iT'S ALL truLY wONDROUS, YES SIREE YES INDEEDY DO !!!!!
jang.com.pk excerpt
Hindu cosmology which has proved right in its other predictions says
the Universe goes in
40b cycles when God Shiva destroys it by opening his third eye. When
the first atom bomb was tested
the maker Oppenheimer remembered the words of the Hindu scriptures
where an explosive produces a
similar mushroom cloud , the words of God Krishna - 'I am become death
, destroyer of worlds'. Of
course the Hindus lost the secret of the atomic bombs when they forgot
Sanskrit and adopted English.
Surely there is enough dark and strange matter to curve the Universe ?
Prof Khwaja Masud
excerpt jang.com.pk
Before the world began to believe that the earth was round, Galileo
had to undergo imprisonment and
Bruno was burnt at the stake in 1600, because he not only affirmed
that the earth was round, but
also that the universe was infinite.
A similar question has been bothering the cosmologists (those who
study the universe): Is the
universe flat? The researchers have given the answer: the universe is
flat.
The implications of this discovery are as radical as when humanity
discovered that the earth was
round. How have the astronomers come to this conclusion?
Two different groups of astronomers have released that the most
detailed pictures yet taken of the
most distant object that it is possible to observe with a telescope.
That object is no mere star or
galaxy. It is the entire universe, as it was, when it was only 300,000
years old - a monstrous shell
of glowing plasma left over from the Big Bang. The shell surrounds the
earth at a distance of 14
billion light years. This glow is known as the cosmic microwave
background (CMB). Balloon - borne
telescopes, so as to eliminate atmospheric distortion, have examined
the CMB. These telescopes are
named as Boomerang and Maxima. Both Boomerang and Maxima are helping
the researchers consolidate
their ideas about the fundamental nature of the universe.
They have confirmed that the glow is amazingly uniform. The CMB is
smooth and largely featureless.
But it is not completely featureless. There are tiny, irregular
variations in its brightness from
place to place.
These puny ripples were first detected in 1992 by the satellite called
the Cosmic Background
Explorer.
These ripples are important because without them the universe would be
monotonously dull. It would
have cooled from a bright, uniform fireball into a dark, uniform void.
These ripples represent
slight variations in the density of the early universe. These
variations later contracted under the
force of gravity to form galaxies, stars planets.
The shapes of the ripples have refuted several theories about what
caused the ripples in the first
place; and, therefore, how the stars and galaxies came to be.
The theory which has been confirmed is called "inflation", an
extension of the Big Bang theory that
cover the first split - second of time.
According to the theory of inflation, the universe expanded
exponentially during the early second,
at the rate much faster than it does now. It was during the transition
from this hyperactive rate of
growth to the present sedate peace that the ripples were formed.
According to Eeinstein's theory of relativity (which showed, among
other things, that time is just
another dimension, like that of space and thus created the concept of
space - time), there are two
possibilities for the geometry of universe. They can be distinguished
by asking what happens to a
pair of parallel beams of light that are fired into space. The obvious
answer is that the beams stay
parallel and never cross. If it is so, the universe is flat. In a
closed universe, the beams
eventually must cross; in an open universe, they spread apart.
We go back to the ripples in the CMB. By observing how large these
ripples appear in the sky and
comparing that with how large they ought to be, given the distance, it
is possible to deduce how
much the microwaves have converged or diverged on their journey to
earth. The new data imply that
the universe is flat. Hence the universe is open. Hence the universe
will go on expanding. The
reverse journey to the Big Bang is not possible. A universe that
contains enough mass to give it a
positive curvature is doomed to a fiery end. It will gradually stop
expanding and begin to shrink,
ultimately imploding in a cataclysmic big crunch. A universe with zero
curvature ie a flat universe
escapes the fiery demise.
Let us have a look at the history of the universe. The universe began
some 15 billion years ago.
According to the theory of creation called inflation (mentioned
above), the nascent cosmos expanded
at a furious rate in the first fractions of a # second of existence
eventually all the particles and
energy in the universe appeared. It all begain with a Big Bang: a
single point of infinitely dense
and hot matter, called a singularity, explodes spontaneously. This was
not a burst of matter into
space but rather an explosion of space itself.
A 10-43 second later than Big Bang, our universe is about the size of
a dust grain. The fundamental
forces of nature are combined in one superforce.
Propelled by the fragmenting superforce, doubling in size every 10-35
second, the universe
"inflates". Quarks and leptons, the building blocks of matter, appear
as separate entities.
By the 10-12 second after the Big Bang, cosmic strings would have
formed and later served as seeds
for galaxies. The laws of nature as observed today have emerged.
Within 10-5 second, the universe becomes a mixture of quarks, leptons
and radiations. It is cool
enough for quarks to bind together in triplets to form protons and
neutron, the building blocks of
atomic nuclei. Three minutes after the Big Bang, simple atomic nuclei,
of heavy hydrogen, helium and
lithium, form. It is too hot for atoms to hold together; they are
ripped apart by radiation as soon
as they are created.
500,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe is awash in radiation.
Galaxies take shape after five billion years. Our sun and solar system
emerge after 10 billion
years.
The fact that the universe is expanding, with every point in it
getting further away from every
other point, implies that there was a time when everything was in on
place, and the force of gravity
would have been infinite - it would be outside the ken of relativity.
Early on in the universe,
gravity has to be explained in quantum effects, rather than space -
time geometry.
Relativity explains the behaviour of the universe at large scales,
while quantum mechanics describes
the behaviour of subatomic particles. Yet the two theories collide
horribly under extreme conditions
such as times close to the Big Bang. Now, an attempt has been made to
reconcile relativity and
quantum mechanics in superstring theory, a theory of everything. If we
pull away the layers of
mystery surrounding the string theory, it reveals a universe that
consists of 11 dimensions where
the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter - from
the smallest quarks to the most
gargantuan supernovas - is generated by the vibrations of
microscopically tiny loops of energy. The
string theory is the theory of the 21st century, bound to unravel ever
more mysteries about our
universe. Let us, for the time being, rejoice that the universe is
flat, because it ends on the
happy note that the universe is going to last for ever.
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hOOROO ;-)
UNCLE wALLY ;-)
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