a thing, it’s probably just a coincidence. If the result had actually stood up, it’s safe to say that I would have heard about it, and there should be more than one such observation.
On the other hand, there’s a similar project in the works which uses patterns in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, rather than individual quasars, and which may be able to detect topological effects as well as geometric ones. All we’re waiting on is the data, which will be taken by the MAP satellite (a higher-resolution version of COBE) which I believe is scheduled to be launched in the next year. Stay tuned.
The article was years ago, quite possibly in the mid- to late 80s. God knows how I’d be able to go dig something like that up now. But I’ll try, just for laughs!
What is 2.7K in fahrenheit, in order to give the viewer an idea? Also, they always say the expansion of the universe didn’t start from any particular point we could point to nowadays, but is like the surface of a balloon or more like raisins in raisin bread rising in the oven. The rising raisins are analogous to the groups of galaxies that are travelling away from each other. But the balloon started as a small sphere and then expanded, and the raisin bread started with the unrisen raisins closer together, which is
the same as the theory of creation, which is that it all started from a point, which had the potential to develop as it has, which doesn’t explain anything. I feel that things are created continuously everywhere in space, including space itself spreading out from every point in what they call the virtual particle vacuum which really isn’t a vaccum even though it really isn’t there. It isn’t there because from the point of view of the creation, creation had to come from something different, for instance from its opposite, which is nothing. But the source of space and matter is postponed to being another dimension from which things precipitate into our dimensions, which simply postpones the explanation, so it doesn’t explain anything. Physicists can’t admit that they can’t explain creation, so they cover the whole thing with these theories. They can’t admit that whatever is said about creation it is a NARRATIVE, it goes like any story, any folktale. Exposition, conflict, climax, denouement. It’s all literature. “Il n’y a pas le hors texte,” as Derrida said in French: there is nothing outside the text, ie., the words we use for things.
2.7 Kelvins is 2.7 Centigrade degrees above absolute zero, which is -273.15 Centigrade. Thus 2.7 K is -454.81 Fahrenheit. I don’t know if that really makes it any more comprehensible, though.
“Physicists can’t admit that they can’t explain creation,” don says.
That’s a very strange statement.
Stephen Hawking: “[T]he actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics.”
Ned Wright (UCLA):“The standard Big Bang model is singular at the time of the Big Bang, t = 0. This means that one cannot even define time, since spacetime is singular. In some models like the chaotic or perpetual inflation favored by Linde, the Big Bang is just one of many inflating bubbles in a spacetime foam. But there is no possibility
of getting information from outside our own one bubble. Thus I conclude that: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’”
Bruce Margon (U Wash.): “It is totally insoluble who turned the key.”
Me: “The Big Bang does not explain creation but it’s a heck of a lot better than other hypotheses that don’t even match the physical evidence.”
good points, Podkayne!
don - Scientists readily admit that the origin of the universe is unknown. On the other hand, the theories about the development of the universe since the beginning of time are based on sound evidence. The analogies of the expanding balloon and rising raison bread are not perfect, but they do a pretty good job of helping people visualize something that is outside our normal experience. Your perception that scientists cover things up is frustrating to me. A fundamental precept of science is to base theories on verifiable evidence and to accept that some things are not yet known. The unknown is what drives research. It sounds like you need to study further into the existing theories rather than to dismiss them based on a particular analogy.
Getting back to my original question: If I have a pound of gaseous tapioca pudding at a temperature of 100 degrees; whether that gas is in a box that is 2’x2’x2’ or in a box that is 2lightyears x 2lightyears x 2lightyears, the tapioca gas molecules are still at 100 degrees. So why aren’t the molecules that were really hot at the begining when the universe was small, still as hot? If one molecule loses heat, another one has to gain it, right?
Simply put, the space between the molecules is getting larger, so the energy, in heat form, has more places to go without bumping into anything else and being reabsorbed.
Ah, Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Proposition 7.0. A beautiful statement, and wonderfully terse to boot. The problem lies in determining whereof you cannot speak; usually that gets people like me into deep trouble
Now I can die peacefully someone has finally managed to do a breakdancing segue from the temperature of the universe
to deconstructionism. I’ve give you a dollar to go from super conductivity to…ummm the Insane Clown Party.
Come on… it’s a whole dollar! (Snapping virtual dollar suggestively)
Caught in fraganti. Damn it!
I believe the phrase is in flagrante delicto, but since you’re some 15 billion light-years away and not too familiar with the lingo around here, we’ll let it slide.
Molecules don’t have heat; molecules have energy. Using very vague thermodynamcis: if you have the same amount of energy in a bigger box, you have less heat.
Could you have menat “if you have the same amount of energy in a bigger box, you have less heat per unit volume”?
You are confusing the terms ‘heat’ and ‘temperature’. Many people do.
Heat is an absolute quantity of energy, and generally doesn’t go away, unless converted to other forms. A lot of the energy that came into being at the Big Bang did end up converted to matter, but much of it remained as heat. But it was in a much smaller volume than today’s universe.
Temperature, on the other hand, is not an absolute quantity, but is more like ‘heat density’. In the same way that converting your tapioca to gas made it take up much more space, and therefore have less mass per cubic meter (density), spreading the huge heat of the early universe over our much larger universe results in a lower temperature.
When this stuff is explained in physics courses, they’ll often compare a burning match to an iceberg. The match has a higher temperature, but the iceberg, due to its much higher mass, stores more heat.
howardsims’ question is valid. If you have a gas in a 1 x 1 x 1 box, the particles have a characteristic typical velocity, dependent on temperature, and are applying pressure to the sides of the box. If this is inside a larger, say 10 x 10 x 10, box, and the walls of the small box vanish, the particles will have the same typical velocity.
Look at the pressure on the sides of the larger box once equilibrium is reestablished: The area the particles are striking has increased by a factor of 100, and since the particles travel 10 times farther, they strike 1/10th as often. Thus, the pressure has dropped by a factor of 1000.
Now look at the ideal gas equation. PV/T = constant where P = pressure, V = volume, and T = temperature. V increased by 1000, P decreased by 1000, so T must be unchanged. The particles occupying a larger volume doesn’t change the temperature.
An “ideal gas” explanation for why the temperature of the universe is lower, ignoring GR and quantum mechanics and questions of whether space is expanding, is that we are comoving with the “gas” around us. If you released the gas from the smaller box, waited a bit, then put a box around some portion of the gas, with the box moving at the average velocity of the particles inside the box, and measured the temperature in the box, in the box’s frame of reference, you would measure a lower temperature. The particles in your box would all have similar velocities to one another (or else they wouldn’t still be close together. This explanation is too simple to get you the correct value of 2.7K, but qualitatively, you can see how the temperature would be lower.
Yes, indeed. Thank you for the correction.
I just got carried away by the momentum of my own rhetoric. But thanks for a fascinating thread on the part of everyone. Additional item: Ancient Egyptian Deconstructionism: The first thing that happened was that the god Atum, who didn’t exist, uttered his name and then he existed.