There has been a hypothesis for some time that the universe greatly expanded immediately after the Big Bang, expanding faster than the speed of light. As the idea goes, this happened between 10^−36 seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between 10^−33 and 10^−32 seconds. The universe expanded by 10^26-fold (or possibliy much more) during that time.
This week, astrophysicists announced that they have observational evidence for the inflation hypothesis. Which apparently is consistent with the idea that there may be many other universes. Somewhere, the shade of Friar Bruno must be laughing.
In other space news, the STEREO A spacecraft detected a solar flare and coronal mass ejection in 2012, which ht the spacecraft. The magnetic polarity of the storm would have been very bad news if it had hit our world. When one factors in the angular velocity of the Earth and the rotational speed of the Sun, the storm missed us by nine days.
Avoiding A Heated Debate
47 minutes ago
1 comment:
Dear Miss Fit:
Stanford put out <a href='https://t.co/KlHE4rXgun">a video</a> showing one of the BICEP2 team going to the home of Prof. Linde, who proposed the inflation theory 30 years ago, to inform him of the confirmation. It needs to be seen by any kid considering a life in science...this is what a 'win' looks like.
Regards,
Frank
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