[extropy-chat] Big Sound theory

[Damien Broderick]

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/01/12/1105423539638.html?oneclick=true

Universe is flat with a ripple

January 12, 2005 - 3:02PM


Australian astronomers have discovered the so-called missing link that 
relates modern galaxies such as the Milky Way to the Big Bang that created 
the universe almost 14 billion years ago.

The breakthrough came after a decade of research by an Australian-led team 
from the Anglo-Australian Observatory.

The findings have been confirmed by independent research from the 
American-led Sloan Digital Sky Survey, announced today at a meeting of the 
American Astronomical Society in San Diego, California.

Scientists found the universe is flat, with ripples that began as the 
tiniest variations in radiation left over from the Big Bang, which many 
cosmologists believe gave birth to the universe.

As it cooled after the giant explosion, the infant universe was actually 
making a sound and those waves produced the ripples.

The way galaxies are scattered across the sky now corresponds to the sound 
waves in the early times of the cosmos, researchers have found.

The project - called the two-degree field galaxy Redshift survey - involved 
mapping the three dimensional distribution in space of 220,000 galaxies, 
using complex astronomical instruments at the Anglo-Australian telescope in 
north-western New South Wales.

A research team member and Anglo-Australian Observatory scientist, Russell 
Cannon, said the findings were of enormous importance.

"What we've done is show the pattern of the galaxies, the distribution of 
the galaxies which we see here and now, is completely consistent with this 
other pattern that's seen in remnants of the big bang," he told AAP.

The research, Dr Cannon said, added serious weight to the Big Bang theory 
about the origin of the universe.

"We've known for a long time that the best theory for the universe is the 
Big Bang - that it started in some enormous explosion in a tiny space and 
it expanded ever since," he said.

"What we can now be much more confident about is that it is the right basic 
idea, it all bolts together very nicely."

A surprise result of the research was new evidence about the expansion of 
the universe.

Scientists had believed the universe was expanding but was gradually 
slowing down because the force of the gravity should be pulling it back 
together.

"So the idea was that we started with an explosion, it blows out but it 
gradually goes slower as it's expanding," Dr Cannon said.

"What the observations have proved is that it's not expanding, it's 
accelerating. It means that some other force is at work or some other 
physics. It's not just the simple gravity picture we had to start with."

The decade of research, Dr Cannon said, had also taken astronomy forward as 
a science.

"It's moved cosmology from what was almost a philosophical discussion to 
what you might call a proper bit of science, of physics, where we're 
measuring numbers and we're able to do a proper comparison of these 
theories and observations."

- AAP