Exploring the Extremes in the Universe

-1593 -   What can we learn about the extremes in our Universe.  These are the boundary conditions we can either observe or theorize.  Here are some of the fastest, the coldest, the rarest, the densest, extremes we can find.

                                                Boomerang  Nebula
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-----------------------  # 1593  - Extreme conditions we can find in our Universe?
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-  Imagine the fastest rotating star.  Ours rotates in about a month.  We have found a Neutron Star that is rotating 716 revolutions per second.  Typically Neutron Stars can be found rotating 30 to 50 revolutions per second.
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-  Neutron stars are 26 kilometers in diameter and packed with neutrons.  However, there are charged particles at their surface.  And, a rotating charged particle creates a rotating magnetic field.  The magnetic field acts as a drag on the rotation causing the star’s rotation to gradually slow down.  After a million years of rotation the star is still rotating 5 to 10 revolutions per second.
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-  The Neutron Star rotating 716 revolutions per second is likely pulling mass off a companion binary star.  The mass crashing into the surface is spinning the star up faster and faster.
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- The fastest star moving through space is also a Neutron Star.  It is clocked at 3,600,000 miles per hour.  This immense speed was likely generated by a supernova explosion.  If the explosion is asymmetrical one star can be shot outward in the opposite direction of the explosion.
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-  The fastest particles are Cosmic Rays that have velocities 99% of the speed of light.  Cosmic Rays are not rays at all , but, charged particles, usually protons, a hydrogen nucleus, or heavier atomic nucleus.  Some have been measured with velocities just a hares breath below the speed of light.  These tiny particles are traveling so fast their equivalent energy is the same as a baseball traveling 60 miles per hour.
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-  The fastest moving planet orbiting a star is an exoplanet the size of Jupiter.  It has an elongated orbit that whips by its host star at 529,000 miles per hour.
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-  Galactic Blackholes at the centers of galaxies can produce jets of charged particles exiting the disk at the rotating poles.  Fast moving charged particles represent an electric current.  These electric currents would be equivalent to a million, trillion amperes.
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-  The greatest vacuum created in experiments on Earth reach 500 to 1,000 atoms per cubic centimeter.  The space between galaxies might have only a few atoms spanning a 100 million lightyears.  That is equivalent to a density of 0.000,000,02 atoms per cubic centimeter.  These tremendous voids are not rare in that they represent 90% of the volume of the Universe.
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-   The coldest temperature possible is Absolute Zero at -273.15 C.  The Cosmic Microwave Background that occupies the voids of space has a radiation temperature of  2.73C above Absolute Zero, -275.88 C.  Some unusual conditions are needed to find a place colder than space itself.  This spot is the Boomerang Nebula.  The star at the center of the Nebula is blasting a solar wind outward at 370,000 miles per our.  This rapid expansion of interstellar gas is so fast as to drop the temperature to -271.10C.  If you compress gas it heats up.  If you expand gas it cools down.
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-  Perhaps  the biggest extreme in the Cosmos is the “ Singularity”.
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-  A massive star collapses when its gravity is so strong its radiation energy can not withstand the compression.  The collapse can be held up by the pressure of electrons refusing to be compressed into their nuclei.  When the gravity is so immense as to crush electrons into the protons and create neutrons the star collapses into a Neutron Star.  When even the Neutrons can not withstand the compression they can collapse into a Quark Star, and then into a Blackhole.
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-  The Blackhole is defined by a boundary at which point the compressing gravity is so strong the even light can not escape.  Called the Event Horizon it is the point where gravity bends light beams so great they fold back on themselves and never pass the boundary.
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-  But, what happens when gravity’s compression continues inside the Blackhole?  What is there to stop the collapse from continuing down to a single point.  Could the collapse continue into a “Singularity”?
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-  We do not know what happens.  The conditions are so extreme that new physics might apply.  We are simply inside the gap of our knowledge.  All the math takes us to infinities.  What does infinite density really mean?  We are at the edge of Cosmic Extremes and the boundary conditions for our Universe.  Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review:   #1- learned something new.    #2 - Didn’t read it.  #3-  very interesting.  #4-  Send another review #___ from the index.  #5-   Keep em coming.    #6-  I forwarded copies to some friends.    #7-  Don‘t send me these anymore!  #8-  I am forwarding you some questions?   Index is available with email upon request.  Some reviews are at       http://jdetrick.blogspot.com           Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to:    jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ----  “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, --   707-536-3272                                   Friday, September 27, 2013

Planets in "other" Solar Systems

-1592 -   Exoplanets we have discovered in other solar systems.  Thousands of discoveries that leave much to learn.  Already the diversity and extremes are visible.

-----------------------  # 1592  -  Planets in other Solar Systems
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-  2013  -  There have been over 1,000 planets discovered outside our Solar System.  Our Solar System has 8 planets.  This review illustrates the diversity of what we have found so far.  The 1,000 confirmed are out or over 4,000 candidates leaving many more potential planets under study.
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-  Like looking for your car keys under the lamppost, we tend to find first the larger planets that are orbiting closest to their star.  These are simply easier to detect with the methods used to detect planets. ( See the footnotes ).   As measurements get more sophisticated we will find smaller, rocky planets in habitable orbits.   Much study remains:
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-  1991  -  was the first discovery of an “ exoplanet”.  This planet was orbiting a “ pulsar”.  A pulsar is a fast rotating neutron star.  A rotating beam of radiation is emitted from the poles.  If the rotating beam is pointed towards us at times we see it as a pulse of light.  A precise pulse of light.  If it wobbles the star is being tugged by an orbiting planet.
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-  A neutron star is a dead star.  A star that is a remnant from a supernova explosion.  Somehow this explosion did not  blow away the Jupiter-size planet that also remains.
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-  1995  -  the first planet was discovered orbiting a normal star.  51 Pegasi is a Jupiter size planet orbiting its sun every 4.2 days.
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-  2012  -  Studying these planets have turned up a diversity of solar systems that were not even imagined.  This review highlights some of the more fascinating ones:
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-  A planet discovered in 2012 that is only 10% more massive than Earth.  It orbits its star that is 93% the mass of our Sun.  This planet is located in the closest star system to us just 4.36 lightyears away.  However, it is orbiting very close to its star.  0.042 Astronomical Units.  That is 0nly 4.2% of the Earth-Sun distance making it far to hot to support life, 1,200 C.
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-  It is not the hottest planet discovered.  Kepler - 70b orbits just 0.6% AU from its star that was a Red Giant just 18 million years ago.  At that time the planet was inside the bloated atmosphere of the Red Giant Star.  Today it is a hot cinder with a surface temperature of 6,930 C.
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-  Not all planets are so close to their star.  They are harder to detect in distant orbits but a planet orbiting the star Formalhaut takes 876 years to complete one revolution.  The is 5 times longer than for the planet Neptune.
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-  The oldest planet discovered is 13 billion years old.  The Universe is only 13.72 years old.  It has been around for a long time orbiting a binary system.  The two star system consists of a Pulsar and a White Dwarf star.  It takes the planet 100 years to orbit the pair and it s 2.5 times the size of Jupiter.
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-  2008  -  In the same star system where the first planet was discovered orbiting a normal star a companion planet is in orbit around the same star that is 1.4 times the size of Jupiter.  It takes only 1.1 days to orbit its star that super heats it to 2,650 C.  The planet is so hot its atmosphere has nearly all evaporated.    It is close enough for spectrums of light passing through the remaining atmosphere to have absorption lines that identify the gases.  The molecules that have been detected include water, methane, carbon monoxide, aluminum, magnesium, tin and vanadium existing in the steamy atmosphere.
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-  So far 4 stars have a system of at least 6 planets.
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-  2013  -  June  -  a star was discovered with 3 planets in its “ habitable zone”.  Habitable zone orbits are defined as those where conditions allow liquid water to exist on their surface.  The system consists of 6 planets with the 3 habitable planets orbiting at 13% and 21% AU.    The planets are orbiting closer but the star is a Red Dwarf Star about 30% the mass of our Sun.  The system is 22 lightyears away.
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-  Kepler- 11 system star is 95% the mass of our Sun.  But all 5 inner planets are orbiting so close to the star they could all fit inside the orbit of Mercury.
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-  There is a lot more diversity to add to the list.  The list keeps growing and more about planet candidates is discovered every day.  There are 36 planets under study that could be habitable under our definition.  12 of these are confirmed.  They could have the same size ,temperature, elements and age that life could have evolved.  Looking at all the twists and turns of our own evolution it seems unlikely that even under similar conditions life will be what we are familiar with.  It is a fascinating exploration.  Stay tuned, and announcement will be made shortly.
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-  Radial Velocity change is one method of planet detection.  In this case orbiting planets cause the host star to wobble around the system’s common center of gravity.  When the star orbits towards us it is blue shifted a slight amount.  When it is moving away from us it is redshifted. The velocity change is only 1 meter per second resolution for today’s technology.  We need 0.1 centimeters / second resolution to detect a single  Earth-size planet.
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-  The transit method of planet detection requires the planet to pass in front of the star in our line of sight.  When this happens the planet blocks a slight amount of light from the star.  In essence the planets shadow sweeps across the telescope.  A Jupiter size planet might dim the brightness by 1%.  To detect an Earth size planet it would be 0.01% and we would need one part per million brightness resolution to measure it.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review:   #1- learned something new.    #2 - Didn’t read it.  #3-  very interesting.  #4-  Send another review #___ from the index.  #5-   Keep em coming.    #6-  I forwarded copies to some friends.    #7-  Don‘t send me these anymore!  #8-  I am forwarding you some questions?   Index is available with email upon request.  Some reviews are at       http://jdetrick.blogspot.com           Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to:    jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ----  “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, --   707-536-3272                                   Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Quasars take us back in time

-1591 -   How do astronomers see the brightest objects in the Universe that are the farthest away?  It is the closest thing we have to a time machine.

-----------------------  # 1591  Galaxy Blackholes at a Distance
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-  Seeing galaxies at a distance requires seeing in the far infrared light.  The expansion of space over cosmic distances stretches the wavelengths of visible light making the light redder and redder until is in the infrared part of the spectrum.
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-  Quasars are the brightest objects in the Universe.  They are the result of active accretion disks orbiting Blackholes that are at the centers of distant galaxies.
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-  One of the first Quasars studied in 1963 , 3C273, had the wavelength of light shifted 16% which meant the galaxy was 2 billion lightyears away.  In 1963 it was the farthest Quasar discovered.  Today, it is the nearest known Quasar.  There are many Blackholes in the centers of galaxies that are closer, but, they are not active, or bright enough to be called Quasars.
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-   Most Blackholes at the centers of galaxies are “ sleeping”, not actively consuming material from their orbiting accretion disks.    Active Blackholes are mammoth, billions of Solar Mass, at the center of galaxies having spinning accretion disks of gas and dust.  The rings of material at the edge of the Event Horizon, closest to the Blackhole, are orbiting faster than the outer rings.  This causes friction between the fast moving and slow moving material.  This friction increases temperatures causing the material to radiate in the ultraviolet.   Electrons are stripped from their atoms, then slam into gas atoms emitting X-rays.  Rotating plasma, the rotation of charged particles,  create spinning magnetic field lines that launch material in jets at the poles, perpendicular to the rotating disk.
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-The jets that are launched out the poles slam into galactic gas that generates radio waves.  Active Blackholes create so much radiation because gas atoms are loosing and recapturing electrons.  Going from charged particles to neutral particles.  When electrons are captured by a shell of a particular atom they emit a specific energy level, which is the same as a specific wavelength of electromagnetic radiation.  For example, when hydrogen captures an electron it emit’s a define 656 nanometers wavelength, a deep red in color.  Each element will emit a defined wavelength spectrum for its particular shell energy levels.
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-  Astronomers can identify this hydrogen element ( 656.3 nanometers) at different parts of the rotating accretion disk.  Because emissions moving away from us are shifted to slightly longer wavelengths and emissions moving towards us to slightly shorter wavelengths astronomers can measure the velocity of the accretion disk rotation.   Knowing the speed of rotation they can determine the time and distance of one complete revolution.  Knowing the period of orbit astronomers can measure the mass to the Blackhole at the center.
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-  The heaviest Blackhole ( NGC 1277) was measured to be 17 billion Solar Mass.  This is 4,000 times bigger than the Blackhole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Our much smaller Blackhole is sleeping, not active.
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-  Currently, over 228,468 Quasars have been cataloged all over 1 billion years old.  Of these, about 5% are active today.  Today, of course, is looking backwards in time to a few billion years after the Big Bang.  Cosmic history reveals that there were many more active Blackholes in the early Universe then there are today.
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-  The distant Quasars and distant supernovae are measured by their brightness and by their amount of “ redshift”.  Redshift is defined as the ratio of the amount of wavelength shift to the original source wavelength.
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--------------------  redshift    =   z   =   wo  -  ws  / ws
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---------------------  wo  -  wavelength of the shifted light that is observed.
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--------------------  ws  =  wavelength of the emitted light at the source.
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-------------------  z  =  wo/ws  - 1
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-  If the original wavelength, ws, was emitted from the source at 500 nanometers.  And, the amount of shift that was observed ( wo - ws ) was 2000 nanometers, then:
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------------------------z  =  2000 / 500  - 1
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-----------------------  z  =  3
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-  A redshift of 3 is when the Universe was about 400,000 years old, called the
     Re-ionizaton Period.  This occurred after the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation was released.  The CMB radiation was shifted into the microwave spectrum, wavelengths longer than the infrared.  Re-ionization occurred later because the photons of this earlier emission slammed into gas atoms causing them to loose electrons and become ionized.
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-  The Webb Space Telescope can detect infrared spectrum out to 25,000 nanometers wavelength.  That corresponds to a redshift, z  =  49.
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------------------------z  =  25,000 / 500  - 1
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-----------------------  z  =  49
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-  A supernova of a star that is 150 Solar Mass would have a brightness Magnitude of +29 occurring 1 million years after the Big Bang.  That is about the limit of the Webb Telescope camera using a 10,000 second exposure.  The redshift in this case would correspond to about z = 25.
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-  The more positive the Magnitude the dimmer the brightness.  The faintest star visible to the naked eye is +6.  Each Magnitude step represents a factor of 2.512 brightness change, so, 5 Magnitudes is a factor of 100  .  ( 5^2.512)  =  100.
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-  A Magnitude difference of 23  ( 29 - 6 ) is ( 2.512^23)  =  The Webb telescope can see 1.6 trillion times dimmer than the naked eye can see.  The brightest objects in the Universe at the farther distances allow us to see backwards in time.  Seeing with the far-infrared telescopes is like having a time machine.

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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review:   #1- learned something new.    #2 - Didn’t read it.  #3-  very interesting.  #4-  Send another review #___ from the index.  #5-   Keep em coming.    #6-  I forwarded copies to some friends.    #7-  Don‘t send me these anymore!  #8-  I am forwarding you some questions?   Index is available with email upon request.  Some reviews are at       http://jdetrick.blogspot.com           Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to:    jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ----  “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, --   707-536-3272                                   Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Structure of the Universe

-----------------------  # 1590  -  Structure of the Universe

-1590 -   How the Universe came out of nothing to the Cosmos we observe today.  A short story about 13.7 billion years of history.

-  The Universe can be defined as “everything” we know about our existence.  Of course, there is much we do not know.  It is not our Universe yet but it is out there.  It tells us where we came from.  What was our beginning.  The irony is the more we learn and expand our Universe the more we find that we don’t know.  Our Universe is expanding.
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-  We know the Universe is expanding because the farther galaxies are moving away from us in all directions.  In fact these galaxies are all moving away from each other as the space between them is expanding at an ever increasing rate.  The more space there is between them the faster they are expanding.  The farthest expansions are separating faster than the speed of light.  The light from these sources will never reach us.
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-  We appear to be in the center of this expansion.  It is the simply the point of our observation.  The expansion is happening everywhere.  No matter where you are in the Universe you see the same thing.
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-  Because this expansion is accelerating and light has a speed limit of 186,282 miles per second, the observable Universe is disappearing at the edges.  The Observable Universe has an edge because that is as far as we can see.  The light has been traveling for 13.7 billion years, so, 13.7 billion light years is as far as we can see.  During that time it took for the farthest light to reach us the Universe was expanding out to 46 billion light years, but, we can’t see it.
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-  The force that is expanding the space is a form of anti-gravity, we call Dark Energy.  It occupies about 70% of the total mass-energy in the Observable Universe.  Some of the energy has converted to mass and that represents about 30% of the total Universe.
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-  Keep in mind the Matter and Energy are two forms of the same thing.  They are only separated by 9 * 10^16, that is 9 followed by 16 zeros, when mass is in kilograms and the speed of light is in 3 * 10^8 meters per second.
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-----------------------  E  =  mc^2
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-----------------------  Mass  =  Energy  /  c^2
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-  The most current calculations for total mass in the Universe is 31.7% with 26.8% being Dark Matter and 4.9% being Ordinary Matter.  Ordinary Matter is all the atoms, quarks and electrons along with all the other particles in the Model of Particle Physics.  Dark Matter is something that we can not see but we know it is out there because of its interaction with gravity.  It does not appear to have any interaction with electrometric energy that we use to detect all Ordinary Matter.
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-  The gravitational effect of Dark Matter appears to represent 85% of all Matter in the Universe.  26.8%  / 31.7%  =  84.5%.
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-  Dark Energy is predominate over Matter and anti- gravity is predominate over gravity.  That is why the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.  We believe in the Big Bang theory because if you run time backwards all this expanding Universe would be a contracting Universe.  It would eventually, after 13.7 billion years if the rates were the came, collapse into a single point.  Sometimes this point is revered to as a “ Singularity”.
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-  Over a large scale the Universe is extremely isotropic.  It is the same temperature and the same density ( homogeneity) in every direction.  It appears to be 2.725 Kelvin throughout all space.  In order to have this uniform temperature everywhere in the Observable Universe it all must at one time been in contact.  It is the same looking 13.7 billion light years in one direction and looking 13.7 billion lightyears in the opposite direction.  Those are 27.4 billion lightyears apart.  They could not have been in contact unless some time in the past they separated faster than the speed of light.
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-  To explain this uniformity the Theory of Cosmic Inflation proposes that in the very beginning of the Big Bang and for a very short period of time the Universe expanded doubling in size 100 times faster than the speed of light and then slowed down to the expansion rate we see today.  This allowed parts of space separated by greater than 13.7 billion light years to have uniform temperature.
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-  The Big Bang and Cosmic Inflation all came from “ nothing”.  It was the beginning of time and space created out of nothing because all the mass energy was collapsed to nothing.  Matter and anti-matter came together in equal amounts and disappeared into nothing.  Gravity and anti-gravity of Dark Energy all cancelled out and became nothing.  When the Universe began all that is known separated out in a balanced way out of nothing.  Now that is making a big deal out of nothing.  Whose idea was this anyway?
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-  As particles separated out of energy the quantum fluctuations caused some unevenness that allowed gravity to create variations in density and temperature.  We can see these temperatures today in the Cosmic Microwave Background in space.  The variations are only 1 part in 10,000 Kelvin.  Over Cosmic history these small density variations evolved into the stars and galaxies we see today.  It is the story of our existence.  Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review:   #1- learned something new.    #2 - Didn’t read it.  #3-  very interesting.  #4-  Send another review #___ from the index.  #5-   Keep em coming.    #6-  I forwarded copies to some friends.    #7-  Don‘t send me these anymore!  #8-  I am forwarding you some questions?   Index is available with email upon request.  Some reviews are at       http://jdetrick.blogspot.com           Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to:    jamesdetrick@comcast.net. ----  “Jim Detrick” -- www.facebook.com, -- www.twitter.com, --   707-536-3272                                   Monday, September 9, 2013