The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59418 Message #2281257
Posted By: Amos
06-Mar-08 - 12:02 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
New Scientist Reports We Are Swamped:
Stephen Battersby (New Scientist.com)
We are all submerged in a sea of almost undetectable particles left over from the first few seconds of the big bang, according to the latest observations from a NASA satellite. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has confirmed the theory that the universe is filled with a fluid of cold neutrinos that remain almost entirely aloof from ordinary matter.
Cosmologists think that in the hot, dense, young universe, neutrinos should have been created in high-energy particle collisions. About two seconds after the big bang, the cauldron of colliding particles would have cooled down so much that most would not have had enough energy to interact strongly with neutrinos. The neutrinos would then have "de-coupled" from other matter and radiation.
In theory, they should still be buzzing around, a soup of slippery particles that by today has been chilled to a temperature of only 1.9 ° Celsius above absolute zero.
Now WMAP has found evidence of this cosmic gazpacho. The spacecraft, launched in 2001, has been building up a picture of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which carries a detailed imprint of the state of the universe 380,000 years after the big bang. In particular, it reveals the pattern of density fluctuations in space, the "texture" of the early universe.
Travelling at nearly the speed of light, neutrinos should have discouraged matter from forming tight clumps, and so smoothed out the texture of the universe slightly."