Friday, December 29, 2017

A Little Science Update

Well, you all know by now about my love for quantum physics. Anyway, here we go:



Science #WhoaScience

SEP 21, 2017 @ 10:00 AM 312,480 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets

The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning, After All


NASA / GSFC

A Universe that expands and cools today, like ours does, must have been hotter and denser in the past. Initially, the Big Bang was regarded as the singularity from which this ultimate, hot, dense state emerged. But we know better today.


The Universe began not with a whimper, but with a bang! At least, that's what you're commonly told: the Universe and everything in it came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Space, time, and all the matter and energy within began from a singular point, and then expanded and cooled, giving rise over billions of years to the atoms, stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies spread out across the billions of light years that make up our observable Universe. 


It's a compelling, beautiful picture that explains so much of what we see, from the present large-scale structure of the Universe's two trillion galaxies to the leftover glow of radiation permeating all of existence. Unfortunately, it's also wrong, and scientists have known this for almost 40 years.

Vesto Slipher, (1917): Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 56, 403


First noted by Vesto Slipher, the more distant a galaxy is, on average, the faster it's observed to recede away from us. For years, this defied explanation, until Hubble's observations allowed us to put the pieces together: the Universe was expanding.

The idea of the Big Bang first came about back in the 1920s and 1930s. When we looked out at distant galaxies, we discovered something peculiar: the farther away from us they were, the faster they appeared to be receding from us. According to the predictions of Einstein's General Relativity, a static Universe would be gravitationally unstable; everything needed to either be moving away from one another or collapsing towards one another if the fabric of space obeyed his laws. 


The observation of this apparent recession taught us that the Universe was expanding today, and if things are getting farther apart as time goes on, it means they were closer together in the distant past.

NASA / STScI / A. Felid


If you look farther and farther away, you also look farther and farther into the past. The earlier you go, the hotter and denser, as well as less-evolved, the Universe turns out to be.

An expanding Universe doesn't just mean that things get farther apart as time goes on, it also means that the light existing in the Universe stretches in wavelength as we travel forward in time. Since wavelength determines energy (shorter is more energetic), that means the Universe cools as we age, and hence things were hotter in the past.


Extrapolate this back far enough, and you'll come to a time where everything was so hot that not even neutral atoms could form. If this picture were correct, we should see a leftover glow of radiation today, in all directions, that had cooled to just a few degrees above absolute zero. The discovery of this Cosmic Microwave Background in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson was a breathtaking confirmation of the Big Bang.

NASA / WMAP Science Team


According to the original observations of Penzias and Wilson, the galactic plane emitted some astrophysical sources of radiation (center), but above and below, all that remained was a near-perfect, uniform background of radiation.


It's tempting, therefore, to keep extrapolating backwards in time, to when the Universe was even hotter, denser, and more compact. If you continue to go back, you'll find:

·         A time where it was too hot to form atomic nuclei, where the radiation was so hot that any bound protons-and-neutrons would be blasted apart.

·         A time where matter and antimatter pairs could spontaneously form, as the Universe is so energetic that pairs of particles/antiparticles can spontaneously be created.

·         A time where individual protons and neutrons break down into a quark-gluon plasma, as the temperatures and densities are so high that the Universe becomes denser than the inside of an atomic nucleus.

·         And finally, a time where the density and temperature rise to infinite values, as all the matter and energy in the Universe are contained within a single point: a singularity.

This very final point — this singularity that represents where the laws of physics break down — also is understood to represent the origin of space and time. This was the ultimate idea of the Big Bang.

NASA / CXC / M.Weiss


If we extrapolate all the way back, we get to earlier, hotter, and denser states. Does this culminate in a singularity, where the laws of physics themselves break down?

Of course, everything except that last point has been confirmed to be true! We've created quark-gluon plasmas in the lab; we've created matter-antimatter pairs; we've done the calculations for which light elements should form and in what abundances during the early stages of the Universe, made the measurements, and found that they match with the Big Bang's predictions. 


Coming forward even farther, we've measured the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background and seen how gravitationally bound structures like stars and galaxies form and grow. Everywhere we look, we find a tremendous agreement between theory and observation. The Big Bang looks like a winner.

Chris Blake and Sam Moorfield


The density fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background provide the seeds for modern cosmic structure to form, including stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, filaments, and large-scale cosmic voids.


Except, that is, in a few regards. Three specific things you would expect from the Big Bang didn't happen. In particular:

1.      The Universe doesn't have different temperatures in different directions, even though an area billions of light-years away in one direction never had time (since the Big Bang) to interact with or exchange information with an area billions of light-years in the opposite direction.

2.     The Universe doesn't have a measurable spatial curvature that's different from zero, even though a Universe that's perfectly spatially flat requires a perfect balance between the initial expansion and the matter-and-radiation density.

3.      The Universe doesn't have any leftover ultra-high-energy relics from the earliest times, even though the temperatures that would create these relics should have existed if the Universe were arbitrarily hot.

Theorists thinking about these problems started thinking of alternatives to a "singularity" to the Big Bang, and rather of what could recreate that hot, dense, expanding, cooling state while avoiding these problems. In December of 1979, Alan Guth hit upon a solution.

E. Siegel / Beyond The Galaxy


In an inflating Universe, there's energy inherent to space itself, causing an exponential expansion. There's always a non-zero probability that inflation will end (denoted by a red 'X') at any time, giving rise to a hot, dense state where the Universe is full of matter and radiation. But in regions where it doesn't end, space continues to inflate.


Instead of an arbitrarily hot, dense state, the Universe could have begun from a state where there was no matter, no radiation, no antimatter, no neutrinos, and no particles at all. All the energy present in the Universe would rather be bound up in the fabric of space itself: a form of vacuum energy, which causes the Universe to expand at an exponential rate. In this cosmic state, quantum fluctuations would still exist, and so as space expanded, these fluctuations would get stretched across the Universe, creating regions with slightly-more or slightly-less than average energy densities. 


And finally, when this phase of the Universe — this period of inflation — came to an end, that energy would get converted into matter-and-radiation, creating the hot, dense state synonymous with the Big Bang.

E. Siegel, with images derived from ESA/Planck and the DoE/NASA/ NSF interagency task force on CMB research


The quantum fluctuations inherent to space, stretched across the Universe during cosmic inflation, gave rise to the density fluctuations imprinted in the cosmic microwave background, which in turn gave rise to the stars, galaxies, and other large-scale structure in the Universe today.


This was regarded as a compelling-but-speculative idea, but there was a way to test it. If we were able to measure the fluctuations in the Big Bang's leftover glow, and they exhibited a particular pattern consistent with inflation's predictions, that would be a "smoking gun" for inflation. Furthermore, those fluctuations would have to be very small in magnitude: small enough that the Universe could never have reached the temperatures necessary to create high-energy relics, and much smaller than the temperatures and densities where space and time would appear to emerge from a singularity. In the 1990s, 2000s, and then again in the 2010s, we measured those fluctuations in detail, and found exactly that.

NASA / WMAP science team


The fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, as measured by COBE (on large scales), WMAP (on intermediate scales), and Planck (on small scales), are all consistent with not only arising from a scale-invariant set of quantum fluctuations, but of being so low in magnitude that they could not possibly have arisen from an arbitrarily hot, dense state.


The conclusion was inescapable: the hot Big Bang definitely happened, but doesn't extend to go all the way back to an arbitrarily hot and dense state. Instead, the very early Universe underwent a period of time where all of the energy that would go into the matter and radiation present today was instead bound up in the fabric of space itself. 


That period, known as cosmic inflation, came to an end and gave rise to the hot Big Bang, but never created an arbitrarily hot, dense state, nor did it create a singularity. What happened prior to inflation — or whether inflation was eternal to the past — is still an open question, but one thing is for certain: the Big Bang is not the beginning of the Universe!


Astrophysicist and author Ethan Siegel is the founder and primary writer of Starts With A Bang! His books, Treknology and Beyond The Galaxy, are available wherever books are sold.





ALSO CHECK OUT MY 2 BOOKS “THE SHAITAN” & “HOBO HANDBOOK: MEMOIRS OF A HOMELESS POET IN NEW YORK” SOLD AT THESE LOCATIONS:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/655627

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hobo-handbook-daniel-canada/1124340542?ean=2940153669205


They are not being sold on Amazon.com at this time.

To view a few sample pages or to purchase the books visit:

https://smashwords.com/books/view/573076  (Note: You must 1st remove “adult content” filter from top right hand corner of Smashword page to access the books, by clicking the “Adult Content” button before searching for the titles titles in search field).

If you want to view my Smashwords Author Profile visit:


You can also check out the comments I will be posting on these social media sites:


My Twitter account: https://twitter.com/lordlumiel
If you wish to shoot me a personal note, this is my email address: lordlumiel@yahoo.com

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

About Monthly Book Campaign


I like to thank everyone who participated in my Free book campaign @ Smashwords for the month of November-December! I'm pleased we had a good number of participants.

For those who downloaded a free copy of either The Shaitan, or Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York, I'd like to not only thank you for your support, but also encourage feedback from you concerning these two literary endeavors. And If anyone had any difficulties obtaining an electronic copy of the books with the "coupon" system, please let me know right away. I'd greatly appreciate that.

You can reach me via social media (FB or Twitter: Which are
under my name Daniel Canada. Or you can reach me via email: lordlumiel@yahoo.com).

I'm looking forward to sharing my upcoming works (hint: 2 books) with you in the months to come!

-Daniel Canada aka Obsidian




Thursday, December 14, 2017

And Now the Poetry Flows




In 20,000 Years
By Obsidian c. 2017



Man!
I ain’t kiss like that in 20,000 years!

I saw you
You were glowing like a furnace
In the Latin Quarters of town
Your cheeks were flushed like Christmas time
Nervous, I checked my pocket watch
It had stopped at 12 midnight, just like my heart
But what the hell! Time is just an illusion
Am I dreaming? You are a dream
I don’t know how all this business happened
But we closed the distance between
Each other on the trolley car
The city of Old San Juan screamed out below us
And we kissed like we were hungry for something
Like we wanted to start a revolution

Your tongue felt like wet velvet
It was slippery and illusive
And I chased after it
I
Chased it as if it was an I.Q. test
I must admit I was flummoxed
Taking a step back I bore witness
To your statuesque face
And wondered who started this fire?
Was it us or The Carthaginians?
It had to have been the Persians
They worshipped Mithra

Forget about all that!

Our stop came too soon
We missed it
Sometimes it’s good to be lost
So we closed the distance between us once more
And kissed like we were trying to save the world
All the while I was thinking to myself

Man! 
I ain’t kissed like that in 20,000 years!  

Once again I am please to announce that this month I will be offering a FREE download of my 2 books: The Shaitan and The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York.
Both ebooks are available online @ Smashword

With this announcement I am adding all the coupon information you will need to obtain your FREE copy of my books on the Smashword site in which this one month offering is being made available.


So get ready for this special treat and check it out as soon as you can! I also welcome any feedback from you the readers. You can contact me either via FaceBook or by email: lordlumiel@yahoo.com

Here are the instructions: Go to Smashword sites https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/573076 for The Shaitan and https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/655627 for The
Hobob Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York.

Click on the "Buy with Coupon" button on the right, which takes you to another page. Click "Apply with Coupon" button on the bottom right and you are home free!

[In case you need it, the code for The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York is: CD75W The code for The Shaitan is: BE23Z]

(If anyone has any trouble with this process, please notify me ASAP, either by FB or my email address: lordlumiel@yahoo.com)

Bon appetitto!

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

I Struck a Poetry Vein




KABALA
By Obsidian c.2017


When my ka reunites with the ba
Ooo lalala
Kabala

You said you were tired of this sacred tree
So you ate the forbidden fruit
Which set you free
Yet free from the torment of who?
Was it the torment of me?
Or was it the torment of you?

But what if the light at the end of the
Tunnel is just the waning light of the moon?
What if there is no light at the end
But a darkened ocean swoon?

For I Am light
And now you are shade
Under an ancient Bodhi Tree

So when my Ka reunited with the ba
Ooo lalala
Kabala

We play with death
Because getting high brings us
Closer to the light
But we pull back
Before we ejaculate
To embrace the herald of
Another dawn’s might

You took the game too far
Now you’re a distant shout
From a distant star
In a galaxy too afar

So when your ka reunites with the ba
Ooo lalala
Kabala


When my ka
Reunited with the ba
Ooo lalala
Kabala

And there we will be
Finally free for an eternity
Alone to roam the universe divine
Under the great sacred Bodhi tree
Reborn
To fall back into the land of shade
Through the tunnel of the womb
Once again into the world of tears

Once again I am please to announce that this month I will be offering a FREE download of my 2 books: The Shaitan and The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York.
Both ebooks are available online @ Smashword

With this announcement I am adding all the coupon information you will need to obtain your FREE copy of my books on the Smashword site in which this one month offering is being made available.


So get ready for this special treat and check it out as soon as you can! I also welcome any feedback from you the readers. You can contact me either via FaceBook or by email: lordlumiel@yahoo.com

Here are the instructions: Go to Smashword sites https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/573076 for The Shaitan and https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/655627 for The
Hobob Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York.

Click on the "Buy with Coupon" button on the right, which takes you to another page. Click "Apply with Coupon" button on the bottom right and you are home free!

[In case you need it, the code for The Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York is: CD75W The code for The Shaitan is: BE23Z]

(If anyone has any trouble with this process, please notify me ASAP, either by FB or my email address: lordlumiel@yahoo.com)

Bon appetitto!