TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Tizer]

Watch out if you go to India for a holiday. Take care and wear some lead shoes if you go walking on the beach in Kerala. I had one of those "Not many people know that" moments today when I discovered that the sand on the beaches in the south-west of India is rich in a mineral called monazite which is a good source of rare earth metals. Not only that, it contains thorium and is radioactive. The sand is dug out from the beaches and even dredged from the sea, both on an industrial scale and the area supplies much of the world's monazite. You'd get more than just a suntan lying on one of those beaches!

[Stanley]

I'll bear that in mind......

[Tripps]

I've heard on the media today that billions of years ago a very dense (!) object about the size of a marble went bang, and in a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, expanded, faster than the speed of light, to the size of the present universe, and led to the existence all the matter we can see today - galaxies etc. All from one marble! Everyone seems very impressed with this research, and there is talk of a Nobel Prize. All the commentators received the news with awe and respect. I doubt any understood what was being said.

Sorry for being flippant - I can't help it - but I don't believe a word of it.

[Stanley]

See this LINK for a report.
David, pretty well confirmed science now. The big puzzle is what was the 'singularity' that kicked it all off. Who lit the blue touch paper?

[plaques]

I can never get to grips with "gravity". Yes I understand that a butty will always fall jam downwards but does gravity really come in quantum lumps and does it move at the speed of light ? Far too many questions still to be resolved. I'll join the "not convinced" club.

[hartley353]

An echo of the big bang heard at the pole, who do they think they are kidding, at the same time as another bunch decide saturated fats are not bad for you. They don't do themselves any favours.

[Stanley]

"An echo of the big bang heard at the pole, who do they think they are kidding, at the same time as another bunch decide saturated fats are not bad for you. They don't do themselves any favours."
So there you are, Hartley has spoken, everyone who disagrees is out of step.

[hartley353]

You are catching on quick Stanley!

[Bruff]

''An echo of the big bang heard at the pole, who do they think they are kidding......they don't do themselves any favours.''

I know. A voice whispered on a hilltop in North Yorkshire is heard on a hill top in New Zealand, who do they think they are kidding. I think it's witchcraft myself. Magic.

Seriously, this is the chap who, on another thread, notes he's 'holding out' for fusion as the answer to our energy needs, a technology that'll require a certain facility among people for advanced mathematics and theoretical physics. You couldn't make it up.

''I can never get to grips with "gravity"........does gravity really come in quantum lumps and does it move at the speed of light''

Don't understand what you mean by 'quantum lump' - is this the packages of energy, or quanta, kicked out?

Last question, theory says 'yes' (there are arguments). Theory suggests gravity (strictly speaking, the gravitational wave) moves at the speed of light (strictly speaking the maximum speed for any interaction, not just light). Experiments will be needed to confirm this and folk have looked to measure the decay of binary pulsars for example to test the theory (there are again arguments).

Which is a good illustration of the merits of the science, as it's a demonstration of the consensus-building and discarding of 'knowledge' as the theory and experiment develops. If you're that way inclined of course. You could always think it's magic. Or assume that because folk argue about things, the thing they argue about must be wrong. Which is a bit silly, really.

Richard Broughton

[Pluggy]

I remember reading a Science fiction many years ago where gravity occurred instantaneously at the remote destination. They had gravity detectors that could detect a ship at great distance, and the gravity detector said it had moved long before the visual confirmation. Looks like they debunked that one.....

[Pluggy]

You are catching on quick Stanley!

As close as we're going to get that Hartley is a self confessed troll ?

[plaques]

Bruff, Those tiny fractions of a second after the big bang are in the realms of metaphysics rather than anything we know in our standard models. Alan Guth’s explanation of inflation is an attempt to fill the void between the singularity and what we know today as matter. I could equally argue, if that’s the right word, since the starting point is “nothing” ie: no mass, no time, just “nothing” then the expansion could take place in a zero time band. TIME would then only appear after the conditions which created mass happened.
As you pointed out, a theory is neither right or wrong until someone proves otherwise. When Jodrell Bank’s array telescope gets going we might get some more interesting answers.

[Stanley]

It's all quite simple really if you place any weight on the latest research. String theory developed into brane theory (from membrane) and this posits that two realities can meet at a point and transfer properties and perhaps even matter. Therefore, there is the possibility that the lack of detected matter could be down to transference from another parallel universe, brane theory posits that there could be an infinite number of these. Perhaps the Singularity is this point of contact and transference. I hope that's clear.....
As for me 'catching on', dream on....

[Bruff]

Plaques - thank you. A very interesting post. I have a very good, if typically difficult, book on 'time' by Julian Barbour, 'The End of Time'. An interesting character: a respected English theoretician, he holds first and second degrees in physics, but has never held a position at a University. He essentially earned money for him and his family through his translating Russian research papers into English.

Richard Broughton

[hartley353]

You are catching on quick Stanley!

As close as we're going to get that Hartley is a self confessed troll ?

I don,t understand your reference to mythical beings, But I would suggest your tendency to brevity shows a lack of understanding.

[Bruff]

Bit brief for me that response...............

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Hee hee! Quite...... See this LINK for a brief explanation of brane cosmology.

[plaques]

Bruff, Book now ordered. Paracetamol already in stock. Thanks for the recommendation.

[Whyperion]

An echo of the big bang heard at the pole, who do they think they are kidding,

I think the reason listening at the poles is that generally background noise is much much less than other places.

[hartley353]

There is not much to do at the poles, sensory deprivation may be the reason for hearing things.

[Bruff]

Interesting.

Assuming the post immediately above is not a joke, is that effect manifest in submariners? There's not 'much to do' in a submarine either. Well, if by 'not much to do' one means admire a splendid and varied vista on your morning constitutional, or take in a footy match, or ride a bus, or catch a fish. There are of course, 'plenty' of other things to do in a submarine as there is in say the British Antarctic Survey......

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I think all those pesky scientists and technicians working there would have a bit of a laugh!

[Tizer]

It's typical for me that I go away for a week's holiday, relaxing and ignoring the news, and when I return I find that the Universe has been created in all the newspapers and on TV. Coincidentally, while on holiday I started reading the 4th book in the Science of Discworld series, having read and thoroughly enjoyed the previous three volumes. These books are a mixture of serious science and hilarious Discworld fiction, although it often seems that (and Hartley will like this) the science bits are the fiction and the Discworld fantasy is more `real'. The Discworld chapters are written by Terry Pratchett while the science is by Professor Ian Stewart and Dr Jack Cohen. The first book in the series is summarised on this Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld

[Stanley]

I heard a lady on World Service this morning predicting a Nobel Prize for the latest discovery about the echo. (LINK) She was saying that all that was needed now was confirmation from parallel experiments. She made the interesting comparison with the Higgs Boson that because the search was done on multiple experiments at the LHC, the announcement wasn't made until it had been confirmed.

[hartley353]

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Now they discuss Nobel prizes for folks hearing nothing. Defies all reason.