Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed

[Lavinda Past]

Makes me feel so thick reading this thread.

Damocles, how would you explain today's discovery to a 10 year old ?

That'd still be too difficult for me...

Try it for a 4 year old. I might have half a chance of understanding it then.

Mind-blowing.

 

[BlueHammer85]

Makes me feel so thick reading this thread.

Damocles, how would you explain today's discovery to a 10 year old ?

That'd still be too difficult for me...

Try it for a 4 year old. I might have half a chance of understanding it then.

Mind-blowing.

Basically son, they found evidence which supports the Big Bang theory , we are now able to detect the very first point of expansion ... I think

 

[unicorn]

Let us know when they've worked out how the Big Bang began from nothing please.

 

[Damocles]

Makes me feel so thick reading this thread.

Damocles, how would you explain today's discovery to a 10 year old ?

That'd still be too difficult for me...

Try it for a 4 year old. I might have half a chance of understanding it then.

Mind-blowing.

I'll have a bash at it.

We have discovered bulletproof evidence that supports the idea that during the Big Bang, everything expanded very quickly for a very short period of time. It was so quick that it broke a speed limit in the Universe which some people predicted but others didn't. This has made us concentrate on 10 of the 1000 ideas that talk about the early Universe which predicted this in their explanation. That's what has been discovered in its simplest form, and unfortunately it loses much of its excitement and it's arguably wrong (as 10 and 1000 are both way off as figures).

-- Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:30 pm --

Let us know when they've worked out how the Big Bang began from nothing please.

The Big Bang didn't begin from nothing. This is a "who is buried in Grant's Tomb" question<br /><br />-- Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:31 pm --<br /><br />

Basically son, they found evidence which supports the Big Bang theory , we are now able to detect the very first point of expansion ... I think

Importantly, we have found evidence of the inflationary epoch. We still don't know why it began or the greater mystery, why it ended. The inflationary epoch is a period of time covering less than a trillionth of a second.

 

[BlueHammer85]

Makes me feel so thick reading this thread.

Damocles, how would you explain today's discovery to a 10 year old ?

That'd still be too difficult for me...

Try it for a 4 year old. I might have half a chance of understanding it then.

Mind-blowing.

I'll have a bash at it.

We have discovered bulletproof evidence that supports the idea that during the Big Bang, everything expanded very quickly for a very short period of time. It was so quick that it broke a speed limit in the Universe which some people predicted but others didn't.

I always thought it was generally accepted that the Big Bang expanded at ridiculous amount of speed before forming the universe as we know it, I've never heard it been mentioned as a slow expansion.

 

[Damocles]

I thought both the observable and unobservable universe both originated from the big bang. My understanding is that the rapid expansion of space after the big bang was much greater than the speed of light (as proven by the fact that the diameter of the observable universe is around 93 billion light years whilst the universe is only 13 billion years old) so it is theoretically impossible for light from the vast majority of the total universe to ever reach earth because of the rate of expansion of it.

This is a mixture of a couple of different things. You're sort of right in each but wrong on the whole.

The observable Universe came from the Big Bang model's progression. The expansion was greater than the speed of light (as proved today). However, the problem of the light from over 13 billion light years is not the same problem; something that relativity explains.

Let's say that you can kick a ball from the half way spot into the net in 5 seconds. We can judge the speed due to the distance travelled and the time taken. Simple d=st stuff. Let's now think that you kicked off at 3pm and the ball landed in the net at 4pm for the sake of exaggeration and it travelled 100 yards. Still a simple d=st idea.

Now let's imagine that the pitch was expanding at 1 yard per hour. As the distance is variable, d=st doesn't mean much as do we count is as the starting point of 100 yards or 101 yards? Now let's carrying this point along. Let's say that the pitch is expanding 100 yards per second. What speed is the ball going when it reaches the destination? Using d=st, it might break the speed of light. However, relativity has fooled us in thinking that. The distance is travelled is different from the distance that it set off from sue to expansion.

There is a difference in measuring in relative distances and non-relativistic distance and that's sort of the best example I can show in why we often find light from older than the observable Universe.<br /><br />-- Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:45 pm --<br /><br />

I always thought it was generally accepted that the Big Bang expanded at ridiculous amount of speed before forming the universe as we know it, I've never heard it been mentioned as a slow expansion.

Ridiculous speeds is one of those terms that isn't very accurate. There was a strong idea that a period called the super-luminal or "inflation" period existed but this has proved it beyond most arguments. It's the different between calling Aguero the best in the world and watching him score 500 goals a season.

 

[unicorn]

How do they measure the inflationary epoch so precisely, a fraction of a trillionth of a second ?; don't get that that (or the bit before the big bang).

Thanks for the explanations though Damocles.

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

Is space real?

 

[nelsons willie]

Makes me feel so thick reading this thread.

Damocles, how would you explain today's discovery to a 10 year old ?

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

 

[dronefromsector7g]

Is space real?

Who cares anyway?

Beer, footy, sex is all you need