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Tag: universe

  • Big Bang Theory Doubted by Majority of Americans

    A recent poll conducted by the Associated Press-GfK sought to test public perception, knowledge, and confidence in certain scientific principles which are whole-heartedly accepted as fact by the scientific community – things such as smoking’s impact on cancer rates, the plausibility of evolution, and the age of the Earth. Unfortunately, the results of the poll show that many Americans are still science-deniers, despite living in an age of high science and technological advancement.

    The poll was conducted by phoning over 1,000 people and asking them their confidence in certain statements, such as, “Smoking causes cancer,” with the scale ranging from “Extremely Confident” to “Not at all Confident.”

    When it comes to people’s perceptions of whether smoking causes cancer, that a mental illness is a medical condition, that genetic codes determine who we are, that overusing antibiotics can be detrimental, that a supreme being guided the creation of the Earth, or that vaccines are safe, the majority of Americans feel very confident in asserting those statements are true.

    When it comes to more controversial and less-tangible ideas, however, the confidence of the American public beings to wane.

    For instance, only 55 percent of people are either extremely confident or somewhat confident that life on Earth evolved through natural selection, while only 60 percent feel confident in affirming the statement that Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

    Big Bang Poll Results

    The most surprising finding from the poll, however, is the fact that only 46 percent of Americans feel confident in the statement that “The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang,” with 52 percent of respondents stating they are not confident or not at all confident that the statement is true.

    The data has many in the scientific community upset and sad. “It is enormously distressing that science, which is our most powerful means for gaining insight into the world, insight into truth, is so mistrusted by so many people,” declared Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University.

    Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, believes that this poll strongly displays the “the iron triangle of science, religion and politics.”

    In other words, religion and politics have perhaps too much influence on how the public perceives and processes scientific data.

    “When you are putting up facts against faith, facts can’t argue against faith. It makes sense now that science would have made no headway because faith is untestable,” stated professor Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for biochemistry.

    The poll found that people who identified themselves as Democrats were more likely to feel confident in the scientific statements than their Republican counterparts and that those who regularly attended church services or who identified as evangelist were less likely to affirm the statements as true.

    “Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are reinforced when some of our leaders are openly antagonistic to established facts,” said 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine winner Randy Schekman.

    Unfortunately for the scientific community, the poll results are consistent with the 2014 National Science Foundation’s “Science and Engineering Indicators” report which revealed that only 48 percent of people believed that life evolved over time and a paltry 39 percent believe that the formation of the universe started with a “huge explosion.”

    Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that the 2014 NSF report found that “The public’s level of factual knowledge about science has not changed much over the past two decades.”

    With the plethora of huge scientific advances and discoveries that have occurred over the past two decades, including the recent discovery of big bang waves essentially proving the big bang theory, it is quite disheartening that the American public is equally as knowledgable now as Americans in 1994.

    Images via Wikimedia Commons and Twitter

  • Big Bang Waves Discovered by Scientists

    In 1916, Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity. This theory, working with the underpinnings of the big bang, postulated that massive objects “bend” space-time and that this curvature is directly proportional to the energy and acceleration of the object itself.

    While many scientists of the time and since have felt that Einstein’s theory of general relativity was and is most certainly true, there were still untested aspects of the theory that scientists had not been able to prove… until now.

    Yesterday, scientists running the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) 2 experiment at the South Pole discovered a key piece of evidence that not only supports and confirms Einstein’s theory of relativity, but also affirms the “inflation” theory of the big bang.

    The theory of inflation was first postulated in 1980 by Alan Guth and was an update to the traditional big bang theory, which pictured the universe as a rapidly expanding gas ball. If this traditional version of the big bang was true, however, space-time should have been more curved and more chaotic in nature.

    Instead, Guth’s theory of inflation hypothesized that the universe began as a single point smaller than an electron and expanded at a rate faster than the speed of light; This growth occurred in 10 to the minus 35 seconds after the birth of the universe, or in one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

    While the theory of inflation would explain why the universe was so “flat” and uniform in structure, no scientist had yet been able to prove that the universe did expand in such a way until yesterday’s discovery.

    What the scientists running the BICEP2 experiment discovered was a unique polarization of light known as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) – light from 380,000 years after the beginning of the universe. This polarization, known as “B-mode” polarization, is a curling of the CMB that can only be caused by gravitational waves.

    And these gravitational waves could have only been caused by a massive and extremely rapid explosion, such as the one put forth by the big bang theory.

    “This is really exciting. We have made the first direct image of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time across the primordial sky, and verified a theory about the creation of the whole universe,” stated Chao-Lin Kuo, co-leader of the BICEP2 experiment from Stanford.

    Perhaps most importantly, however, the discovery of these gravitational waves and the subsequent verification of the “inflation” model of the universe supports a multiverse theory, something scientists have been working toward now for decades:

    “It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously,” stated Guth.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Barack Obama: Special Message On “Cosmos” Debut

    For the fans of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, you might just be pleasantly surprised that the series is back with a ‘big bang’, not to mention updates on all of the new discoveries in the universe.

    As if the debut on Sunday night wasn’t exciting enough, there was a pretty special surprise guest: President Barack Obama, who introduced the episode with a special message that urged viewers to explore new frontiers, like space!

    All politics aside, it was awe inspiring to have Obama as the opening act of such a spectacular event. The president’s introduction “invites a new generation to embrace the spirit of discovery and inspires viewers to explore new frontiers and imagine limitless possibilities for the future,” according to a statement issued by Fox.

    The new Fox science series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premiered on Sunday March 9th, and begins a 13-part journey through the universe and beyond, airing on 10 networks, led by Fox and National Geographic Channel.

    With the brilliant scientist, astrophysicist and educator, Neil deGrasse Tyson hosting the series, it should be full of surprises.

    Robert Lloyd writes in his review for The Times, headlined: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘Cosmos’ a fascinating, fun place to be:

    “The subject — everything that is and how it got that way — is obviously a big one, encompassing not only planets and stars and amoebas and people, but the lenses through which we’ve viewed it all. Most important, it celebrates scientific inquiry itself, which Tyson defines as ‘generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules: test ideas by experiment and observation; build on those ideas that pass the test; reject the ones that fail; follow the evidence wherever it leads; and question everything.”

    The series is presented to generate interest in science and the universe, with an interesting and fun introduction.

    “The goal is to convey why science matters to the person, to our society, to us as shepherds of this planet. It involves presenting science in ways that connect to you, so Cosmos can influence you not only intellectually but emotionally, with a celebration of wonder and awe,” says Tyson. “Science should be part of everybody’s life. The prerequisite is not that you become a scientist. It’s that at the end of the series, you will embrace science and recognize its role in who and what you are.”

    The Fox and National Geographic preview hosted at the White House on Feb 28, signaled the start of the White House Student Film Festival, and tied in with Obama’s efforts to boost the use of technology and science in classrooms around the country.

    Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey will air Sundays at 9 pm on Fox and Mondays at 10 pm on the National Geographic Channel with bonus footage and behind-the-scenes content.

    Amazingly, the series will also be shown on 220 channels in 181 countries, and is a group effort from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions and Cosmos Studios, the company founded in 2000 by Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow.

    Image via YouTube

  • Stephen Hawking Upset with “God Particle” Discovery

    At 71 years old, Stephen Hawking is the oldest survivor of ALS, a motor neuron disease. Despite being diagnosed with ALS at age 21, Hawking has defied the odds to continue living and become an extremely productive member of the scientific community. Hawking’s work in physics has led to advanced discoveries with the general relativity, black holes, and various areas of quantum mechanics – most of which has brought forth more questions than answers. Perhaps that is why one should not be surprised to hear Hawking lament the fact that the Higgs boson particle was discovered last July.

    In speaking to an audience at London’s Science Museum, Hawking opined that “Physics would be far more interesting if it [the Higgs boson particle] had not been found.” By discovering the “God particle”, scientists have fixed the final a chink in the armor of the Standard Model of physics, a theory which attempts to integrate the four fundamental forces of nature – gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces – into one unified theory explaining all of known physics in the universe.

    What the discovery of the Higgs boson immediately means is that physicists now know what gives subatomic particles (things such as electrons and quarks) mass, the property which allows said particles to interact with other particles in the way they do to form atoms and more complex molecules. The idea of the Higgs boson particle was first put forth by scientists in the 1960’s, but no experimental evidence existed for the particle until the findings of the Large Hadron Collider last July.

    While Hawking may believe that the discovery of the Higgs boson makes physics less interesting, he is still pursuing many interesting avenues of research. Hawking is one of the primary proponents of M-theory, a theory which integrates all the versions of string theory into one vision. One aspect of M-theory is that it allows for and encourages scientists to consider the fact that we exists in a multi-dimensional and multiverse world, all of which exist through the laws of physics and are not dependent upon a “creator”:

    “These multiple universes can arise naturally from physical law. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. Most of these states will be quite unlike the universe we observe, and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist.Thus, our presence selects out from the vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the Cosmos, this makes us, in a sense, lords of creation,” states Hawking.

    In order for further progress to be made with the M-theory, certain other discoveries must be made first, discoveries which Hawking hopes can be found using the LHC: “There is still hope that we see the first evidence for M-theory at the LHC particle accelerator in Geneva. From an M-theory perspective, the collider only probes low energies, but we might be lucky and see a weaker signal of fundamental theory, such as supersymmetry. I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionise our understanding of the universe,” voiced Hawking.

    Supersymmetry is a theory which states that all particles have a superpartner particle with the exact opposite properties. If this LHC could help find proof of this theory, then progress would be made toward solidifying the M-theory as the prevalent universe model.

    Until that point is reached, however, Hawking leaves us with some advice as to how to protect the existence of the human race: “So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and hold on to that child-like wonder about what makes the universe exist.”

    [Image via Stephen Hawking’s Website]

  • Nuclear Clock Keeps Excellent Time

    Australian reseachers, along with other international scientists, have come up with an idea for a new clock that would keep the time of the entire history of the universe so far to under a second. That’s roughly 14 billion years – no easy feat.

    New South Wales Professor Victor Flambaum and his colleagues plan to build a clock that is accurate to 19 decimal places, according to their bid accepted by the journal of Physical Review Letters. The clock would keep time by measuring neutrons revolving around the nucleus, which would “offer unprecedented systematic shift suppression, allowing for clock performance with a total fractional inaccuracy approaching 1×10-19.”

    Professor Flambaum, who is head of Theoretical Physics, says that the new clock would be 100 times more accurate than the best current atomic clocks. Flambaum adds, “with these clocks currently pushing up against significant accuracy limitations, a next-generation system is desired to explore the realms of extreme measurement precision and further diversified applications unreachable by atomic clocks.”

    Flambaum goes on to say, “atomic clocks use the orbiting electrons of an atom as the clock pendulum. But we have shown that by using lasers to orient the electrons in a very specific way, one can use the orbiting neutron of an atomic nucleus as the clock pendulum, making a so-called nuclear clock with unparalleled accuracy.”

    It would be very nice to have such an accurate clock. Though, some clocks seem excessive, like the Jeff Bezos-funded Texan mountainside cuckoo he hopes will shoot out of the ground in 10,000 years, likely scaring the heck out of whatever is left of human civilization by then.