Science > Physics > PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 794 September 26, 2006 by PhillipF. Schewe, Ben Stein and Davide Castelvecchi
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Science > Physics |
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"Sam Wormley" |
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26 Sep 2006 02:30:40 PM |
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PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 794 September 26, 2006 by PhillipF. Schewe, Ben Stein and Davide Castelvecchi |
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 794 September 26, 2006 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein,
and Davide Castelvecchi www.aip.org/pnu
HYPERSOUND, ACOUSTIC PULSATION AT 200-GHz FREQUENCIES, has been
produced in the same kind of resonant multilayered semiconductor
cavity as used in photonics. Physicists at the Institute des
Nanosciences de Paris (France) and the Centro Atomico Bariloche and
Instituto Balseiro (Argentina) generate the high frequency sound
pulses in a solid material made of thin GaAs and AlAs layers. One
can picture the sound, excited by a femtosecond laser, as being a
short pulse of waves or equivalently as particle-like phonons,
excitations pulsing through the stack of layers. These phonons are
reflected at either end of the device, called a nanocavity, by
further layers with a much different acoustic impedance acting as
mirrors. Acoustic impedance is the acoustic analog of the
refractive index for light. Bernard Jusserand
(bernard.jusserand@insp.jussieu.fr, 33-1-4427-6980) says that he and
his colleagues hope to reach the terahertz acoustic range. The
wavelength for such “sound” is only nm in length. They believe that
a new field, nanophononics, has been inaugurated, and that the
acoustical properties of semiconductor nanodevices will become more
prominent. THz phonons, and more specifically the reported
nanocavities could, for example, be used to modulate the flow of
charges or light at high frequency and in small spaces. THz sound
might also participate in the development of powerful “acoustic
lasers” or in novel forms of tomography for imaging the interior of
opaque solids. (Huynh et al., Physical Review Letters, 15 September
2006)
ELLIPSOIDAL UNIVERSE. A new theoretical assessment of data taken by
the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) suggests that the
universe---at least that part of it that can be observed---is not
spherically symmetric, but more like an ellipsoid. The WMAP data
has served to nail down some of the most important parameters in all
of science, such as the age of the universe since the big bang (13.7
billion years), the time when the first atoms formed (380,000 years
after the big bang), and the fractions of all available energy
vested in the form of ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark
energy. One remaining oddity about the WMAP results, however,
concerns the way in which portions of the sky contribute to the
overall map of cosmic microwaves; samples of the sky smaller than
one degree across, or at the degree level, or tens of degrees seem
to be contributing radiation at expected levels. Only the largest
possible scale, that on the order of the whole sky itself (technical
term: the quadrupole moment), seems to be under-represented. Now
Leonardo Campanelli of the University of Ferrara and his colleagues
Paolo Cea and Luigi Tedesco at the University of Bari (all in Italy)
have studied what happens to the quadrupole anomaly if one supposes
that the shell from which the cosmic microwaves come toward earth is
an ellipsoid and not a sphere. This shell is called surface of last
scattering since it corresponds to that moment in history when
photons largely stopped scattering from charged particles when it
became cool enough for many of the particles to bundle themselves
into neutral atoms. If the microwave shell is an ellipsoid with an
eccentricity (non-sphericity) of about 1 %, then the WMAP quadrupole
is exactly what it should be.
This is not the first time a non-spherical universe has been
suggested, but it is the first time the idea has been applied to the
state-of-the-art WMAP data. Historically an ellipsoidal universe
would nicely parallel Johannes Kepler’s discovery that the planetary
orbits were ellipses and not circles. This adjustment in
astronomical thinking was just as revolutionary as Copernicus’
helio-centric model, and it helped Newton and others arrive at the
idea of an inverse-square law for gravitational attraction. What
could have caused the universe as a whole to be ellipsoidal?
Campanelli (campanelli@fe.infn.it), Cea and Tedesco say that a
uniform magnetic field pervading the cosmos, or a defect in the
fabric of spacetime, could bring about a nonzero eccentricity.
(Campanelli, Cea, Tedesco, Physical Review Letters, 29 September
2006 )
***********
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE is a digest of physics news items arising
from physics meetings, physics journals, newspapers and
magazines, and other news sources. It is provided free of charge
as a way of broadly disseminating information about physics and
physicists. For that reason, you are free to post it, if you like,
where others can read it, providing only that you credit AIP.
Physics News Update appears approximately once a week.
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| User: "Jan Panteltje" |
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| Title: Re: PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 794 September 26, 2006 by PhillipF. Schewe, Ben Stein and Davide Castelvecchi |
26 Sep 2006 04:00:31 PM |
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On a sunny day (Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:30:40 GMT) it happened Sam Wormley
<swormley1@mchsi.com> wrote in <AdfSg.164455$FQ1.47233@attbi_s71>:
What
could have caused the universe as a whole to be ellipsoidal?
Campanelli (campanelli@fe.infn.it), Cea and Tedesco say that a
uniform magnetic field pervading the cosmos, or a defect in the
fabric of spacetime, could bring about a nonzero eccentricity.
Or an other universe not so far away?
More then one big bang?
Seems logical, there are many stars too, why should this 'bang' be
unique?
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| User: "G. L. Bradford" |
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| Title: Re: PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 794 September 26, 2006 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein and Davide Castelvecchi |
29 Sep 2006 06:11:31 AM |
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"Jan Panteltje" <pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:efc4dq$tm3$1@emma.aioe.org...
On a sunny day (Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:30:40 GMT) it happened Sam Wormley
<swormley1@mchsi.com> wrote in <AdfSg.164455$FQ1.47233@attbi_s71>:
What
could have caused the universe as a whole to be ellipsoidal?
Campanelli (campanelli@fe.infn.it), Cea and Tedesco say that a
uniform magnetic field pervading the cosmos, or a defect in the
fabric of spacetime, could bring about a nonzero eccentricity.
Or an other universe not so far away?
More then one big bang?
Seems logical, there are many stars too, why should this 'bang' be
unique?
It's unique because it isn't really a "bang" at all. It is collapsed
remote background horizon of Unity universal, or common, to any and all of
countless local foreground universes constituent to that same Unity.
Why does the search for the so-called Big Bang go on right now in ever
more ferocious collisions within particle accelerators down and down, or
inward and ever inward, toward orders of levels ever closer to the Planck
limit? When the Planck limit and constituent Planck units ("G = c = h-bar =
k = Unity = 1" -- Roger Penrose) are a universal constancy, a universal
constant, today?! A Universal Horizon -- the Planck Horizon -- today?! It
should be because the two, one at large (the Big Bang Horizon) and one at
small (the Planck Horizon), represent the same collapsed constant, the
remote background Horizon of Unity (1) (countless constituent local
universes = Infinite Universe overall; in a non-relative depth of them a
constant of 'almighty dense', thus a non-local -- to any foreground
universe -- constant of 'almighty hot horizon' to Unity (to Merger (to
'1'))).
Hotter than the pit of Hell means absolute disorder. The measure of the
order of disorder of the Universe is "entropy." Unity, taken to its absolute
of one ('1') is absolute, or infinite, disorder. Countless foreground
universes, the infinity of foreground universes (the infinity of
infinitesimals such as us), is that infinite disorder clearly defined to a
crystal clarity. But "infinitesimal" is indistinguishable from zero ('0'),
not one ('1'). It also inherently implies plurality, the infinity of which
implies the nakedly singular infinite...or Infinite Universe = Unity = 1 (=
Merger = Merged already (a constant)).
Now you have a mess of zeroes in play, the archtype, or archtypical, of
which is of course "zero," ONE (1) big fat ZERO (0). Duality being in play.
Unity = 1, not 0. 'Infinite' is archtype. 'Infinitesimal' is archtype. But
when there are two or more infinites...bang! they are not two or more
infinites but ipso facto two or more infinitesimals. Bang! Relative to one
another they are then not two or more infinitesimals but two or more
finites. The archtype 'Finite' then being "Finite but unbounded. Finite but
without limits."
Physicists want to envision 1-dimensional "strings." Archtype: "String" or
"Superstring." I envision progressively collapsing relativity into distantly
collapsed "horizons." Archtype: "Big Bang Horizon," "Planck Horizon," "Speed
Of Light Horizon," "Horizon Of Gravity," and so on, all equalling --
finally -- the ONE (1) "Horizon of Unity (Horizon of Infinity) (Horizon of
Merger)." You've heard the saying, "All politics is local." Well, all order
is local. Out from local universes' order, the disorder that is the vigorous
and vital -- far more fertile and energetic -- Frontiers of the Wild
Universe expands, grows, increases, in heated disorder (relative to all far
cooler local universe order).
GLB
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