This program was recorded at the 12th Annual Wonderfest, the San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science.
Wonderfest's broad goals are best described by its mission statement: Through public discourse about provocative scientific questions, Wonderfest aspires to stimulate curiosity, promote careful reasoning, challenge unexamined beliefs, and encourage life-long learning.
Wonderfest achieves these ends by presenting series of scientific events to the general public. At most of these events, pairs of articulate and accomplished researchers discuss and debate compelling questions at the edge of scientific understanding.
Bio
Lloyd Knox
Professor Lloyd Knox joined the faculty at UC Davis in 2001. His research activities are in the area of cosmology and include development of data analysis methods, analysis and interpretation of data, calculation of observable consequences of models, and motivation of future observations. His research has had a very high impact on the field, as evidenced by the 3,900 citations to his 72 publications.
Chung-Pei Ma
Chung-Pei Ma is a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley.
UC Berkeley Astronomy Professor Chung-Pei Ma shows how spiral galaxies occasionally merge with one another, which, she says, will eventually happen to our own Milky Way Galaxy when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy.
Electromagnetic radiation, mostly in the microwave range, believed to be the highly redshifted residual effect (seeredshift) of the explosion billions of years ago from which, according to the big-bang model, the universe was created. It was discovered by accident in 1964 by Robert W. Wilson and Arno Penzias; its presence supports the predictions of big-bang cosmology.
Nonluminous matter not directly detectable by astronomers, hypothesized to exist because the mass of the visible matter in the universe cannot account for observed gravitational effects. Dark matter comes in two varieties: baryonic, which is about 5 percent of the universe, and nonbaryonic, which is 22 percent of the universe. The nonbaryonic dark matter is believed to consist of heavy, electromagnetically neutral particles called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).
Any of the billions of systems of stars and interstellar matter that make up the universe. Galaxies vary considerably in size, composition, structure, and activity, but nearly all are arranged in groups, or clusters, containing from a few galaxies to as many as 10,000. Each is composed of millions to trillions of stars; in many, as in the Milky Way Galaxy, nebulae can be detected. A large fraction of the bright galaxies in the sky are spiral galaxies, with a main disk in which spiral arms wind out from the centre. The arms contain the greatest concentration of a spiral galaxy's interstellar gas and dust, where stars can form. Surrounding the centre (nucleus) is a large, usually nearly spherical nuclear bulge. Outside this and the disk is a sparse, more or less spherical galactic halo. In elliptical galaxies, which vary greatly in size, stars are distributed symmetrically in a spherical or spheroidal shape. Dwarf ellipticals (with only a few million stars) are by far the most common kind of galaxy, though none is conspicuous in the sky. Irregular galaxies, such as the Magellanic Clouds, are relatively rare. Radio galaxies are very strong sources of radio waves. Seyfert galaxies, with extremely bright nuclei, often emit radio waves and may be related to quasars.
It may be true that based on the current model it is impossible for particles with mass to exceed the speed of light. However, perhaps the most important aspect of having a scientific model in the first place (beside from putting it to practical uses which requires affirmative practice and results) is actually to use it to ultimately disprove itself through the greater understanding it has provided us.
Concordantly, theories, although if you wish to make use of the predictability and therefore practicality of their models must be treated as absolute, if your aim is to better understand the universe they represent must be treated as quite dynamic.
Theories are simplified representations and as such always leave room for counter theories. The only theory that can possibly account for everything without doubt is written in the language of subatomic particles and still takes a whole universe to describe!
@antimather photon is its own anti particle. There is no "anti photon". Also no particle with "non zero rest mass" can travel at speed of light. Massive particles have to move at sub-luminous speeds. No mystery here.
Also particles moving with super-luminous speeds are called tachyons, but they are purely mathematical solution, doesn't mean that they "have to exist". They of course may exist. In fact the anti particles itself were suggested from Dirac's equation "negative solutions" but we know that they exist because there are experiments that can be done in a lab that demonstrate their existence. There is absolutely 0 evidence for tachyons and as far as I know, the whole idea is that they "cannot be observed" in principle. They as well don't exist for us.
Do We Understand Cosmic Structure?
- What is the Source of the Universe ?
Where did Existence come from?
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Now we have three ( 3) sources of the Universe:
Big bang , vacuum and God.
Which of them is correct ?
About big band and God my opinion is:
the action, when the God compressed all Universe
into his palm, physicists had named -a singular point
And action, when the God opened his palm,
physicists had named - the Big Bang
=.
And about vacuum Paul Dirac wrote:
‘ The problem of the exact description of vacuum, in my opinion,
is the basic problem now before physics. Really, if you can’t correctly
describe the vacuum, how it is possible to expect a correct description
of something more complex? ‘
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#
In the book “Evolution of Physics” Einstein and Infeld wrote:
“ We have the laws, but we are not aware what the body
of reference system they belong to, and all our physical
construction appears erected on sand ”.
They are right. Why?
Because :
The Universe ( as a whole ) is Two- Measured,
there are two Worlds: Vacuum and Gravity.
They are Parallel Worlds.
What was before Vacuum or Gravity ?
Does Gravity exist in Vacuum or vice versa?
No answer.
== .
Fact and Speculation.
1.
Fact.
The detected material mass of the matter in the Universe is so small
(the average density of all substance in the Universe is approximately
p=10^-30 g/sm^3) that it cannot ‘close’ the Universe into sphere and
therefore our Universe as whole is ‘open’, endless Vacuum.
But what to do with the infinite Universe the physicists don't know.
The concept of infinite/ eternal means nothing
to a scientists. They do not understand how they could
draw any real, concrete conclusions from this characteristic.
A notions of ‘more, less, equally, similar ’ could not
be conformed to a word infinity or eternity.
The Infinity / Eternity is something, that has no borders,
has no discontinuity; it could not be compared to anything.
Considering so, scientists came to conclusion that the
infinity/eternity defies to a physical and mathematical definition
and cannot be considered in real processes.
Therefore they have proclaimed the strict requirement
(on a level of censor of the law):
« If we want that the theory would be correct,
the infinity/eternity should be eliminated » .
Thus they direct all their mathematical abilities,
all intellectual energy to the elimination of infinity.
Therefore they invented an abstract ‘dark matter and dark energy’.
They say: ‘ 90% or more of the matter in the Universe is unseen.’
And nobody knows what it is.
2.
Speculation.
Unknown ‘dark matter ‘ it is matter which makes up the difference
between observed mass of a galaxies and calculated mass……
which….will …’close ‘ ….the Universe into sphere, as …….
as……the astrophysicists want.
Question:
How can the 99% of the Hidden ( dark ) matter in the Universe
create the 1% of the Visible matter ?
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#
Now it is considered that Newton / Einstein's laws of gravitation
are basis of physics, the first laws / source of Universe.
But the detected material mass of the matter in the Universe
is so small that gravitation field, as whole, doesn't work
in the Universe.
So, the Newton / Einstein's laws of gravitation are correct only
in the small and local part of Universe and we cannot take them
as the first ones.
What can the first law of the Universe be?
All galaxies , all gravitation fields exist in Vacuum (T=0K).
Gravitational effects took place only in a small area of Infinite Vacuum.
It is impossible to use GRT to the Universe as a whole.
Vacuum is “ The first law of the Universe.”
The Physics first of all is Aether / Vacuum.
Vacuum is the Source of the Universe .
Vacuum is the Absolute Reference Frame.
Without Eternal, Infinite Vacuum Physics makes no sense.
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Best wishes.
Israel Sadovnik. Socratus.
...
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Why is there so much talk of mass in the universe? I think we build to much of our theorys on einsteins e=mc2... I find it more interesting to take away mass from the equation, because it opens a hole lot of other possibilities than what scientists allready work on. Photons can be eaten by black holes, so is there "antiphotons" since obviously matter and antimatter exists? And is there possible that mass can travel at the speed of light? And in theory, if mass is taken out of the equation anything coulb travel in the speed of light or faster with the right amount of force. So could dark matter be the counter-part of light, "antiphotons"?