A Princeton University astrophysicist believes that with the help of a new telescope in Chile, she and her team can confirm exactly what happened after the Big Bang that created the known universe 13.8 billion years ago.
Scientists have theorized that by observing the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the remnant of the light left after the explosion of the Big Bang, they could determine how the universe has been inflating ever since.
But as astrophysicist Jo Dunkley explained, scientists can “extrapolate backwards and infer what could have happened to produce the patterns we see in the CMB &#8230; But there are other scenarios you could imagine that could produce those patterns.”
Dunkley <a href="applewebdata://D263A0C7-C432-4711-B075-41D8C46F1E12/v">told</a> New Scientist’s Jonathan O’Callaghan, “Before we had any of the particles we are familiar with now – protons, neutrons, light and so on – we think the universe was permeated by a different kind of energy. We call it the inflaton field, but we really don’t know exactly what it was. The energy stored in that field drove this exponentially fast growth of space at the beginning of time. It did so until the inflaton field decayed and we started forming the particles we know and the universe evolved into the form we have now.”
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Dunkley said she and her colleagues have been using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile, but the new telescopes at the Simons Observatory will make the job more accurate. She explained that they want to observe gravitational waves —ripples in the fabric of space-time that “squeeze and stretch space in a particular way; they squeeze in one direction and stretch in another” to see how the light of the CMB is polarized.
“We’re looking for this very, very faint polarized signal in the CMB that could only come from gravitational waves,” she stated.
But because it’s a tiny signal, and the scientists have to peer through the Milky Way to see it and light from other sources in the galaxy complicates matters as well as water vapor in the atmosphere, the capacity to use both the Simons Observatory in Chile and the BICEP-Keck telescopes at the South Pole could prove crucial to getting a better view because conditions at the two telescopes are different.
“We’re looking for variations in what we can think of as the temperature of the CMB that are billionths of a fraction of a degree,” Dunkley said. “The polarized signal is a very subtle departure from something uniform. The Simons Observatory will help because it has tens of thousands of detectors, which is 10 times more than previous generations of telescopes such as the ACT.”
“There’s so much richness of information in the CMB,” Dunkley enthused. “I remember a few years ago people thinking we had measured the CMB, and that was it, done. Then we realized how much there is to know, not only in its polarization, but as a backlight through the whole universe. It just keeps producing more exciting stuff.”

Abstract line shape with pink and orange colors

Astrophysicist Says New Telescope Could Confirm How Universe Began

Big Bang

Chile

Outer Space

Princeton University

Technology

World

A new map of the structure of the universe that over 150 researchers worked on reveals that the existing standard model of the universe may not be as well-supported as previously imagined.
The current Standard Model of Cosmology (SMC) states that the “Big Bang” that created the universe used pure energy and left the universe with roughly 5% ordinary matter, 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy. But the new map indicates that six times as much dark matter exists in the universe compared to visible matter, and that the matter is not as “clumpy” as hitherto suspected.
“It seems like there are slightly less fluctuations in the current universe than we would predict, assuming our standard cosmological model anchored to the early universe,” astronomer Eric Baxter from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy <a href="https://www.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=12399">stated</a>. “The high precision and robustness to sources of bias of the new results present a particularly compelling case that we may be starting to uncover holes in our standard cosmological model.”
The SMC argues that gravitational interactions among ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy are described by the General Theory of Relativity and that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on cosmic scales, as Professor Brian Albert Robson of the Australian National University <a href="https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/66783">points out</a>.
“Unfortunately, both the SMPP (Standard Model of Particle Physics) and the GTR are considered to be incomplete in the sense that they do not provide any understanding of several empirical observations,” Robson notes, adding that the SMPP “does not provide any understanding of the existence of three families or generations of leptons and quarks, the mass hierarchy of these elementary particles, the nature of gravity, the nature of dark matter” while the GTR “does not provide any understanding of the Big Bang cosmology, inflation, the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, the nature of dark energy.”
The research team utilized the Dark Energy Survey (DES) as well as the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The SPT has more range than the DES; it maps the radiation left over from the Big Bang, called Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
“It functions like a cross-check, so it becomes a much more robust measurement than if you just used one or the other,” Chihway Chang, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago who collaborated with Baxter, asserted.
“Determining whether hints of problems in the standard cosmological model are real or just chance fluctuations will require more data,” The University of Hawaii noted.

Day and Night Frontier

New Map Of Universe May Poke Holes In Existing Model

Science

Space

The remarkable James Webb Telescope has now offered mankind a possible glimpse of the farthest starlight from Earth anyone has ever seen, and a galaxy that was formed closer to the original Big Bang than any galaxy seen before.
Two galaxies billions of light-years farther behind the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744 were discovered by the Webb. One is estimated as having come into existence 450 million years after the Big Bang — which has been estimated to have occurred 13.8 billion years ago — while the second, titled GLASS-z12, emerged only 350 million years after the explosion. Both galaxies are estimated to be tiny compared to the Milky Way galaxy of which Earth is a part.
“These observations just make your head explode. This is a whole new chapter in astronomy. It&#8217;s like an archaeological dig, and suddenly you find a lost city or something you didn’t know about. It’s just staggering,” said Paola Santini, one the authors of a research paper led by Marco Castellano of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, Italy.
Another research paper outlining the discovery was led by Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both papers were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“With Webb, we were amazed to find the most distant starlight that anyone had ever seen, just days after Webb released its first data,&#8221; Naidu <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-draws-back-curtain-on-universe-s-early-galaxies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> of the second galaxy.
“Everything we see is new. Webb is showing us that there&#8217;s a very rich universe beyond what we imagined,” Tommaso Treu of the University of California at Los Angeles echoed. “Once again the universe has surprised us. These early galaxies are very unusual in many ways.”
The first galaxy reportedly has a redshift of 10.5 while GLASS-z12 has one of 12.5. Redshift and blueshift describe how a light wave moves, whether toward us or away from us. As a light is stretched, it is “shifted” toward the red end of the light spectrum. Thus the greater the redshift, the farther the light is from us.
GLASS-z12 is thus even farther away from us than the first galaxy found with it.
“At least three types of redshift occur in the universe — from the universe&#8217;s expansion, from the movement of galaxies relative to each other and from ‘ redshift,’ which happens when light is shifted due to the massive amount of matter inside of a galaxy,” Space.com <a href="https://www.space.com/25732-redshift-blueshift.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">explains</a>.
Up until the discovery of GLASS-z12, the farthest known galaxy that was discovered was GN-z11, found in 2016 by the Hubble Space telescope; its redshift was 11.1.
“We’ve nailed something that is incredibly fascinating. These galaxies would have had to have started coming together maybe just 100 million years after the big bang. Nobody expected that the dark ages would have ended so early,” Garth Illingworth a member of Naidu&#8217;s team, enthused. “The primal universe would have been just one hundredth its current age. It’s a sliver of time in the 13.8 billion-year-old evolving cosmos.”

Space warp travel trough universe

‘Just Make Your Head Explode’: Scientists Awed As Webb Finds Farthest Light Seen By Man

Scientists Awed As Webb Finds Farthest Light Seen By Man

Air and Space

James Webb Telescope

A dispute has arisen among scientists as to whether images from the James Webb Space Telescope have disproven the Big Bang theory.
The Big Bang, first proposed in 1927, posited that the universe started as an incredibly hot, dense single point that exploded, triggering a constant expansion of the known universe. That led to the Lambda-CDM model of the universe, considered the standard model of cosmology, which states that the universe is full of matter, dark matter, and dark energy.
Three basic facts support the Big Bang theory: more distant galaxies are reputed to have a higher red-shift than closer ones, meaning there is an increase in wavelength of the light emanating from them, so their light is shifter toward the red area of the spectrum; the cosmic background radiation from the effect of the Big Bang fills the universe, and the evidence for an abundance of elements in the early universe.
But social media became abuzz with rumors that the Big Bang theory had been debunked after a recent article by Eric Lerner, the author of the 1991 book “The Big Bang Never Happened.”
Lerner claimed, “The hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since.”
Lerner quoted Allison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, saying, “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.”
Kirkpatrick, who has changed her Twitter handle to “Allison the Big Bang happened Kirkpatrick,” was incensed, saying that her words were taken out of context, tweeting, “Time to curl up with A Very Kitty Cocktail Party while muttering that the big bang is real. &#8230; And efff the dickwad who blatantly misused my quote in an attempt at ‘evidence.’”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
And efff the dickwad who blatantly misused my quote in an attempt at &quot;evidence&quot;
&mdash; Allison Kirkpatrick (@akastro.bsky.social) (@AkAstronomy) <a href="https://twitter.com/AkAstronomy/status/1560078004696530944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Kirkpatrick <a href="https://twitter.com/AkAstronomy/status/1561860061856661505">linked</a> to an article by Jackson Ryan addressing Lerner’s claims.
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In case you are still confused, check out this nice summary by <a href="https://twitter.com/dctrjack?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dctrjack</a> <a href="https://t.co/dqAzOlXZGI">https://t.co/dqAzOlXZGI</a>
&mdash; Allison Kirkpatrick (@akastro.bsky.social) (@AkAstronomy) <a href="https://twitter.com/AkAstronomy/status/1561860061856661505?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2022</a></blockquote>
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“Lerner&#8217;s piece uses some of the early JWST studies to attempt to dismiss the Big Bang theory,” Ryan <a href="https://www.cnet.com/science/space/no-james-webb-space-telescope-images-do-not-debunk-the-big-bang/">wrote</a>. “What&#8217;s concerning is how it misconstrues early JWST data to suggest that astronomers and cosmologists are worried the well-established theory is incorrect.”
“We as scientists have a responsibility to educate the public, and I take that responsibility very seriously,” Kirkpatrick told Ryan. “Deliberately misleading the public makes it difficult for them to trust real scientists and to know fact from fiction.”
“If you&#8217;re interested in further arguments against Lerner&#8217;s hypotheses and why the claims don&#8217;t add up, I recommend checking out Brian Keating&#8217;s recent YouTube video,” Ryan recommended.
“It’s a common misconception that redshift proves that galaxies are speeding away from us. They aren’t,” <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/157264/the-latest-webb-observations-dont-disprove-the-big-bang-but-they-are-interesting/">Universe Today</a> noted. “Distant galaxies aren’t speeding through space. Space itself is expanding, putting greater distance between us. It’s a subtle difference, but it means that galactic redshift is caused by cosmic expansion, not relative motion.”
“The only model that supports all the evidence is the big bang. Lerner’s argument is an old one that has long been disproven,” Universe Today concluded.

Abstract Big Data, Fiber Optic Light Painting

‘Efff The Dickwad’: Scientist Claims Big Bang Disproven By James Webb Space Telescope, Gets Wrecked

Scientist Claims Big Bang Disproven By James Webb Telescope, Gets Wrecked

Superstar Kaley Cuoco was asked if she would ever &#8220;get married again&#8221; after her latest trip down the aisle has ended in her filing for a second divorce — and she did not beat around the bush with her answer.
During the 36-year-old actress&#8217; interview for the cover story for Glamour magazine&#8217;s April 2022 issue, the &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/female-tv-reviewer-freaks-out-big-bang-theory-hank-berrien">Big Bang Theory</a>&#8221; star was asked flat out if she thought another trip down the aisle was in the cards for after she filed for divorce from professional equestrian Karl Cook back in September 2021, <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/kaley-cuoco-never-getting-married-again?utm_brand=glm&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_social-type=owned&amp;mbid=social_twitter_glamourmain&amp;utm_medium=social">reported</a> the outlet in a recent piece. The two tied the knot in June 2018. She also was previously married to tennis player Ryan Sweeting from 2013 to 2016.
&#8220;I will never get married again,&#8221; Cuoco explained. &#8220;Absolutely not. You can literally put that on the cover.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
April cover star <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KaleyCuoco?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KaleyCuoco</a> gives us the low down on how she feels about marriage.<a href="https://t.co/zCPuNu2iaf">https://t.co/zCPuNu2iaf</a>
&mdash; Glamour (@glamourmag) <a href="https://twitter.com/glamourmag/status/1514645435742363654?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 14, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;I would love to have a long-lasting relationship or a partnership,&#8221; she added. &#8220;I believe in love because I&#8217;ve had incredible relationships. I know that they&#8217;re out there. I like being someone&#8217;s partner and having that companionship.&#8221;
The &#8220;Flight Attendant&#8221; star and Cook shared the news last year that the two were calling it quits with a joint statement, <a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/04/14/kaley-cuoco-will-never-get-married-again-following-karl-cook-divorce/">reported</a> Page Six at the time.
&#8220;Despite a deep love and respect for one another, we have realized that our current paths have taken us in opposite directions,&#8221; the statement read in part.
&#8220;We have made this decision together through an immense amount of respect and consideration for one another and request that you do the same in understanding that we will not be sharing any additional details or commenting further,&#8221; the statement added.
It is not the first time the &#8220;Young Sheldon&#8221; star has said she was done with the institution of marriage. The last time came after her and Sweeting broke up. In April 2018,  Cuoco told <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/a19631902/kaley-cuoco-may-2018/">Cosmopolitan</a> magazine that she never thought she&#8217;d ever marry again until she met then-fiancé Cook.
&#8220;I honestly thought I wouldn&#8217;t get married again,&#8221; Cuoco explained.  &#8220;My ex ruined that word for me.&#8221;
&#8220;I married someone the first time who completely changed,&#8221; she added. &#8220;The person I ended up with was not the person I originally met. And that wasn&#8217;t my fault — that was his.&#8221;
&#8220;I knew how much I had to give and how much I wanted to receive,&#8221; the superstar actress continued.  &#8220;I knew I just had to be patient … I had to go through a lot of things, but it brought me to Karl.&#8221;
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/heartbreak-hollywoods-most-awesome-couple-breaks-james-barrett">HEARTBREAK: Hollywood&#8217;s Most Awesome Couple Breaks Up</a>
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ive-chosen-myself-kim-kardashian-proclaims-in-vogue-interview-amid-divorce-and-parenting-disputes-with-kanye-west">&#8216;I&#8217;ve Chosen Myself’ Kim Kardashian Proclaims In Vogue Interview Amid Divorce And Parenting Disputes With Kanye West</a>

Kaley Cuoco-2

Superstar Actress Answers Whether She Will Ever ‘Get Married Again’ After Second Time Ends In Divorce

Television

A giant $10 billion space telescope is scheduled to be rocketed into space on December 22 with the hope that it will discover the universe’s origins and the first light that ever emanated in the universe, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10306519/The-James-Webb-telescope-looks-like-giant-honeycomb.html">taking humanity back</a> to the Big Bang.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which measures 21 feet across with silver foil as a sunshield the size of a tennis court, has been in the making for 25 years at a cost of almost $10 billion and is scheduled to launch from Europe&#8217;s spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
Once in place, it will emit 458 gigabits of data a day for up to ten years. The telescope’s field of view is 15 times wider than the Hubble Telescope and gathers six times more light, JWST is considered one hundred times more powerful than the 31-year-old Hubble.
Light emitted by the earliest stars and galaxies hits the Earth as infra-red light, which the Webb telescope is able to ascertain, but the telescope must maintain a cold temperature to do so, requiring it to go much farther into space than the Hubble. The Big Bang is estimated to have occurred roughly 13.8 billion years ago. The JWST is estimated to be able to see light from at least 13.5 billion years ago.
Systems engineer Amy Lo told <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-webb-space-telescope-60-minutes-2021-12-12/">CBS News</a>, “At the bottom of the spacecraft, that silver shroud is a parasol, big as a tennis court, to shield Webb from the sun. Above, there are 21 feet of gold-plated mirrors, six times bigger than Hubble&#8217;s mirror, to catch the earliest star light in creation.” She spoke of the 18 hexagonal mirrors, saying, “All 18 images will form one very nice, solid image. That image would be invisible to the human eye. Like a night vision camera, Webb is designed to see heat — infrared light — because that&#8217;s the only signature left from the stars at the edge of time. Even that glow will be so dim the mirrors will have to squint for hours to expose an image.”
Astrophysicist Amber Straughn added, “Everything we know about, everything we can see, me and you, everything on the planet, all the hundreds of billions of other galaxies, all of that only makes up about 5% of the universe. The rest of it, that other 95%, we have no idea what it is. That 95% &#8211;the unknown&#8211;is all around us like a ghost.  Nearly all the cosmos is made up of what physicists call, in desperation, dark matter and dark energy. Never seen, scientists infer they must exist because they&#8217;re the best explanation for how galaxies form and move.”
“It&#8217;s like we have this 14-billion-year-old story of the universe, but we&#8217;re missing that first chapter,” she continued. “And Webb was specifically designed to allow us to see those very first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. Now, galaxies are born and then they evolve, they change over time, and this way that galaxies change must rely critically on dark matter. And Webb is going to allow us to observe that process of galaxy evolution in much more detail.”

FRANCE-OVERSEAS-GUIANA-SPACE

Big Bang Revealed: Telescope Launched Next Week Might See First Light In Universe

This week, astronomers announced that they had discovered the most distant quasar and earliest known supermassive black hole ever found, and the quasar that was discovered took them back as close as humans have been to the Big Bang.
As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/14/world/most-distant-quasar-black-hole-scn-trnd/index.html?utm_term=link&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twCNN&amp;utm_content=2021-01-15T09%3A01%3A04">CNN</a> reported, “This quasar is a thousand times more luminous than our Milky Way galaxy, and it&#8217;s powered by the earliest known supermassive black hole. The light from this quasar took more than 13 billion years to reach Earth, and astronomers were able to observe it as the quasar appeared just 670 million years after the Big Bang.”
Many scientists <a href="https://www.gemini.edu/pr/monster-black-hole-found-early-universe">currently believe</a> that after the Big Bang, atoms could not interact and form stars and galaxies, as they were too far from one another. But roughly 400 hundred million years after the Big Bang came the Epoch of Reionization, in which stars and galaxies were formed.
“The process of forming a quasar likely begins when a supermassive star collapses into a &#8216;normal&#8217; stellar black hole at the end of its life,&#8221; James Maynard explained on <a href="https://medium.com/the-cosmic-companion/finding-j0313-1806-the-most-distant-quasar-ever-seen-51ec506d8333">Medium</a>. &#8220;Over time, black holes can merge, eventually forming supermassive black holes. With a steady supply of material, these objects can outshine brighter than their home galaxies.”
Quasars, powered by black holes, create gas and dust when gas enters them; that gas and dust then emits electromagnetic energy. Jets emerging from the quasars emit gas and dust which then form stars. The recently-discovered quasar, J0313-1806, has a black hole engine twice the size of the largest one yet discovered.
“This supermassive black hole is seen radiating vast quantities of radiation when the Universe was just five percent of the current age of the Cosmos,&#8221; Maynard wrote. &#8220;This body is 20 million light years more distant than the previous record-holder for the most distant quasar known, discovered just three years ago.&#8221;
Xiaohui Fan, study coauthor and regents professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, stated, &#8220;The most distant quasars are crucial for understanding how the earliest black holes formed and for understanding cosmic reionization — the last major phase transition of our Universe,” adding, &#8220;We think those supermassive black holes were the reason why many of the big galaxies stopped forming stars at some point.”
Feige Wang, lead study author and NASA Hubble fellow at the University of Arizona, stated, &#8220;This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole is affecting the galaxy around it. From observations of less distant galaxies, we know that this has to happen, but we have never seen it happening so early in the Universe.&#8221;
&#8220;Black holes created by the very first massive stars could not have grown this large in only a few hundred million years,” Wang added, concluding: &#8220;This would be a great target to investigate the formation of the earliest supermassive black holes. We also hope to learn more about the effect of quasar outflows on their host galaxy — as well as to learn how the most massive galaxies formed in the early Universe.&#8221;

Black hole

Most Distant Quasar, Huge Black Hole Found Taking Scientists Back To Dawn Of Universe

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