The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 11 (Part 2)

In our last blog and reading of the year, the second part of the eleventh chapter of The Fabric of the Cosmos” was covered. In this part of The Fabric of the Cosmos, the book talks about a period of our universe’s life that the book calls the “fuzzy patch.”  This fuzzy patch that the book is referring to is a period very early in our galaxy’s life that we are unable to observe.  This period of time would give us vital information that would increase our understanding of the inflationary era greatly.  The book says that this time period is characterized by extreme heat and extreme density.If we could observe our universe under these conditions, we could understand much more about our universe and potentially turn the theory of inflation into a fact of our universe.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 11

In Chapter eleven of The Fabric of the Cosmos, the question, “How did galaxies form as a result of a completely uniform universe?” is answered.  The book says that although our universe was uniform in the beginning of time, it was not completely and perfectly uniform.  There was a tiny lumpiness that eventually grew larger and became the galaxies that we observe today.  Buy why was there this tiny lumpiness before our galaxies were formed?  The book attributes these tiny lumps in our early universe as being a result of quantum mechanics.  The idea idea of uncertainty that comes along with quantum mechanics is what caused these disturbances, or as the book calls them, “jitters.”  These jitters are still present and are constantly occurring in today’s galaxy.  The book says that these minor jitters that occur in our galaxy could perhaps even result in other universes being created and give substance to the theory of parallel universes.  I think that these jitters give the idea of parallel universes some substance and make this theory of parallel universe more believable.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 10

In chapter ten of The Fabric of the Cosmos, the idea of inflation is first presented by Greene to the readers. He first explains the idea of inflation by comparing it to a frog perched on top of a plateau in a bowl. Just like he universe, the frog will quickly move away from the plateau and towards the bottom of the bowl. In comparison to the universe, the bottom of the bowl is equivalent to a lower energy state of the universe. The universe will naturally progress towards a state of less energy compared to the state that our universe was in before the Big Bang.
In an incredibly small amount of time the universe expanded from the size of a strand of DNA to the size of the Milky Way galaxy. The extreme increase in the expansion of pace was the exact moment that happened after the Big Bang. After the initial outburst, the expansion of space has slowed down to a more steady pace. Will the end of the universe be a reverse of the Big Bang? This section suggests that that could potentially be true, but I later in the book I learned that this is not true. What I later found out, extraordinarily, is that the universe is actually speeding up in its expansion.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 9

Chapter nine of the Fabric if the Cosmos deals with the relationship between temperature and symmetry in our universe. The book states that the universe and cosmos in general has gone through phase transitions similar to those that happen when water turns in to ice. These changes that have happened as our universe gets larger are a result of the decreasing temperature in our universe and also account for a decrease in the symmetry of our universe. One of the most interesting topics of this chapter of the Fabric of the Cosmos was the idea of a graviton- an actual particle that portrays the characteristics if gravity. Is there a connection between gravity’s elusive particle,the graviton, and the unusual and generally weak force exhibited by gravity? I think that there is a definite possibility that there is considering the fact the gravity is the most mysterious of all forces to us.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 8 (Part 3)

The third section of chapter eight of The Fabric of the Cosmos deals with the relationship between space-time and the symmetry of the universe.  When a person looks at something in the universe, he is looking through both space and time.  because this observer is looking into the past, one would assume that we could look back far enough so that we could observe the Big Bang.  This is not the case, in the books diagram, the closer we get to the Big Bang, the fuzzier the observation becomes.  On the assumption that both space-time exists and the inflation of the universe originated at the Big Bang we can learn more about what actually did happen in the first moments of the universe.  The universe must have exponentially expanded in the exact moment that the Big Bang occurred. The book says that instead of the Big Bang happening at one location, it must have happened everywhere.  This concept is difficult for me to wrap my mind around because I would have thought that the Big Bang originated at a single point.  However, this new thought that the Big Bang happened everywhere in the universe at once ames much more sense when completely thought through.  This thought agrees with the inflation that we learned about in this chapter and also agrees with the current model of space-time that we have.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 8 (Part 2)

This second part of chapter eight in The Fabric of the Cosmos deals with the stretching of space.  We know that the universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang.  When observing the universe and the speeds at which things are moving away from earth, it appears that the earth was the region from which the Big Bang started.  The book explains this view by saying that the universe is stretching.  Earth is not actually the point from which the Big Bang started, rather because of the way in which the universe is stretching, the universe appears to be expanding away from one’s point wherever that person is in the universe.  The book compared this stretching mddl of the universe to an expanding balloon with pennies on it.  This stretching of the universe further develops my concept of the symmetry of the universe.  The universe seems more likely to be symmetric in this expanding model, with time being the only asymmetric part of the universe.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 8

This section of The Fabric of the Cosmos dealt with the symmetry of space.  The section calls everything that has existed in space since the big Bang symmetric.  This symmetry is so common throughout our universe because symmetry is just a part of time.  The book compares the symmetry of space to looking at a snowflake or other object from different angles.  The snowflake would look the same for many of the angles that one looked an the snowflake, but not all the ways you look at the snowflake.  The question becomes, when relating this theory to our universe, in which ways that we look is are universe symmetric compared to not symmetric?  One of the ways that our universe is not completely symmetric is time.  As the time moves forward in the universe, things change.  If the universe were completely symmetric time would not even exist because there would be no way of recognizing that time is passing.  Basically everything would be the same forever.

The Fabric of the Cosmos Ch. 7 (Part 3)

In this most recent section of The Fabric of the Cosmos, an important question that I had been wondering about was brought up in the beginning of the chapter: “In fact, does wave function collapse really happen, and, if it does, what really goes on at the microscopic level?”  The book describes this problem as  the quantum measurement problem.  The first explanation given by the chapter deals with Bohr saying that we are looking too far into the issue and that quantum mechanics is much more shallow than we anticipate.  This resolution does not satisfy me because it seems like there truly is something underlying quantum physics.  The next explanation says that there is never actually a wave.  Instead, the different possibilities of the particles are expressed in parallel universes.  this resolution does not satisfy me because wouldn’t there have to be an infinite amount of parallel universes to satisfy the particles that make up a wave?   The final explanation, and one that makes the most sense, says that there is an uncertainty principle.  Simply, we can not know both things at once.

Does the Universe Exist if We’re Not Looking

I thought that this worksheet really brought a new aspect to the experiments we have been studying in The Fabric of the Cosmos recently.  In class we asked the question: Does a particle change the past when going through these experiments?”  The other option that could potentially be happening is that the particle knows the future.  Either way, the long range experiment with observing the quasar on earth enhances these potentially true aspect of a particle.  In the experiments we have been studying, if the particle did change the past, it would have only changed milliseconds of the past.  However, in this hypothetical observance of a distant quasar, the time that the particle would effect would be light years.  This makes me wonder how much quantum physics affects space when we observe it.  When we look at something in space, could it potentially change the way space is formed in the future? Potentially.

The Fabric of the Cosmos CH 7 (Part 2)

In the second part of chapter seven of The Fabric of the Cosmos, a development on the first experiment we studied is present.  This new experiment deals with erasing the past.  The book asks the question: Assuming you can not change the past, is there anything you can do to change something’s impact on the present?  In the experiment conducted in this section of chapter seven, an photon gun shoots photons towards a double slit screen and a detector is placed to see which slit the photon goes through.  Because the photons are being observed, as predicted two separate lines appear on a detector, but when a screen is placed in front of the detector that erases the known position of the particle, an interference pattern forms.  This experiment is similar to the earlier experiment in this chapter and I understand the results.  The thing that I do not understand about the experiment is how a screen can all of the sudden erase the position of a particle.  I do not see how that logically can work out.