INTRODUCTION:
On page 16 of PART 9 of this series we concluded with a quote from WEINBERG on the thrill of being able to appear into the beginnings of events that transpired immediately after BIG BANG. During the past three decades of probing back to earlier than one hundredth of a second of the earliest events of the BB, limited interpretations have been made based on all the data available. It it was a serious undertaking with expectations of unusual results. Now some of those results are coming in and new and different understanding of it all is emerging.
HYDROGEN-THE MASTER BUILDING BLOCK OF THE UNVIERSE
As the PLASMA MIX of the initial BIG BANG began to cool, exotic matter, 2 kinds of quarks, 3 kinds of neutrinos and other sub atomic particles began to appear. When atoms first began to take form, the ingredients available were limited. These included photons (particles of light) and neutrinos, and elementary particles of matter--electrons and protons. The nucleus of the hydrogen atom is a proton. There were composites or a few combinations of elementary particles--DEUTERONS, a proton plus a NEUTRON. The DEUTERON is the nucleus of the heavy hydrogen, DEUTERIUM, and ALPHA PARTICLES, which are two PROTONS plus two NEUTRONS (the nucleus of the helium atom, an ALPHA particle) . By the time the universe was 100,000 years old, neutrinos were aloof and did not participate in the birth of atoms, and photons were not essential to the atom-forming process. So, to form the first atoms of our universe there were electrons, protons, deuterons and alpha particles. In this mix, protons outnumbered alpha particles about eleven to one. Deuterons were just a sprinkling. The ingredients present, therefore, coupled with the particle recipes for hydrogen and helium resulted in an atomic mix of about 92% hydrogen, about 8% helium, and a fraction of a percent deuterium. Nearly 13.5 billion years after hydrogen and helium were first formed these elements remain the most abundant throughout the COSMOS: HYGROGEN makes up about 90% of the total, whereas helium comes in at about 9 percent. The rest are heavy metals.
Cooling was necessary, cooling had to drop the temperatures and until it was cool enough to slow the heat agitated particles and stop independent motions, even the strongest force of nature, the nuclear force, was not strong enough to pull the frantic protons and neutrons together into nuclei during these earliest seconds of the universe. Some think it was not until about fourteen seconds into the history of the universe after it had expanded that it was cool enough for the first nuclei, alpha particles, formed. The formation of alpha particles testifies to their stability. Deuterons, while simpler than alpha particles, are not as stable. Consequently, they did not form until the universe was almost four minutes old. Nuclei heavier than that of helium (alpha particles) such as beryllium, boron, and CARBON, necessary for life in any form, etc., did not form because these heavier nuclei could not compete with the inherent stability of the helium nucleus. thus, all the free neutrons that were still available at the four minute mark took refuge in either the helium nucleus or the heavy hydrogen nucleus. All of the hydrogen in the universe formed at that time. Consider heavy water, it was linked to early nuclear energy development and today as a neutrino detector, such as at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Sudbury , Ontario, which uses one thousand tons of heavy water in its detector. One molecule of heavy water (consisting of twenty-eight particles: ten electrons, ten protons, and eight neutrons) or one oxygen atom, one hydrogen atom, and one deuterium atom, bringing together deuterium that was formed when the universe was about four minutes old, so when you hold a tube of heavy water in your hand, you hold primordial atoms, remnants from the first minutes after the BIG BANG. (Rigden pp. 7-9) Howard Shaply, a great astronomer, said: "If God did create the world by a word, the word would have been hydrogen." Keep all of the above in mind when you read this PART 10.
INFLATION OF THE EARLY UNIVERSE
Astronomers are trying, with their improved instruments, to peer into the dawn of time in this finite bubble we call the universe, or BIG BANG; ignoring for the time being whatever else there may be out there beyond the bubble. One of the major items on the agenda is to obtain evidence of some sort that will confirm that portion of the STANDARD MODEL and ancillary ideas that the universe underwent a spurt of wrenching, exponential growth called INFLATION, during the first tiny fraction of a second of its initial existence. (Bahttacharjee p. 1296) ) INFLATION as a QUANTUM phenomenon, producinggravitational waves demonstrates that gravity has a quantum nature like the other known fundamental forces of nature, providing a window into interactions much more energetic than are created in any laboratory experiment on earth. The way they confirm it is of major significance; it is the most direct evidence yet that gravitational waves--a key but elusive prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity--exists. (Cowen p. 181) It might get them the noble prize.
The announcement was made on March 17, 2014. John Kovac, a cosmologist at Harvard University and one of the four principal investigators of BICEP, said: "We believe that gravitational waves could be the only way to introduce this B Mode pattern." [That they were seeing and detecting] They had found in two years of work, faint pinwheel-like swirls called B. MODES. The results were announced in a talk at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. (Bhattacharjee p. 1296) In the past, researchers had good evidence of how the first atomic nuclei formed a SECOND after the BIG BANG. But now they have probed the first 10-32 seconds. 'It's not every day that you wake up and find out what happened one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang." says Marc Kamionkowski, a cosmologist a John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. (Bhattacharjee p. 1296)
The idea that at the BIGBANG ballooned from subatomic to football size so soon after ignition could solve long-standing cosmic conundrums, such as why the observable Universe appears uniform from one end to the other. While the theory has proved to be consistent with all cosmological data collected so far, conclusive evidence for it has been lacking. Cosmologists knew that inflation would have a distinctive signature: the brief but violent period of expansion would have generated gravitational waves, which compress space in one direction while stretching it along another (the ripple effect). Although the primordial waves would still be propagating across the Universe, they would now be to feeble too detect directly, but they would have left a distinctive mark in the CMB. They would have polarized the radiation in a curly, vortex- like pattern known as the B MODES or Cosmic Curl. (Cowen p. 182)
Last year the SOUTHPOLE TELESCOPE (SPT) became the first observatory to detect B MODE polarization in the CMB. But that signal was over angular scales of less than one degree and was, then, attributed to how galaxies in the foreground curve the space through which the CMB travels. But the signal from primordial gravitation waves is expected to peak at angular scale between one and five degree. A different animal indeed. And that was exactly what John Kovac and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts say they detected. They used the instrument BICEP 2 that is located just meters away from its competitor, the SPT. "Detecting the tiny B MODE required measuring the CMB with a precision of one ten-millionth of a Kelvin and distinguishing the primordial effect from other possible sources, such as galactic dust." (Cowen p. 182)
But could there be in the foreground something that could masquerade like this 'signal'?
No,says the team. The BICEP2 is an array of 512 superconducting microwave detectors, at the South Pole, a region well known to contain only tiny amounts of such emissions, and they have compared their data with those taken by an earlier experiment with the BICEP I, and showed that dust generated signal would not only have been different but also of a different color and spectrum. Data from a newer, more sensitive polarization experiment, the KECK ARRAY, which the team finished installing at the South Pole in 2012 and will continue operating for two more years, showed the same characteristics. So, isn't the same signal emerging from two other, different telescopes, very convincing? (Cowen p. 282) And then, the signal is 20 times larger.
Then observers announced that they had spotted traces of undulations in the fabric of space and time- rippling through the infant universe. Rumors had been circulating for days, but the formal announcement electrified scientists the world over. If it holds up, it clinches the idea that in the first sliver of a second, the cosmos expanded like a gargantuan balloon in a faster-than-light (super luminous) EXPANSION, OR GROWTH SPURT known as INFLATION. It was a well thought out idea proposed more than 30 years ago. It was much resisted. But it took the new observational detectors and telescopes to probe deep enough to shed some light on the subject. The observations show for the first time that gravity must follow the same rules of quantum mechanics that other forces such as electromagnetism do. Forging a quantum theory of gravity may be the grandest goal in physics. Some cosmologists say the discovery is the biggest in their lives. "Never has the boundary of human understanding been pushed back so far." says Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. He had not participated in the work. I personally think the moment when the boundary of human understanding was pushed to its limits was when the Great Joseph saw and conversed with the FATHER and THE SON, in 1823. (Smith l:17)
Many cosmologists consider B modes the smoking gun for inflation. Time will tell.
Of the latest observations scientists around the world rejoice over the recent findings of the smoking -gun evidence of the BIG BANG. So too, may those religions with a creationism interpretation of the origin of the (or A) universe, such as the Jews but especially the Mormons. In Israel, Bar-Ilan University's Professor Nathan Aviezer, author of the book In the Beginning, dealing with the subject from the Jewish standpoint, advocates the argument that scientific and religious beliefs can live together in harmony. (Zievew p. 9) Something the Mormons have known for the past 185 years. Most other religions are skeptical. By1844 the Mormons had insights into the entire Universe and knew the current Big Bang is but a very small and finite part of the greater Universe. Some aspects of these themes were identified in PART I of this series, with more details added in subsequent PARTS. In another future PART, a detailed comparison of GENESIS 1:1-31 will be made, suffice it here to provide the foregoing summary and point out that one of the obvious problems for biologists, geologist, and paleontologists is found in Genesis l:12, which, in Genesis, was the third day: "The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, and God saw that it was good." (RSV) "So the earth produced all kinds of plants, and God was pleased with what he saw." (TEV) (Reyburn p. 41) But for plants photosynthesis is required, but the Sun was not created until day five. One would think the creator would know how to assembled the livings things on earth and get the chronology right. The required photosynthesis is not a theory, it is a law. No sun- no plant life, no most other life as well. Those religions that after 1915 declared the Bible infallible and correct and not subject to correction, cannot go back now and ask the original author to make changes to correlate with science. And squeeze as you may, even the Mormons have to contend with, and they do, the creational accounts in their GENESIS story, found in the King James Version, and the versions of Moses and Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. However, while these three Mormon sources do not reflect the necessary changes needed to conform with the latest discovers, the Prophet Joseph Smith between 1835 and 1842, provided a great deal of corrective data in a different chronology, an account of the creation, along with time it took, expanded, and corrected the creational account so the Sun came before the higher orders of Plant life and animal life, along with other details. This is all in the Temple Ceremony account that only those who attend the temple are privy to know and now, visually see. They seldom discuss the account outside the temple. I personally know of a geologist who accepted the challenge to activate, become Temple qualified, and then in the Celestial Room realized for twenty years he had been basing his life on the wrong premise and realized the reality of what Joseph Smith had provided. He wept. Many scientist take issue with what is found in Genesis 1:1 to 1:31, but fully informed Mormon scientists have deep confirmation of their beliefs because their Temple account is different and anticipated these great modern discoveries and provide the basis for discoveries by science yet to come.
HOW MANY BIG BANGS?
For example, Mormons know that there are least 1062 worlds, the same amount of suns and the same amount of moons, and a similiar zodiac star systems, just as a beginning to God's creations. (Moses 7:30) The current estimate of the entire content of the finite BIG BANG UNIVERSE is there is only mass enough for a total of 2526 Suns, but most of these suns would no have an earth, or a moon, and a zodiac array of stars. So just how many Big Bangs are required to host these 1062 (The ENOCH NUMBER, Moses 7:30) world systems? It will take a while to wrap one's mind around that.
The Mormons knew that the earth and life requires most of the known elements especially the heavy ones, of the periodic table, and that there was a group of 20 critical ones and 72 others (making a total of 92) with the first one (hydrogen) or atom, the dominant atom; the building block of all the others. (Odberg pp. 170-172) Jewish scholars had this also, and many more ancient documents but gave them little credence. Certain of the Christian movements also had such records, but eventually they lost them and they themselves became obscure. In the last 70 years many of the old ancient documents have been recovered to the delight of Mormons, but to the consternation of certain Christian groups. It was one of the great achievements of the restoration to have ancient knowledge restored one hundred and seventy years ago and then have many of the extreme ideas confirmed by discoveries after 1900. (Malik pp. 20-21, 124; See the CD's on ENOCH, KOLOB, 4TH CHAPTER OF ABRAHAM and also the CREATION, in this Web Site Series). The Book of Abraham also stipulated the Egyptians had most of this knowledge before 2000 BC, which was when Abraham possessed it. It was knowledge that he took into Egypt when he sojourned there for a short time. But confirmation from ancient records and the advancement of science had been slow in being discovered and recovered (PGP Facimiles 2 & 3)
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS AND THE ORIGIN OF ORDINARY MATTER
The concept of Nucleosynthesis is quantitative and places severe demands upon cosmic abundances of all the elements necessary for life. Nuclear reaction rates, conditions and nature of astronomical objects needed to be known in greater detail, and a consideration of thermonuclear conditions in a broad variety of astronomical settings. The initial conditions for stellar nucleosyntheses are the results of cosmological nucleosynthesis. When did they happen? The Big Bang is largely constrained by the degree which one can identify some abundances of certain elements and identify them as being the relic of cosmological nucleosynthesis rather than the results of subsequent stellar processing which cannot fully account for what is observed. Because nucleosynthesis is connected with the nature of stellar evolution, it is in some stars that conditions are found which are capable of providing the abundance of almost all of the nuclei we observe and need. Not only must the conditions be right for thermonuclear burning, but the nuclei so processed must be ejected out into the interstellar medium as clouds of elements subsequent to incorporation into earths, stars, meteorites, nebulae, and cosmic rays in which we observe these abundances. Most of the nuclear processing occurs during STELLAR DEATH THROAS, their last, most extreme conditions. The late and final stages of stellar evolution are of particular importance. The stages of ordinary stellar evolution (hydrogen and helium burning) and the final state of stars (white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes and clouds of elemental particles and dust) must be connected by events to supernovae, novae, and planetary nebula ejection. How do ensembles of stars and gas clouds interact as galaxies? It is the details of when and how all of this happened that the new searches are determined to disclose. (Arnett p. 3)
It is apparent that great masses of matter, unorganized, originating and accumulating from generations of Supernova Type l b episodes, generated the 92 elements that comprise the present inhabitable earths, so that the First Time (DAY 1) and the Second time, (DAY 2), consumed billions of years. There are less than thirty elements identified in the spectrum of the Sun so it could not have given birth to the earth. There is, at present, no acceptable theory of how the Sun and Moon were created or when, though they are working on it. In Mormon literature it is clear that this world is very young compared to the rest of the worlds created in previous Big Bangs. In this current Big Bang, whatever time it took to get the clouds of unorganized heavy elements organized into an earth, it took at least the first two TIMES (days)of creation (Abraham 4:8, 13, 19, 23, 31) or billions of years, to organize the world and prepare it for man; ore deposits, etc.
In Mormon chronology many worlds have preceded this earth in this present Big Bang (Moses l:23-35). So they would create another world like the other worlds that had been created, from matter that was already gathered together waiting to be organized. Mormon chronology of the creation of the earth starts on the first day with reference to matter unorganized that can be accessed for another world. The first two days in that chronology is taken up getting the earth formed, differentiated, and prepared for man. In geological terms, the earth was differentiated into a solid core, with a liquid core surrounding the solid core then the lower mantle, middle mantle, and upper mantle with the Conrad Layer, or continents on top.
It is the Conrad Layer which is host to the other things necessary for man, oil, ore bodies, coal, etc., It is on the third period (DAY) that the sun and moon are created. The earth is considerably older than the sun because sun was formed on the third period (day). Then the sun and the moon were configured into the system known as the earth-sun-moon. The earth had been present since the first day or TIME. The LENGTH OF time required for the sun and moon and earth, since that system was completed comprised or put together was called the THIRD TIME (day) or PERIOD depending on which account one follows. The duration of time or minimum length of the THIRD TIME would have to exceed the age of the Sun and Moon. The moon has been determined to be more than 4.l billion years but not less than 2.5 billion years old. The SUN is now considered to be at least 4.6 billion years old. (Astronomy May 2014, p. 20) However, they calculate the Sun took an estimated 50 million years to form, so we add that small amount to the length of the Third Day. (Cendes p. 31) The time that has elapsed since the sun-moon-earth system were configured was recorded in the Times and Seasons, "time, according to Abraham's records, "two thousand five hundred and fifty five millions of years" (2.555 billion years), had been going on since the formation of the system, (NOT THE WORLD.) (Taylor p. 758). So the length of the third day would be not less than 2.045 billion years. Tentatively our galaxy is considered to be at least 11 billion years old; among the younger galaxies, so the FIRST TIME in the TC account, and the SECOND TIME, (or DAY) may have taken at least 5.4 billion years and THE FOURTH and the FIFTH TIME, (or DAY) would have taken up the 2.555 billion years since the end of the THIRD TIME. The SIXTH TIME (or DAY), which would date from the time of the fall of Adam, when the earth assumed a mortal condition, has only consumed a period of time less than six thousand years. Now, we will see what the new instruments provide in the way of details and how all of the above may be modified and fine tuned, and the CHART will be revised again and again. But that is the nature of observational astronomy and science.
SUPER LUMINOUS-FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT
The Mormons are aware of super luminous light or radiation, so that concept applied to the early Big Bang, THE INFLATION, is not baffling. There are at least five orders of super luminous radiation (light) in Mormon cosmology, not counting the radiation detected in the current discoveries in the small area of the electromagnetic spectrum known as white light.
INFLATION AND INFLATONS
The inflationary scenarios was invented in 1980 by Alan Guth a cosmologist at MIT. According to the Standard Model of cosmology, into which all data is being fitted or rejected, as it is obtained and interpreted. when the universe sprang into existence, it contained a quantum field, similar to an electric field, made up of particles called INFLATONS, a term coined just for the purpose. The term INFLATONs will be used in certain discussions as more progresss is made concerning the INFLATIONARY PERIOD to discuss the first radiation from the BIG BANG. It was way too hot for photons. The QUANTUM FIELD blew up or expanded spacetime so that within 10-32 seconds the cosmos doubled and redoubled its size 60 times, filled with INFLATONS. In the process, it pulled itself "flat" like a bed sheet snapping taut and evened out in temperature. Inflation stopped as the INFLATONS cooled to decay into other particles, ultimately including photons, electrons, and quarks. (Bhattacharjee p. 1296) That's another story that will be taken up. The key at this time was the high temperature kept anything from forming discrete particles, it would have to cool a lot before baryonic matter could form. There are going to be a lot of firsts: The first baryons (ordinary everyday matter), the first hydrogen and helium, the first clouds of gravity condensations, the first stars, the first clusters, the first galaxies, the first black holes, the first supernovas (to get the heavy elements) the first earths, the first galactic clusters, etc, etc.
THE BICEP 1, AND BICEP 2 DETECTORS: WHAT IS HIDDEN IN THE AFTERGLOW?
In a project that began before January 2010, cosmologists put together a major effort to study the BIG BANG'S AFTERGLOW, THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND (CMB). We are inside the bubble. In all directions there is a constant expanding radiation wall of the Cosmic Microwave Background except for about a third of the sky, which is blocked off by the presence of the Milky Way through which we cannot see. (Gott p. 233) The project advanced as the cosmologists used the BACKGROUND IMAGING OF COSMIC EXTRAGALACTIC POLARIZATION (BICEP) detectors. There was BICEP 1 and BICEP 2). BICEP 1, which was a small but sophisticated radio telescope at the South Pole used by the US -led team, worked for two years, completing a phase of their work in December 2012, mapping how the arrow-like polarization of the microwaves variations from place to place across the sky were retained by the final remnants of the CMB. They detected the first evidence of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in space that inflation generated 13.8 billion years ago at the time the BIG BANG universe started to expand. (Cowen p. 281)
The telescopes captured a small picture of the waves, or curls, as they continued to ripple through the Universe some 300,000 years later, when stars appear to have started to form and matter was still scattered across space as a broth of plasma. (Cowen p. 281) The images were seen in the CMB, the glow that radiated from that white-hot plasma and that over billions of years of cosmic expansion has cooled to microwave energies and now can be mapped and all its retained data, no matter how small, can be examined for details.
Those working on this aspect found that the INFLATION FIELD roiling with tiny quantum fluctuations. Inflation magnified those fluctuation to enormous size, seeding variations in the density of energy and matter that eventually grew into galaxies. The fluctuations also created one-part-in-1,000,000 variations in the temperature of the CMB across the sky. By measuring the statistical distribution of hot and cold spots of different sizes, they determined the content of the universe in terms of ordinary matter , mysterious dark matter whose gravity binds the galaxies, and weird space-stretching dark energy. That much of the universe has been worked out and seems to be consistent with the idea of INFLATION.
TENSOR MODES AND B-MODES
Now, with the new results they have gone a big step further and tested a particular prediction of inflation. The influence of quantum mechanics was immense, not only did the stuff inside the infant universe fluctuate-so did spacetime itself. If quantum mechanics operated, it must have influenced spacetime, because gravity and spacetime must respond to quantum mechanics. Inflation stretched that jittering into gravitational waves billions of light-years in wavelength that left their own imprint on the CMB. That is what they wanted to detect. Whereas the density variations caused a simple sloshing of matter and energy to form more dense spots to less dense ones. Gravitational waves stirred up a more complex twisting motion called TENSOR MODES, only that type of motion can give rise to B MODES, according to Uros Sljak, a cosmologist at the University of California Berkeley. "The B MODES are only 1 % as strong as the already -faint temperature variations. To see them the BICEP team deployed BICEP 2, a 26-centimeter telescope with 500 exquisitely sensitive microwave detectors called BOLOMETERS, each cooled to within fraction of a degree of absolute zero...they got a little help from nature, as the B-MODE signal appears about 20 times stronger than many cosmologists had expected. This was a huge factor in their success. It will be a huge factor in the next steps forward.
BICEP owes its success in part to detectors made by Jamie Bock and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena used in the PLANCK observations, previously discussed when PLANCK was summarized. Susan Staggs, a cosmologist at Princeton University works on the Atacama B Mode Search in Chile, she was shocked when she heard of the success of BICEP. She got excited because the signal was so big. For many it was unexpected. The Big signal suggests that cosmologists may soon be able to test the idea of inflation in earnest. At least it does silence doubters of the faster-than-light stretching, because alternate theories do not produce B MODES, all of the proposed alternatives are now dead. It does rule out noninflationary models, for awhile theorists will still continue searching for an alternative to inflation, though it may be futile as further observations expands the current work with greater detail. (Bhattacharjee p. 1297)
Now cosmologists will seek to probe the characteristics of the INFLATON FIELD- particularly to find out how the field interacted with itself to give itself energy, and develop some analogies that will help explain it. Theorists predict modifications to the shape of the inflation energy landscape, so if that landscape can be measured precisely, physicists might be able to put to rest other theories, such as string theory, long mocked as an untestable "theory of everything." The energy density of the universe during inflation was 3 trillion times any energy achieved with a particle accelerator here on earth. So their next big goal is to determine the shape of the energy landscape or its potential. The signal strength reported by BICEP jibes nicely with a model of that landscape proposed by Andrei Linde of Stanford University in California in 1982. That will be revisited. One area that needs resolution is the signal implies that the tensor (CURLING) churning in the early universe is twice as strong as the upper limits inferred from Planck's temperature measurements made some years ago. The two observations need to mesh. The spectrum of shorter and longer quantum fluctuations in the infant universe must have been a lot more complicated than standard theory assumes. That is not good for inflation. Come on, everybody, back to the drawing board!
Researchers need to confirm the BICEP results. The on-going PLANCK MISSION may do so this year, 2014. That will happen rather quickly if the signal is as large as reported. In order to trace the inflation's energy landscape, observations must measure the statistical distribution of the swirling B MODES in exactly the same way they measured the statistical distribution of the hot and cold spots. They break the hot and cold spots down into overlapping spots of bigger and the smaller sizes on the sky, and the spectrum of different sizes of spots encodes the recipe for the universe. They expect the spectrum of different sizes of B MODES to reveal the inflation potential that encodes the recipe for the universe. The spectrum of larger and smaller B MODES should reveal the shape of the inflation potential. So far, the BICEP team has measured the modes in a patch of sky measuring 15o by 60o and has observed B MODES that make pinwheels about 1 degree wide. Primordial gravitational waves should also produce B MODES stretching about 10o across. Spotting those larger B MODES would most likely require another more sensitive space-craft mission like Planck to map the whole sky. That is perhaps where they will go next.
A NEW PLANCK MISSION TO MAP THE SKY AGAIN
A proposed new PLANCK MISSION, could map the whole sky. They are trying to make a case for such an effort to measure polarization in detail. Such a mission might finally enable physicists to test theories that attempt , so far without results, to meld quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity, which says that gravity arises when mass and energy bend spacetime. The BICEP results proves that gravity must be quantum mechanical, as B MODES originate from quantum fluctuations in spacetime itself. (Bhattacharjee p. 1297) Pandora's box has been opened, primordial gravitational waves have shaken up cosmology, and the call is for more missions and sensitive detectors and to rewrite the theories. This is progress!
CHARTING THE BIG BANG
A sketch diagram of the BIG BANG has been provided that will permit one to visualize some aspects of history of our personal universe. The vertical line on the right identifies known or suspected moments in the history of the BB. These moments will change from time to time and the CHART will be updated. In the lower left hand corner is the firecracker (?) called the BIG BANG at the time it popped from whatever it was at the beginning when our present time began. there was an immediate inflation and expansion of the plasma or whatever they will get around to calling it, when the small burst doubled in size sixty time in a super luminous event. That EVENT is now placed at 10-32 of a second in to the history of our universe and into which most of the above is placed. The burst was a bubble, as it expanded outward in all direction there was a record of events imprinted on the inside wall of the bubble called the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND, (CMB). Imprinted in the CMB were curls of energy now called B MODES, and now the work is cut out for astronomers to establish the detail of what happened, when it happened and perhaps where everything goes from there.
As we go up the CHART, or time line, significant events are identified. When did the mix cool down so the first building blocks of exotic matter consisting of quarks could form a proton? Perhaps about one second? It was only when the plasma mix was cool enough that sub-atomic particles could form protons with a positive charge. This would be the Hydrogen Atom, it is the particle that has a starring role in this universe. The universe is teeming with hydrogen: every cubic centimeter of dark interstellar space, essentially void of any other known matter, contains a few atoms of hydrogen. At the other extreme, the planet Jupiter's interior contains in excess of 10 million billion billion (1035 atoms of hydrogen), and every star, regardless how long it lives, itilluminates its cosmic neighborhood with light that originates from the burning or fusing of atoms of hydrogen into helium, these two atoms or elements dominate the material cosmos. (Rigden p. 1)
Was it about 3 minutes or 100,000 years? When did electrons form with their single negative charge and combine to form hydrogen, the primary building block of all elements, the electrons anchor? Most, if not all of the Hydrogen in the Big Bang was formed at that time. And Helium, when did it first show up since most of the Helium in the Big Bang was produced at that time? Helium is formed when hydrogen atoms are fused in a certain way adding neutrons to make the helium mass. What are astronomers observing that makes them think there was a DARK AGE in the emergence of matter? And what is DECOUPLING? Something happened before 300,000 years into the history of the Big Bang when the first stars started to show up. Now they also know certain things happened at about 380,000 years.
When was the first time matter began to condense and gravitationally aggregate into Stars? How does a star form? What are the details of the small galaxies found to have appeared about .95 million years into the history. Where were galaxies finally forming about l billion years into the history? The survey called GOODS, mentioned in earlier PARTS, along with the HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE'S ADVANCED CAMERA, and CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY, are all searching the same part of the sky for some of the first galaxies. There are different types of galaxies how did each of them form? Which came first, the galaxies or the black holes? And when did the great walls of galaxies and gigantic clusters form? Somewhere about 3.8 billion years into the history was there the formation of our galaxy? Was it close to 10 billion years ago? And within our galaxy was there the formation of a world, nearby was a star, our sun, formed about 4.6 billion years ago? The picture is fuzzy, but details are emerging, and with it understanding of the multiple and myriads of other objects in the Big Bang, an incredible phenomena of fantastic variety. Was it all pre-planned and necessary?
Our Big Bang is expanding, knowing the details of its history is of great interest, but what is it expanding into? Are we going to bump into other Big Bangs? Overlap? Is there a bunch of firecrackers out there just a popping off all over the place? What is the geography out there? Is it a big let down to realize our Big Bang is finite, somewhat less than 20 billion years old? Will it be a further let down to realize we cannot look outside our bubble? It has been expanding for nearly 14 or more billions of years so its diameter is now approaching or has exceeded 40 billion years. Just a little tiny itza-bitzy pop! The Delirium of Immensity is not confined to our BB.
TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE
Using TYPE la SUPERNOVAE, which derive from the thermonuclear explosions of white dwarfs, two teams, before 2002, were able to determine the expansion history of the universe. TYPE Ia supernovae shine with near uniformity so by comparing their apparent brightness with their intrinsic brightness the teams infer a supernova's distance. The spectrum of the supernova reveal how its light has been stretched or red shifted, by the expansion of space itself. When the two teams completed their analyses of their study of supernovae, they were confronted with the astonishing result that the expansion of the universe was not slowing down as expected but was speeding up. At that time they thought some mysterious energy was lurking in the shadows of the universe, some devious and furtive "antigravity" force they called dark energy. Many cosmologists were loath at that time to admit the existence of dark energy. (Gefter p. 35) And there are not many happy cosmologists today because they are still working on the problem.
According to the theoretical prediction of INFLATION, the BIG BANG's geometry is flat, which means it must contain an average density of matter and energy of about 10-29 grams per cubic centimeter. But after more than three decades of observations when they tallied the total amount of matter and energy--including dark matter -- they came up embarrassingly short. In fact, they were missing over 70 % of the contents of our BB, but the supernovae studies changed their ideas.
COSMIC STRUCTURE: DENSITY WAVES
Another approach to the study of the early events is the observation of COSMIC PATTERNS, or cosmic structure that follow patterns initiated by density waves, also called BARYON ACOUSTIC OSCILATIONS, (BAOs) in the early years of the BB. The patterns look a lot like the giant Olympic Game overlapping circles. Galaxies tend to bunch along spherical shells. When BARYONIC MATTER, protons and neutrons, separated from the radiation as the radiation cooled, just 370,000 years into the universe's history, these patterns developed, summarized Zosia Rostomian of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. (Astronomy May 2014, p. 19)
Astronomers using the SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY'S (SDSS) BARYON OSILLATION SPECTROSCOPIS SURVEY (BOSS), both discussed in previous PARTS, have made the most precise measurements, within l percent, of galaxy positions nearly halfway across the visible universe. These newest measurements were announced January 8, 2014, at the AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY meeting in Washington, DC. It informed scientists how the universe's expansion has changed.
They had studied BARYON ACOUSTIC OSCILLATIONS, (BAOs) that arose in the universe's earliest moments, when the hot plasma mix of photon, electrons, protons and neutrons and dark matter filled the cosmos. The gravity association with denser regions pulled in more material, which then compressed and heated up. Radiation pressure pushed the baryons and light outward to make each region less dense. The baryon radiation mixture expanded as spherical sound waves (BAO), similar to waves rippling on a pond's surface when a pebble is thrown into it.
Some 370,000 years intro cosmic history, the universe had cooled enough for the electrons and baryons (protons & neutrons) to combine, which allowed the radiation to stream free, carrying with it the oscillation pattern, the longest sound wave imprinted on the radiation to the farthest distance one of those pressure waves could have reached from the Big Bang in the finite time of 370,000 years. Matter clumped along the spherical BAO oscillation shells with a radius of about 580 million light years. This kind of pattern has been observed elsewhere during galactic surveys.
Astronomers with BOSS mapped roughly l million galaxies in two different epochs: one, when the universe was about 8 billion years old, and the second when the universe was 10 billion years old, about the time the Milky Way was formed. They analyzed galaxy distributions, which result from BAOs and measured the patterns by the angle on the sky at different times in the universe's history. They already knew the physical size of those shell patterns, they can calculate how far away from Earth those structures are. From that calculation, they can determine the universe's expansion rates at those different cosmic epochs. This information gives astronomers hints about the mysterious 'dark energy' that is causing the expansion. The SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY, ( SDSS) and BARON OSCILLATON SPECTROSOCIC SURVEY, (BOSS) will continue taking data of distant galaxies until June 2014. (Astronomy, May 2014, p. 19) Both probable, preliminary, and precise data is plotted on the CHART, new data will update constantly. Elaborate diagrams have been generated to help visualize the BB history, but all are out of date. The present CHART will be revised frequently as new data arrives. In the near future there will be major understanding as giant telescopic enterprises report their discoveries.
ON THE MENU
In an earlier PART we mentioned that a GAS CLOUD, called G2, was on the way to an encounter with the 4 million-solar mass monster, called Sagittarius A*; a kind of a weird name, but that was what the massive object in the center of our Galaxy was called before they knew it was a black hole. Astronomers had discovered the fast moving G2 in 2006 and, upon calculating its trajectory, realized it would zoom right up to, and no doubt, into, the black hole, without any resistance or reluctance at all. Gravity causes it to whiz faster and run a fever, heating up and emitting high-energy radiation. Our black hole is a thousand times dimmer than it ought to be, or is expected to be, mainly because it has not had much food to eat, over the last 10 billion years it has dined on about everything immediately available, now it is hoping its gravity will pull objects close, but when something gets close and looks like it could be added to the Menu, it likes to heat it up until it is well done. It will be emitting quite an X-ray flare. But G2 is only a snack, about the three times the mass of our earth. Astronomers are poised with telescopes, particularly NASA's SWIFT TELESCOPE, which is taking pictures daily not wanting to miss even one instant of the snack time event. The monitoring activity of SWIFT, that had actually started in 2006, was described in a report at the AAS meeting on January 8, 2014, in Washington, DC. G2's appearance is important because our supermassive black hole is the only one close enough to study, and the only way to study black holes is to watch them interact with nearby material-- like eat them. It might be a little messy.
The VERY LARGE TELESCOPE (VLT) in Chile was the one that determined G2 had the mass of about three earths, and that the cloud had doubled its velocity in just seven years since it was first noticed, but most of the certainty of what is going to happen was really understood in 2011. They believe the cloud which is spiraling into the center may break up and parts of it will fall into the hole, other fragments will swing pass and then proceed to orbit the Black Hole, joining eleven stars now orbiting in fear of being added to the menu, but the black hole will eventually get them all. The radiation that the cloud and the Black Hole will emit will provide new insights into the environment at the center of our galaxy. (Elisa Youngsteadt, American Scientist, March-April 1212, p. 123)
BRIGHT GALAXIES IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
Using NASA'S HUBBLE and SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPES, astronomers have identified four unusually bright young galaxies in the early universe. The deep survey image shows these objects as they appeared just 500 million years after the BB. They are about 10 to 20 times more luminous than any such stellar conglomeration observed before. Their brilliance results from active star formation, with one producing stars at a pace about 50 times faster than our galaxy does today. For the first time astronomers were also able to determine such a distant object's mass. Although only some 3 percent of the diameter of the Milky Way, tiny little things, each of these galaxies is likely home to around a billion stars. Images were released at the AAS meeting in Washington DC. (Astronomy May 2014 p. 13)
GAMMA RAY BURSTS AND NASA's SWIFT SATELLITE DETECTOR
NASA's SWIFT SATELLITE TELESCOPE has detected more the 900 GAMMA RAY BURSTS (GRB) As soon as it senses a blast, it slews around to observe it and also sends the GRB coordinates to a net work of other telescopes. While the outbursts that supermassive stars have while alive are impressive, the outbursts when they die are truly spectacular. The key to the fabulous flare-ups is that every star eventually runs out of fuel to control the nuclear fusion processes in the core. When this happens, the star dies a violent death, how violent depends on its mass. A star with less than 8 solar masses will shed its outer layers and leave a planetary nebula with its dense remnant core called a white dwarf. A star larger than that usually will explode in a supernova that can shine brighter than all the other stars in a galaxy combined. But there are different kinds of supernovae, they are not all equal. A star with less than 20 solar masses, will leave behind a dense neutron star core, while a more massive star, some can be extremely massive, Type la, will collapse, imploding to create a black hole.
As discussed in early PARTS, the formation of a Black Hole is a violent event--so violent that it can release a light signature seen across most of the visible universe. The blast signals this catastrophic death, they were first discovered by accident during the height of the Cold War. The U.S. Military launched a series of satellites, known as the VELA PROJECT, to detect gamma-ray flashes in case the Soviets violated the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The VELA PROJECT never confirmed any atmospheric nuclear explosions, but did detect gamma-ray flashes coming from above the earth-mysterious bursts from outer space that had unknown origins. These flashes, which the military declassified in 1973, were the first detected gamma-ray bursts. It is now known that these signals are the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, each giving off more energy in a few seconds than the Sun will release in its entire 10 million life time. The gamma X-ray bursts study and microwaves research triggered the field of RADIO ASTRONOMY mentioned in Part 9. Gamma rays are the part of the electromagnetic spectrum more energetic than X-rays, and just one gamma-ray photon can pack thousands of time more energy than a visible light photon. That is why gamma rays can kill. Earth's atmosphere adsorbs gamma rays, like X-rays, which means these flashes do not affect life on our planet, but it does mean astronomers must launch satellites out of the earth's atmosphere to detect them.
GRB astronomy has made great strides since they found the first blasts with SWIFT, now they detect one new GRB each day. The bursts originate from all direction. GRBs come in three types: SHORT duration bursts that last just milliseconds, LONG DURATION bursts that can last hours, and ULTRA-LONG-DURATION bursts that can last for hours. The latter two types result from the death of a massive star, while the SHORT duration bursts come from the violent merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. More will be said about these in the future.
Whenever an instrument, such as SWIFT detects a GRB flash, astronomers receive that object's coordinates within minutes via text message and a network of instruments around the globe. They slew to view the object. The GRB emissions rams into nearby material, which causes that material to glow in less energetic, but detectable, radiation. Afterglow studies detecting different wavelengths, show that the brightest and longest GBR's come from galaxies rich in star formation and that often a new, bright supernova will appear in the same location on the sky as a GRB. A supernova signals the death of a star, so this implies that the deaths of the most massive stars triggers some of the most violent and energetic phenomenon in the universe. Astronomer have a name for such an incident- a COLLAPSAR or a HYPERNOVA, which will be discussed in future PARTS.
As the core of a star collapses into a black hole, the remaining stellar material falls toward the center and swirls into a high density accretion disk surrounding the stellar remnant. Matter from this accretion disk will be swept into jets of material at the poles of the star. This is not fully understood, it is one of the objects of current observation. When the jets tunnel through the star and reach the star's surface they can blow the star to bits, they release gamma-ray energy in the direction of the jets. When one of these jets is aimed directly at Earth, telescopes see a long or ultra-long-duration GRB.
One GRB holds the record for the farthest object seen with the unaided eye. On March 19, 2008, the jet beam from GRB O8030B, was so powerful that its afterglow reached a visual magnitude of 5.3 for nearly 30 seconds. This is very bright. Anyone looking at the right spot, and there were some who were, in the constellation BOOTES, at the time would have seen the glow of a star dying 7.5 billion years ago. (Cendes p. 33-34)
The GRB that holds another record in recent years, was an ultra-long burst that exploded a mind-boggling 13.2 billion years ago, and its light just arrived at Earth in 2009. This object was a supernovae, formed early after the first stars appeared about 300,000 years after the BB, at a time the first galaxies probably started forming. Details like this will modify the CHART. Such GRB glimpses are intriguing to astronomers who want to learn about the FIRST GENERATION of stars in the universe. These are called POPULATION 111 stars, and are very important. The chemical composition of the cosmos was different in the first few hundred million years, and thus so were the stars that were born from that material. (Thus the ancients could say: "Come, yonder is matter comprising all the elements we need for a world and life, let us go and form another world like we here-to-fore have formed..."). The universe held the basic elements that formed just minutes after the BB. There was 75 percent hydrogen, 25 percent helium, and a few traces of "metals. (Any element above helium in the periodic table are called metals by the astronomers). This would be confusing to a geologist until he understand the terms and meanings of astronomers. And ALL the HYDROGEN there would ever be was created at that time. Nothing in the remains of the BB we now observe will ever be hot enough to generate HYDROGEN. When hydrogen is all used up, that is all there is. Nowhere in the universe is new hydrogen being formed. I wonder who planned this all out?
Metals are more efficient at cooling a dust cloud than pure hydrogen, and at cooler temperatures, smaller stars form. In a metal free environment, however, the dust cloud will be warmer, and computer simulations show stars that form in such environments will be much more massive than those seen today, growing to a few hundred solar masses. Astronomers conclude that these first stars, due to their supermassive size, would have lived just a million years before exploding as brilliant supernovae. But before these blasts occurred these stars would have fused in their cores the first 26 elements of the periodic table, including carbon, oxygen, silicon and iron. Until these became available in massive clouds of accumulating explosions, there would no life. Nor could there have been earths like ours to permit life with all its myriads of forms. The carbon in your body came from such a source, literally you are the children of the big stars. Population 111 stars left their mark as the first suns to inject metals into the universe, so life could be, but in doing so they also doomed themselves. They spread these elements so effectively throughout the cosmos that astronomers do not see any metal free stars today. But there is life everywhere. (Cendes pp. 34-3
THE SAME MENU FOR BLACK HOLES IN QUASARS
About 750 million years after the BIG BANG, a giant BLACK HOLE was formed in QUASAR ULASH120+0641. Alberto Moretti of the BRERA ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY in Milan, Italy, and his colleagues used the EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY's XMM-NEWTON OBSERVATORY (ESAXNO) to study the galactic center that produces huge amounts of radiation powered by a supermassive BLACK HOLE. It is the most distant-known QUASAR. They found that its X-ray spectrum, an indication of the rate of which the BLACK HOLE sucks in matter, was indistinguishable from those of quasars formed later in the life of the Universe. They had expected that the Quasar would collect matter at a much higher rate because its mass is 2 billion times that of the sun. The slow growth rate of the galactic center of this Quasar raises questions of how it could have reached its huge size so early in the universe's life? It engulfed matter at the same rate as much younger quasars. (Nature, Vol. 507, page 403, 27 March 2014) They will be working on this one for a while.
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