- 2840 - CMB - cosmic microwave background echo? We only understand a bit about 5% of the Universe that is ordinary matter and we are clueless about 95% of the Universe that is Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Astronomers are getting better instruments into space that can measure the granularity of the CMB with higher resolution and they can begin measuring the polarization of the photons.
- The Big Bang blast created sound waves that can be heard even today. The sound waves of alternately compressed and rarefied regions of plasma were transmitted through the plasma must like sound waves travel through air.
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- Sound waves are an “analogy” easier for us to comprehend. Another explanation for the hotter and cooler regions is that in its primordial beginning the Universe was smaller than an atom. It was subject to Quantum Uncertainties of the sub-atomic scale. These quantum fluctuations were the beginning of the variations in pressures, densities, and energies that grew into the density patterns we call “sound waves” from the Big Bang.
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- Plasma is a soup of ionized particles and photons that first emerged after the Big Bang. Ionized particles are atomic nuclei that have lost their electrons and therefore become electrically charged. Charged particles scattered the photons and made the plasma opaque.
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- “Hearing” these sound waves from the Big Bang requires some interpretation by astronomers. When the ionized particles expanded and cooled down from millions of degrees Kelvin to 3,000K the electromagnetic force between positive and negative charged particles overcame the thermal energy of the explosion and came together.
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- When the electrons and protons united they became neutral hydrogen and helium atoms. The photons were then no longer being scattered by ionized particles and were free to expand with space. At the instant of release the pattern of density variations became frozen into what is now called the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. The density patterns are the sound waves. The density patterns appear as hotter and colder temperature patterns on the CMB radiation.
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- The CMB is like looking at a cloud in the sky. What you see is the surface of the cloud. You see the instant the light waves left the water vapor. Beyond the surface the light is scattered by the water vapor. The cloud is opaque beyond its surface. The CMB is the surface of the expanding opaque, ionized plasma that neutralize and released photons from scattering.
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- When the photons left the surface they were 3,000 Kelvin. Today they are 2.7 Kelvin, which is less than 3 degrees above absolute zero. The reason the photons are lower temperature by a factor of 1000 is that the Universe has expanded by a factor of 1000 over the time span of 13,700,000,000 years. The temperatures get cooler because the photons loose energy.
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--------------------------------- E = h * f = h * c / w.
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- Energy of a photon is directly proportional to frequency (f) and indirectly proportional to wavelength (w). “h” is Planck’s constant and “c” is the speed of light constant . The loss of energy is translated into lower frequencies and longer wavelengths.
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- The longer wavelengths are due to the stretching of space in the expansion of the Universe. When the photons left the surface of the plasma they were Gamma Rays of short wavelengths. Today the CMB photons are microwave frequencies and much longer wavelengths.
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- Today the average temperature of the CMB is 2.725 K. On top of this average is the slight variations in temperature due to the sound waves that created denser and hotter regions and rarified and cooler regions.
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- These variations are very small, one part in 100,000. That means the temperature varies from 2.72501 K to 2.72500 K. That takes some very sensitive instrumentation to detect. These temperature variations are granular in nature with their hot-cold alterations.
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- At 17 degrees of arc the variations are 40 millionths of a Kelvin from the average. At 1 degree of arc they are 85 millionths of a Kelvin. And, at 0.1 degree of arc back down to 30 millionths of a Kelvin. The maximum granularity occurs at 1 degree of arc.
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- The 1 degree scale matches up well with astronomer’s calculations that this scale after 13,700,000,000 years would have grown to the scale of galaxies and clusters of galaxies we see today. In other words, the denser, hotter regions eventually became stars and galaxies, and, the rarefied, colder regions eventually became voids and interstellar space.
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- The sound waves from the Big Bang were like striking a Big Bell. The sound created was a fundamental frequency and the overtone harmonics at integer higher frequencies. The higher frequencies experienced different energy transitions in the expansion of the Universe.
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- Astronomers can separate these frequencies from the data and measure the energies in each of the harmonics. The data from studying these acoustic signals in the CMB have allowed them to calculate the age, composition and geometry of the Universe. (Amazing!!)
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- The age of the Universe is 13,700,000,000 years.
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- The photons from the CMB have traveled 45,000,000,000 lightyears, but, much of that travel was the expansion of space as the Universe expanded. The photons have traveled in time 13,700,000,000 years.
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------------------------------------ The composition of the Universe is:
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------------------------ 5% ---------- ordinary matter
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------------------------ 25% ---------- Dark Matter
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------------------------ 70% ---------- Dark Energy
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- The geometry of the Universe is nearly flat.
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- The composition calculations come from measuring the amplitude of the first harmonic. By measuring the loss of energy of the first harmonic frequency versus the fundamental frequency astronomers can calculate the ratio of the ordinary matter to the total matter/energy in the Universe.
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- Ordinary matter constitutes only 5% of the Critical Density needed to explain the expansion of the Universe. The calculations of density from these sound waves in the CMB is 10^-29 grams per cm^3.
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- This is a very small amount of mass, but it is equal to the Critical Density of Mass / Energy needed to just balance the expansion of the Universe so that it neither collapses under gravity nor accelerates its expansion. If the balance was perfect the Universe would be perfectly flat geometrically.
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- However, current evidence is that the Universe is Saddle Shaped geometrically. There is not enough density above the Critical Density to keep it from expanding forever. In fact the amount of Dark Energy, or “vacuum energy“, is enough to accelerate the rate of expansion into infinity.
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- By measuring the loss of energy in the 2nd and 3rd harmonic frequencies astronomers have calculated the Dark Matter to be 5 time the density of ordinary matter. Dark Matter is 25% of the Critical Density in the Universe.
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- That leaves 75% that we do not know what it is. We call it “Dark Energy” and we believe it is vacuum energy responsible for the accelerating expansion of the Universe. (This acceleration was discovered by astronomers in 1998.)
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- The CMB and all visible galaxies in the Universe is the Observable Universe. The total Universe is much bigger, and we can’t see that because it is beyond the distance light can travel since the Big Bang.
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- More Universe exists because shortly after the Big Bang the expansion of space was faster than light. This is called Cosmic Inflation and it occurred when the force of gravity split off from the other three forces, the electro weak forces. It happened between 10^-43 and 10^-36 seconds through a phase transition that expanded space by 10^100 times.
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- This growth was enormously faster than the speed of light. It did not violate the Theory of Relativity because it was space expanding and no object that was traveling faster than the speed of light.
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- You can see the results of the CMB discoveries. The CMB was the biggest boon to astronomy since the telescope. But, its new discoveries have uncovered new mysteries.
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- You can see the CMB radiation by tuning your old CRT TV between channels, easy to do if you have an analog tuner. When you see the ”snow” on the screen, about 1% of that static in your receiver is coming from the CMB.
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- Now, we only understand a bit about 5% of the Universe that is ordinary matter and we are clueless about 95% of the Universe that is Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
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- Astronomers are getting better instruments into space that can measure the granularity of the CMB with higher resolution and they can begin measuring the polarization of the photons. This new data will likely lead to even more discoveries and more mysteries.
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- September 24, 2020 823 2840
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--------------------- --- Thursday, September 24, 2020 ---------------------------
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