Astrophysics / An article by a group of mathematicians generates a lively scientific debate
Yuval Dror, Haaretz, News and Walla!
An article proposing a theory according to which the structure of the universe is football-like, causes a stir in the world's astrophysicist community. The new theory states that, contrary to the accepted theory, the universe is not infinite and therefore a spaceship that begins its journey to the edge of the universe, will discover after traveling a distance of 73 billion light years of flight that it has returned to the point from which it left. On the other hand, another group of researchers claims that the new theory is unfounded - and even wrong. "No football, no donut and no bagel," said Dr. David Spergel of Princeton University, one of the world's best-known astrophysicists.
The basis of the article published yesterday in "erutaN" magazine, by the mathematicians Dr. Jean-Pierre Luminette, Dr. Geoffrey Weeks and some of their colleagues lies in the observations he made
NASA's WMAP satellite, which was launched into space in 2001. This satellite measures the background radiation of the universe, which is the remnant of the Big Bang, which according to the prevailing theory occurred 13 billion years ago. As a result of the explosion, radiation was created that spread in all directions. The satellite measures the background radiation as it was 400 years after the big bang.
Radiation is measured through the minute changes in temperature of different parts of the sky. The analysis of the results shows some of the important properties of the universe, and its geometric structure.
A few years ago, astronomers developed a mathematical model that explains the variation in the temperature of the background radiation - and this is where the problem begins. It turns out that when the sky is divided into small areas, the model manages to accurately predict what the temperature differences will be. But when dividing the sky into only four parts, the model fails to make an accurate prediction. The reason for this, Wickens and Lumint claim, is related to the fact that the universe is not infinite as they first thought, but spherical.
They propose a different structure: a polygon with 12 faces, reminiscent of a football. If their theory is correct, then a ray of light that begins its journey towards the east will appear a long time later in the west, similar to a computer cursor that begins its journey on the right side of the screen and exits on its left. In fact, the authors of the article claim, we live in a world of mirrors:
The same galaxy that appears on one side of the sky should also appear on the other side of it, and for this reason people get confused and believe that the universe is not infinite.
However, those who look for the same galaxy in different areas of the sky will find that this is an impossible task. "Trying and finding the same galaxy in two different places would be like trying to recognize the same person - the first time from the front when he was a boy
50, and a second time from the top when he was seven years old, and all this in an audience of billions of people," Weeks clarified the difficulty of the task. For this reason, he claims, it is simpler to spot repeating patterns in the measured background radiation. If the radiation has completed its circuit around the universe and meets its source, a circle pattern will form.
The publication of the article caused an uproar. Prof. Spergel and his team at Princeton, who analyze the PAMW data, claim that an in-depth analysis of about two-thirds of the data sent by the satellite completely refutes the Wix-Lumint theory, and other theories that believe that the universe has a closed and finite structure. Other scientists claim that there is no proof of the existence of those circular patterns that suggest that the background radiation met itself. Dr. Weeks told the "New York Times" that his team will soon collaborate with Spergel's team, in an attempt to prove or disprove the new theory.
Israeli researcher: The air from the football of the theory went out before we could play it Israeli scientists responded yesterday to the Lumint Weeks study with divided opinions. Prof. Arnon Der of the Technion questioned the correctness of the new theory. "The theory was built by mathematicians looking for mathematical solutions to the PAMW measurement problem," he said. "The air from the football of this theory came out long before we could play it. It takes a long time for the many data collected from WMAP to be analyzed. The authors of the article did not check with Spergal's group what data they have, even though according to Spergal the data they have outright rule out such a theory. This possibility should have been taken into account before publishing the article."
Prof. David Eichler from the Department of Physics at Ben-Gurion University says: "It's a nice theory that goes against the accepted theory and it's a good thing, because not everything that's popular is necessarily true. It is healthy and right for people to think of new strange possibilities, although at this stage it is difficult to know which of them is right."
However, according to Prof. Hagai Netzer from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University, the theory is possible. According to him, although the devices that measure the background radiation are accurate, they are still not perfect. "WMAP's data is accurate and still has a 2% deviation. The authors of the article build their theory on these 2%, because these 2% are critical and may decide whether the universe is open or closed. In the end, the matter will be decided - there is no middle ground here."
14 תגובות
The science of physical creation
Parashat Beresheit of physics and geometry
In the beginning, God created
the infinite geometric emptiness.
Geometric emptiness had an infinite amount of length.
Geometric emptiness had an infinite amount of space.
Geometric emptiness had an infinite amount of volume.
The imagination filled the geometric emptiness with geometric shapes such as a circle, triangle, square, etc.
The shape of the circle is created from a certain amount of closed length, containing a certain amount of area.
The shape of the triangle was created from a certain amount of closed length, containing a certain amount of area.
The square shape is created from a certain amount of closed length, containing a certain amount of area.
And so on many forms were created.
And God will see that the infinite geometric emptiness contains only geometric shapes, and will fill the emptiness with a passive time that does not move from its place, and is completely at rest.
Thus physical creation began, with passive time filling infinite geometric volume.
And God will turn passive time into absolute cold, and this is how the limit of cold in the world is determined.
And the passive time was absolute rest and absolute cold, and it occupied an infinite geometric volume.
And God said - the deed we have done is good.
And God saw the lonely and sad state of the passive time that is on the border of the cold, and added to it the joyful, multi-faceted quantitative energy.
And God will drown in the cheerful quantum energy a physical law that says:
Many appearances will the cheerful quantum energy have, but the ever-changing quantity will be preserved.
And God forbid that the cheerful quantitative energy does change its appearances, while taking care to preserve the changing amount.
And God said, the thing is very good.
And God commanded the passive time and energy to create the material that appears in many physical forms, such as gold, iron, carbon, hydrogen, and more,
And the creation began.
The quantitative passive time, connected with the quantitative joyful energy, and from a certain combination of quantities, a physical form of gold was created.
And once again the quantitative passive time was connected with the quantitative joyful energy, and from this new combination of quantities, a physical form of iron was created.
And once again the quantitative passive time was connected with the quantitative cheerful energy, and a new combination of quantities created a physical form of carbon.
And so the passive time and the cheerful energy created many and varied physical forms, and many and surprising types of matter appeared in the geometric space,
And so the geometric space became a physical space, which provides material for the creation of stars, with the help of combinations of amounts of passive time and energy.
And the stars began to fill the infinite space full of passive time, and they stood frozen in place.
And God commanded the frozen stars to start moving - only in a screw-shaped orbit, which has 3 data.
The diameter of the screw track, advance angle, and speed.
And the stars began to move and never stopped moving.
They did not move in a straight line path, nor in a closed circular path. Each planet moves in a spiral orbit that has three unique data only to it - a unique diameter, a unique angle of advancement, and a unique speed.
This orbital shape turned all the stars in the world into one dynamic disc-shaped unit.
And God commanded this discus to move forever in a straight line in infinite space full of passive time and energy,
Within this disk that moves in a straight line, the stars move in helical orbits. This discus, in which all the stars of the world are located, was named... Universe,
The speed of the universe in a straight line is absolute, and the person does not notice it (C12 estimated value)
The number of stars in the universe is finite but not fixed.
The universe moves in infinite space full of passive time and energy, from which new stars are formed.
During the absolute movement of the universe, stars in the universe also disintegrate, and they give their energy, and their passive time, to the infinite space.
The infinite space is where stars are born, and it is also where they disintegrate and disappear.
And man has not yet been created.
The active time has not yet been created either,
Only the passive time and the joyful energy were created, and they create the material of the stars..
Light was also created, as waves of passive time,
Waves of passive time move in the absolute rest and absolute cold of passive time, filling infinite space.
Sunlight is waves of passive time, moving in an infinite space full of passive time, which is completely still and completely cold.
There is no void in the world, and it is full of passive time and energy.
And man had not yet been created, and had not yet spoken,
When man was created, he received natural knowledge from the Creator.
With this natural knowledge man invented a language of words,
But man did not know that the language of words is based on actions that lead to natural knowledge.
And since the person did not know the secret of the words, the words brought the Tower of Babel, which confused the person.
The words also brought the active time that exists only in man's imagination, and does not exist in physical space.
The active tense always presents the word trap that confuses man, and reminds him of the Tower of Babel.
The man who was created on a planet is the one who invented the active time. Has the words past, present, future.
Past and future are in man's imagination, when
In physical reality there is only the present.
Man, who was created on a planet that is in eternal motion, is trapped in the trap of words, and has never been able to free himself from it.
Man loves the trap of words because it contains love and hope, anger and jealousy, and the escape hatches to the lie, to the truth, and to free imagination.
With the trap of words man entered heaven, and the trap of words expelled him from heaven.
The trap of words always works, and since then man has been looking for a new good language, and he has not yet found it.
A. Asbar
According to the Holy Ari our world is the world of action and it is in the shape of a circle and the world of action means the entire universe and it can be proven from what our eyes see that everything in creation is not symmetrical but round and so are the stars and so is the universe
The universe is in the shape of a disk moving in a straight line - in the direction of its axis - at a speed of 12C
Details in the article
http://img2.timg.co.il/forums/3/c8659042-cdd9-4060-b7fd-a3872d542a4b.pdf
Forgive my ignorance, can someone explain what it means that the universe is closed? You really asked Tamm - what is there outside of football? is nothing? I do not understand…
To my understanding only
ghosts,
From the equations (Einstein's field equations) you can get a lot of shapes for the universe
Three of them are Friedman universes (with k=0,1,-1) fourth is the mentioned soccer shape and there are many more.
Each of these forms of the universe has all kinds of properties.
One of the features of all the forms except the three Friedmans, is that there are preferred points in space, that is, in the general scale of the universe, the universe is not the same at every point, and this is contrary to what is called the cosmological principle - which states that there is no special point in the universe (in football, for example, the meeting of the wigs is a special point) . It is important to emphasize that the cosmological principle is not sacred, it is an assumption, but so far it stands up well to the test of reality.
Therefore, most physicists (assuming the correctness of the cosmological principle which has not yet been disproved) conclude that the universe must be one of the three Friedman universes. The current article discusses the possibility that the universe is not a Friedman universe but a football - and the meaning is that the universe is not the same at every point - according to them, the background radiation confirms their conclusion, but so far, 7-8 years later, it does not seem that the claim has gained momentum (I don't know what its status is today, but It is clear that it did not become an accepted theory - see the Wikipedia entry).
Now we are faced with three options - two of which describe a "curved" universe (k=1,-1) and one describes a flat universe (k=0) - you can understand the concept of a flat or curved universe based on the question of whether the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees - If yes the universe is flat, if not, it is curved (from looking at the latitude and longitude lines of the Earth, you will argue that on the surface of the Earth the sum of the angles in each triangle is greater than 180 degrees).
Let her know that the situation of a flat universe is a very limited situation - the sum of the angles in a triangle is precisely 180 degrees, and since any measurement you make will not give an exact result, you will never be able to say with certainty that the sum of the angles is 180 degrees - all you can say is that it is Between 179 and 181, or between 179.9 and 180.1.
The significant figure is that until today they discovered that the universe is very flat - that is (very close to 180 degrees from above and below) - in abstraction it is said to be so close that if you draw a triangle between the three ends of the visible universe - today's measurement will not be able to accurately distinguish that the sum of the angles is Not 180 degrees (this is an analogy, the situation is much more complicated, but I hope you understood the principle).
If the universe is really flat or not - it is impossible and we will never be able to know - what we can know (if it is so) is that it is not flat and until now, with all the precision of the measurements - they have not been able to find out that it is not - that is, even if it is curved it is to an extent very small
deer
I didn't understand much (you probably understand why) but from what I understood from your words:
From the beacons a universe is obtained which is (k=0)
That is, flat and without curvature.
On the other hand, you wrote:
"Since the visible universe is even convex, its radius of curvature is still much smaller than the radius of the observable universe."
Could this be a hint that the universe is flat, though, just because there is no more data to disprove it?
In other words,
(As you mentioned: "There are many other explanations for the non-uniformity of the cosmic background radiation - although of course, not everything is known")
It could also be the case that the universe is flat (only because of the lack of other data that contradicts it) but at certain points in the universe (if it is discovered), the curvature is positive and thus it will disprove the flatness of the universe?
Or maybe I didn't understand anything and my question is not formulated well?
Zvi, thank you very much for the reasoned explanation!
By the way, my name is Gil Friedman (seriously!) so the equation is in my genes, but it turns out that I have not yet reached the necessary potential to understand it... 🙂
The question here concerns the degree of curvature of the universe.
In general, under the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy, the Einstein equation for the universe can have three types of solutions called the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann-Lema%C3%AEtre-Robertson-Walker_metric ), where the variable k can have the values k=0,-1,+1
As for the solution proposed here, it is a solution that is based on breaking the isotropic assumption and thus the universe has "some preferred direction", this strange assumption, originates from the inhomogeneity of the cosmic background radiation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homology_sphere#Cosmology
As far as I understand - there are many other explanations for the unevenness of the cosmic background radiation - although of course, not everything is known (and certainly not to me).
For the sake of Mr. "not so hard" we will go back to the Friedman hammer, because it is what is accepted for now.
The value k=0 corresponds to a universe with a flat general matrix and so far all observations indicate that this is indeed the case (although since this is a limiting solution, it will never be possible to prove exactly that this is the case, and all they can prove is that the radius of curvature of the universe R(t) is small by much more than the radius of the observable universe) - in order to see that this is indeed the case, simply type in Google: flat-universe and you will receive tons of news confirming this - for example:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2848.
You will therefore understand that the meaning is that there is certainly no point that can be observed from both directions, even given the telescope in the ultimate - and this is because the visible universe even with is convex, yet its radius of curvature is much smaller than the radius of the observed universe.
incidentally,
Such a universe (k=0) does not contradict the fact of the existence of the cosmological constant and only affects the way it propagates through R(t) in the way suggested by the Friedman equation in the first link.
If the universe is round, think about where we are in this football and find a celestial body that should be found halfway between us and ourselves (again). Now we just have to look for it in the opposite direction and if we find it, we have prepared the claim. No?
All I know is that it's been seven years and I haven't heard anyone talk about it beyond the speculation described here.
I must say that such speculations (about the closure of the universe and about the possibility of a ray of light meeting itself) have been around for as long as I can remember and the claim that this is something new (back then, in 2003) seems a little strange to me and what would be more correct to say is that evidence was found that might support the theory of the universe the closed
Another thing that seems to me to be an attempt to create a sensation is the claim that before it was the accepted theory that the universe is infinite and the amount of matter is infinite: since the Big Bang, no one thought so.
It seems to me that this theory does not quite agree with the accepted conclusion today - that the expansion of the universe in general is accelerating all the time.
It has nothing to do with a shell.
Machel
Do you know anything about this theory? The article reminds me of the debate between us: does the universe have a shell or not.
Another perhaps not so strange theory that I've heard of - the shape of the universe is symmetrical - cone facing cone - bipolar and from each pole which is essentially a white hole - from each apex of each cone energy is drawn from potential energy fields that are around it... the black holes are "vents" that emit energy Back out.
Food for thought - maybe there is another place beyond the universe where there is no light?
Another perhaps not so strange theory that I've heard of - the shape of the universe is symmetrical - cone facing cone - bipolar and from each pole which is essentially a white hole - from each apex of each cone energy is drawn from potential energy fields that are around it... the black holes are "vents" that emit energy Back out.
Food for thought - maybe there is another place beyond the universe?