Model of the Universe

I have started a new project on Kickstarter, to spread models of the Universe. You've seen globes and models of the Moon, planets and solar system. For the cost of a latte, you will have a downloadable model of the entire Universe sitting on your desktop! The model also includes the stars and constellations of the hemisphere. Any proceeds will go toward publication costs and registration at an international conference I'm invited to. Check it out and tell all your friends!

Peace Wins Over Darkness

Back in October, Darkness Can Not Drive Out Darkness, this blog pointed to the three women who shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman bring more light to the world than "dark energy." In Sunday's New York Times they were hailed again:

"In a ceremony in Oslo that repeatedly invoked gender equality and the democratic strivings of the Arab Spring, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was presented to three female activists and political leaders on Saturday for 'their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights' as peacemakers."

Sunday's Times contained no mention of the three men who divided up the Physics Prize. Perhaps claiming discovery of "dark energy" does not interest the Times writers anymore. Hint: try rewarding a woman from a challenging background. Only two women have been given the Physics Prize--Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963. The day she wins the Physics prize will easily make the front page.

UPDATE: Nick Suntzeff, co-founder of the High-Z supernova search, quoted in Eric Berger's Houston Chronicle blog:

"This must be perhaps the only Nobel Prize ever awarded for a discovery for which we have no explanation, not even an inkling of one."

Higher Authority

Here is someone who has revolutionized science, was selfless in pursuit of the truth, overcame skepticism and outright prejudice, while maintaining a child's wonder about the universe. Rather than just learn equations from a book, this scientist thought up new equations! The statue of Albert Einstein sits in front of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

The sculptor, Robert Berks, gave Einstein a notebook with three of his famous equations.

E=mc^2

The most famous Einstein equation, equating energy with mass. It was published as a quick addendum to one of his 1905 papers. Einstein published 4 revolutionary papers in a short time. The world took years to realize their significance. Today E=mc^2 is ubiquitous, even to those who don't understand what it means.

eV = h $\nu$ - A

The photoelectric effect, which Einstein explained using quantum mechanics. This probably got the attention of Annalen der Physik editor Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. There was no system of "peer review" in 1905; publication of papers was solely the decision of editors like Planck. If not for Planck, Einstein might have waited indefinitely to be published. Einstein's solution to the photoelectric effect was the official reason for his 1921 Nobel Prize, for even in 1921 Relativity was controversial.

Ruv-½guvR=-κTuv

The Einstein equation for gravitation, part of his General Theory of Relativity published in 1915. General Relativity predicted that gravity is actually a curvature of Space/Time. Einstein tried to apply this curvature to the entire universe, imagining it as a sphere of four dimensions rather than 3. We move in the 3-D surface of the sphere. Photons travel like satellites in orbit around the sphere with velocity c.

Einstein realized that the gravity which causes Space to be curved into a sphere would also cause it to collapse, unless it were expanding. Einstein could have predicted an expanding universe, which would have been one of history's great scientific predictions. Certainly the prediction would have been ridiculed at first. 15 years later Edwin Hubble's observations would show that the universe was indeed expanding.

To support his spherical Space/Time, Einstein added a repulsive "cosmological constant" to the equation. When Hubble showed that the universe was expanding, Einstein removed the constant. Later Einstein would call the CC his greatest blunder. Recently it has been fashionable to add the repulsive constant again. So far, Einstein has still not been convinced. His notebook shows that there is no cosmological constant.

We can learn a lot from Einstein. The very formulation of original equations is proof of his unusual mind. Finding equations that made testable predictions made Einstein even more special. We learn that even Nobel Prize winners make blunders. The inclusion of a cosmological constant also hides another prediction, that the speed of light c is not always constant.

NEXT: We visit another Nobel Prize Winner.

Austin

The way to Washington has a detour to Austin, Capitol of Texas. Austin is also well known for its lively music and arts scene. Near 6th Street you can see the home of author O. Henry. In late August Austin hosted the Armadillo Con science fiction convention. The weekend of September 24-25 6th Street was cordoned off for the Pecan Street Festival, full of live entertainment. That same week Austin hosted the joint annual meeting of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP) and National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP). All things change with time, and the growing size of this meeting is a sign of positive change.

At Thursday's dinner the speaker was physicist Stephen Weinberg. As many respected scientists do today, he railed about the mystery of an "accelerating" universe. He lamented cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider in the 1990's and in the same breath condemned the International Space Station. With all due respect to Dr. Weinberg, experiments on the Moon and ISS may end up solving his "dark" mystery. The answer to the accelerating puzzle may not be in dark, but in light.

Weinberg's textbook on Relativity, which nearly every graduate student must study, takes great liberties with Einstein theory. He completely omits the i factor for time, which is a key to considering Space/Time as one entity. Weinberg completely ignores the possibilities in c, the speed of light. In his book he repeats an absurdity: h = c =1. The Planck value and c are definitely not equal to 1, and this may have led a generation of physicists down a dark path. If c were constant, the only way to explain supernova redshifts is by conjuring "dark" energies.

On Friday night we heard from Astronaut Pier Sellers, who devoted much of his career to assembling ISS. He brought some more NASA video showing Space missions. As astronauts tend to be, Pier was upbeat about space stations and the future. The scientific output from ISS is just beginning. We would happily share a spacecraft with Pier.

The Whole Pie

The year's Nobel Prize for Physics is divided like a pie among three males who will receive 50, 25 and 25 percent of the loot. However the Chemistry Prize has rightly been awarded to one person, Dr. Daniel Schechtman. He discovered quasicrystals, a new form of crystalline matter in 1982. Dr. Schechtman, 70, has waited 29 years for his prize.

At one time scientists thought that crystals only formed in repeating patterns. The quasicrystals found by Schechtman formed mathematical patterns that never repeated. Their electrons would form in patterns of 10, a symnetry never seen before. Viewed from other directions, the crystals would exhibit fivefold symnetry. Such formations were counter to everything known to science.

Dr. Schechtman's results faced great challenges in being accepted. At first Schechtman was handed a crystallography textbook and told to reread it. Later Schechtman was asked to leave his research group. After being rejected by one journal, Schechtman's paper was published two years later by Physical Review Letters. No less a figure than Linus Pauling, who already had a Nobel Prize, denounced Schechtman. Finally 3 other scientists were convinced enough to confirm Schechtman's discovery.

Dr. Daniel Schechtman discovered a new form of crystal that had been completely overlooked by other scientists. Quasicrystals formed in patterns that were thought to be impossible. At first Schechtman was not believed, and had difficulty even being published. Few scientists believed him at first. Finally, nearly 30 years later, Schechtman has received his prize.

Eyes On the Nobel Prize

Despite evidence to the contrary, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics will be shared by 3 scientists who claimed to have discovered an "accelerating universe." They found evidence for acceleration in redshifts of distant Type Ia supernovae. Somehow science seems to have overlooked what a child might ask: what if the universe isn't accelerating but light slows down?

Next they want a Space-based experiment, once called JDEM but now called WFIRST. Such a mission could not launch until at least 7 years after the James Webb Space Telescope, 2025 at the earliest. The cost of WFIRST would be more than 1000 Nobel Prizes. Long before WFIRST or anything like it launches, there will be evidence that light slows. With all the alternatives to an accelerating universe, this prize might be premature.

Neutrinos Pass Through LIght Barrier

Neutrinos are shadowy particles that can pass right through the Earth. For a long time they were thought to be massless, now scientists know that neutrinos have a tiny mass. Neutrinos were found in three flavors: electron, muon and tau. Recently neutrinos were found to change from one flavor to another. These discoveries were not part of the Standard model of particle Physics.

CERN is known for the giant Large Hadron Collider. Built to discover the theorized Higgs boson, LHC has so far failed to find the Higgs. Scientists are beginning to doubt that the Higgs exists at all. If the Higgs boson is not found, the Standard model will be in jeopardy. Other experiments at CERN may be just as important for Physics.

Today researchers from CERN will announce that neutrinos can travel faster than light. From Nature.com:

Particles Break Light Speed Limit

The OPERA detector is located 1400 meters underground and 730 km from CERN. OPERA is designed to detect neutrinos emanating from CERN experiments. By timing neutrino travel over this baseline, researchers can say with confidence that they have exceeded the speed of light. For a long time that speed was considered an inviolable constant. As followers of this blog know, c is slowing down. All things change with time, and someday a constant speed of light will be seen as just a stipulation.

The Peasants Are Revolting

Across the globe, from Tripoli to Texas, people are protesting their national governments. Often these regimes are composed of an elite few who have lost touch with reality. They try to stay in power by controlling what the press is allowed to publish. In this way they can set terms of debate, and marginalize dissent. Despite their attempts to stay in power, regimes are being swept away.

In the science world, there is growing resistance to the idea of "dark energy." In turn, DE has led to doubts and confusion about dark matter. A former string theorist, now exiled to China, writes in Alpha Meme:

"The public repulsion against dark matter and dark energy is really annoying. Rob Knop at scientopia compares it to 17th century catholic church mentality; Ethan picks it up and bangs the dark matter explains everything drum although dark matter does not fit very well to galaxy rotation curves – Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) fits much better:"

The "dark energy" link to Wikipedia clearly states that DE is a "hypothetical" form if energy. The link from a former member of the Supernova Cosmology Project, one group which claimed to discover DE, is equally dismissive of the public. He now blogs from Squamish, British Columbia:

"I am regularly struck, when giving public outreach talks, or when hearing the topic of Dark Matter discussed amongst the general non-Astronomer public, at the separation between acceptance of Dark Matter between astronomers and the general (informed) public. (The general public at large probably doesn't have enough of a clue about Dark Matter even to have a wrong opinion, alas!)"

Remarks like this will alienate the public which funds science. In turn this will lead to more ridicule for "dark energy" and its advocates. The idea of a repulsive energy has been very bad for science. When will the scientists admit that the Emperor has no clothes? A simple expression like GM=tc^3 shines light on these dark mysteries.

Higgs To Be Confirmed, Or Not

A headline in Christian Science Monitor confidently states:

The God Particle Existence To Be Confirmed by 2012

This refers to the elusive Higgs Boson, whose existence is predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The term "God Particle" was coined by physicist Leon Lederman in the 1990's while seeking funding for the Superconducting Supercollider. When that project was cancelled by the Clinton administration, it was a huge setback for US science. Physicists had to find work in other fields, like cosmology.

Since SSC was cancelled, the Large Hadron Collider has been built in Europe. Though the headline predicts a discovery, so far LHC has found no Higgs. The phase space it could inhabit has grown smaller. By 2012 LHC may have found no Higgs at all.

In big ticket projects, there is a great danger of overconfidence. Scientists must justify their funding by predicting what they will discover. Gravity Probe B was designed to find evidence of relativistic frame dragging. Though the data proved difficult to separate fr noise, Grav Probe 's operators concluded that they had confirmed relativity. There is great pressure to skew the results toward a preselected discovery.

Since the SSC was cancelled, many physicists moved into studies of the Universe. In the late 1990's they claimed discovery of a repulsive "dark energy" causing the universe to accelerate. Following the habits of Physics, they developed a "standard model" for cosmology. Results of other experiments, such as WMAP, were interpreted as confirming the model. As in the Higgs search, there is great danger of overconfidence. Future experiments may confirm that "standard models" are wrong.

End of Beyond Einstein?

With a hat tip to Steinn Sigurdsson and Kea, last week saw stories that both the Laser Interferometry Space Antenna (LISA) and an International X-Ray Observatory (IXO) were to lose funding. For years this blog been chronicling NASA's Beyond Einstein program and the effect of "dark energy." The writer attended an Observing Dark Energy Workshop and the Beyond Einstein conference in Stanford during 2004, and the 2006 HEAD meeting in San Francisco, where Principal Investigator Harvey Tanenbaum described the planned X-Ray mission. In 2007 a scientist argued before the National Research Council that emphasis on DE would be bad for science.

LISA was a plan to send 3 spacecraft in formation to detect hypothetical gravity waves. IXO evolved from CON-X, a Space-based X-Ray observatory. These were considered first priorities in the Beyond Einstein program, yet in 2007 were pushed out of line in favour of a Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM). In August 2010 JDEM was itself replaced by WFIRST, which would seek extrasolar planets and look for DE on the way. November brought news that the entire astrophysics budget would be eaten by cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope.

The WFIRST Progress Report lists as its third goal, "Supernovae as a probe of the expansion history." No explicit mention of "dark energy," which many doubt even exists. The DE advocates are reduced to sub-committee advisors in this Powerpoint plan. WFIRST is described by Steinn as "a hack of a powerpoint presentation no one else had seen." There is reason to doubt that JDEM, WFIRST or anything similar will ever fly.

Is this the end of Beyond Einstein? No by a long shot! These missions would be expensive and not launch until years in the future. The case for existence of gravitational waves is questionable--the LIGO experiment has not detected any. The evidence for "dark energy" is even shakier; the redshifts of Type Ia supernovae can be explained by GM=tc^3 and a changing speed of light. The real advances may have been accomplished with little more than pen and paper.

The local conditions of Special Relativity, which do not allow for gravity, can be linked with the curved Space/Time of General Relativity. The solution can explain much about the Universe--its size, expansion rate and whether that expansion will stop or reverse. A bit of math can explain the non-linear increase of supernova redshifts, the cosmic horizon problem, the "flatness" problem, even the 4.507034% proportion of baryons. Long before the expensive Space missions would have launched, we may already be Beyond Einstein.

Yet Another Top 50!

This scientist has not been awarded the million dollar Shaw Prize, the half million dollar Gruber Prize, a MacArthur Grant or this year's Einstein Prize. Experience shows that people who have those things remain insecure, living in fear that someone will show that cosmic acceleration doesn't exist. Instead of getting greedy for more, we are happy for all the people who do care. Another Top 50 blog list has been discovered, from Laboratorytechnician.org:

50 Phenomenal Astrophysics Blogs

"GM=tc^3: Subtitled Adventures in Space/Time, Riofrio's blog explores the cosmos with a scientific perspective and a curiosity for the unknown."

Scientific perspective and curiosity for the unknown is all one really needs. Thank you, Laboratory Technician! Science could not function without you!

Herd in Dallas

This has been a very busy week at the huge American Physical Society meeting in Dallas. APS has taken over the convention center and most of the good hotels. There was a large and attentive audience for Monday's talk: Lunar Orbit Anomaly and GM=tc^3 Cosmology. Tuesday was filled with poster sessions and meetings with APS journal editors. Wednesday started with another meeting, this one with Physical Review Letters. The Physical Society of Japan is holding a collection for tsunami relief. Scientists came from every continent to hear talks.

In front of the convention center is this sculpture of cosmologists. The herd finds it easy to follow fashionable ideas, be they "inflation" or "dark energy." Has anyone told them the awful fate that awaits the end of their journey? How inflation can never be proven experimentally? How "dark energy" will be remembered alongside ether and epicycles? As physicists head for slaughter, they feel safe in their great numbers.

The Only Constant Is Change

February's ASTRONOMY magazine features this column by Bob Berman:

The Dimensionless Constant

"Scientists are discovering our universe may not be as invariable as previously thought"

Berman's article describes the work of John Webb and Michael Murphy, who have been searching for changes in the fine-structure value $\alpha$. They are based in Australia, not New Zealand.

"In 1998, New Zealand astrophysicists studied the light from distant quasars as it passed through ancient nebulae. The way the light was absorbed revealed the value of $\alpha$ long ago. They found that in the distant past, the constant was slightly smaller than it is today. The result seemed impossible, and most astronomers simply rejected it.

"This variation in $\alpha$ violates one of the tenets of Einstein's special theory of relativity, which states that a constant must be identical no matter where and when it is measured. One physicist called this discovery "the news of the year in physics." If constants like $\alpha$ really vary, the cosmos loses its homogeneity, and dark matter and dark energy could be different in various places."

The fine-structure value $\alpha$ determines the strength of electromagnetic interactions. For some odd reason this dimensionless value is nearly equal to 1/137. It is given by ke^2/$\hbar$ c, where c is the speed of light. Changing $\alpha$ is a big indicator that the speed of light is also changing.

"Flatness"

The oddly named "flatness problem" doesn't indicate that the Universe is flat like the Earth (they are spherical) but refers to density. If the Universe were too dense, it would collapse under its own gravitation. Somehow it has a critical density $\Omega$ that allows it to expand asymptotically, slowing but never stopping or reversing its expansion. If this density varied even slightly, the imbalance would accumulate and make the Universe unstable. Old models do not solve this mystery.

A cosmology where GM = tc^3 is driven toward the stable density. The difference is made up by you and I, the matter we are made of. When the Universe is "underweight," quantum mechanics predicts that matter will appear via pair production. As we saw in the last post, the amount of this matter is the difference between $\rho$i and $\rho$f, or 4.507034%. This unique prediction is precisely confirmed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe.

In their paper on Time-Varying Speed of Light Albrecht and Maguiejo do not solve the flatness question, but suggest that a varying-c cosmology may someday answer it. Once this paper was published, Albrecht and Maguiejo discovered to their consternation that John Moffat had published a similar paper years earlier. They were all preceded by Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in 1874, so changing c is an old idea. Only in the 20th century, along with communism and fascism, did fixed c become dogma.

From their paper we can use Albrecht and Maguiejo's equation (10). Here R (not a) is scale and e is the deviation from critical density.

e = $\Omega$ - 1

edot = (1 + e)e(Rdot/R)(1 + 3w) + 2(cdot/c)e

Now we have w = 0,

From R=ct and GM=tc^3 we get:

(Rdot/R) = (2/3t) and (cdot/c) = (-1/3t)

edot = (1 + e)e(2/3t)(1 + 3w) + 2(-1/3t)e

edot = e^2 (2/3t)

Is it not reassuring that the other terms cancel? When t is low e is large and a large edot drives density toward a critical value. Today, when t is billions of years and e is very nearly zero, little mass is being created. Just as scale R began in a Bang and has been slowing since, the amount of mass creation has also been slowing and is now nearly zero.

Despite success, some people will act as if this isn't a Theory. It is painful to say that new ideas take time for others to figure out. Papers where c varies (including Albrecht and Maguiejo's) face great difficulties in publishing. Arthur Eddington joked in the 1920's that only 3 people understood Relativity, though he couldn't think of the third one! In the 21st century, we are on the way to solving "flatness" and other problems.

Remember the Alamo

The Alamo in San Antonio is where a small force of Texas rebels held off the huge Mexican army. The University of Texas at San Antonio was a brief stop on the way to Florida. Talk to the Joint Meeting October 22-24 of the American Physical Society (APS), American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and National Society of Hispanic Physicists:

GM=tc^3 Cosmology and the Moon

Relativity suggests an expanding cosmology of scale R = ct, where t is age of the Universe. Gravitation would then require that c be further related to t by: GM = tc^3. Where G and M are mass and gravitational constant, this simple expression predicts data from the microwave background, including 4.507034% baryonic matter and a stable density $ \Omega$ = 1. The non-linear increase in Type Ia supernova redshifts may be precisely predicted without repulsive energies. (Riofrio, 2004) Prediction of a changing c may be tested with modern lanterns and the distant hilltop of the Moon. Our Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment has measured the Moon's semimajor axis increasing at 3.82 ± .07 cm/yr, anomalously high. The Mansfield sediment (Bills, Ray 2000) measures lunar recession at 2.9 ± 0.6 cm/yr. More recent work accurately measures a recession rate of 2.82 ± .08 cm/yr. LLRE differs from independent experiments by 10 $\sigma$. If the speed of laser light were decaying, the Moon's apparent distance is predicted to increase by 0.935 cm/yr. An anomaly in the Moon's orbit is precisely accounted for. This interesting result may have importance for cosmology, shedding light on puzzles of "dark energy.'' In Planck units, this may be summarised as: M = R = t.

The audience at San Antonio was very intent and interested. If a scientist ever feels surrounded by adversity, remember the Alamo!

Buckyballs

The Carbon-60 molecule was first found at Rice University in 1985 by Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, Richard Smalley, and then-graduate students James Heath and Sean O'Brien. Carbon-60 was found to occur naturally in common soot. Because of its resemblance to a geodesic dome, the molecule was named the Buckminster Fullerene or Buckyball for short. In 1996 Kroto, Curl and Smalley were recognised with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. October 11-14 the discoverers were celebrated at this conference in Rice University.

Sean in particular was inspired by the Apollo program to follow a career in science. The spherical form of Carbon-60 was first proposed by R.W. Henson in 1970. Henson's idea was rejected by colleagues and was never published. The Buckyball's discovery began with cosmic dust. Diffuse Interstellar Bonds (DIB) were an unexplained astrophysical feature. Possibly unknown carbon molecules played a part. Speculation about the interstellar medium would eventually lead to Buckyballs.

When the team announced their discovery, many scientists tried to refute them. At least 6 papers were devoted to puncturing the discovery. One paper was nastily titled "C-60: a Deflated Soccer Ball." Some scientists are devoted to studying soot, and were miffed that the Buckyball team had discovered in soot what others had not. Finally in 1990 another researcher isolated a bottle of Buckyballs, vindicating the discovery..

The Nobel winners commented that "the structure of universities is counter-productive" and "Germanic."

The pressure to publish is "negative for the creative process."

At a big school like Harvard or UC they would have enjoyed little stature.

Buckyballs helped open up the new science of nanotechnology. They led to carbon nanotubes and other potentially useful products. This year, 25 years after they were found on Earth, C-60 molecules were observed in a planetary nebula by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Since the search for Buckyballs began with speculation about the interstellar medium, a discovery in Space was a fitting birthday present

Graphene Eyes the Prize

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their work on graphene, a form of carbon just one molecule thick. Unlike physicists who require expensive machines, Geim and Novoselov extracted graphene from ordinary slabs of graphite using adhesive tape. A hundred times stronger than steel, graphene has many potential uses in electronics and material science. The prize committee also recognised the duo's "playfulness." In 1997 Geim used a magnetic field to levitate a frog, earning an Ignobel prize.

Once again there was no prize for "dark energy." At least one blogger predicted that 2010 would be DE's year. The New York Times, which has been a tireless promoter of DE, has long been predicting that it would win a Nobel. Even if "dark energy" existed, it would have no conceivable use. It would be too diffuse in Space to power a watch, much less levitate a frog. As this blog has noted, a shrinking number of scientists believe that DE exists at all. Better luck next time, guys.

A Constant not Constant?

Back on Earth, there was an interesting story in Livescience:

Proton is Smaller Than Thought, new Measurement Finds

According to research published in the July 8 issue of NATURE, the size of the proton is 4 percent smaller than previously thought. The size of protons is thought to depend on the "Rydberg constant," a combination of values including Planck's value h and the speed of light c. This finding may indicate that the book value of the Rydberg is wrong, or something may be missing from Quantum Electrodynamics. "Either a theory must be revised or a supposed constant is wrong."

Being composed of values like h and c, a change in the Rydberg might mean that one or both of these changed. 330 years ago, in the time of Ole Roemer, many thought the speed of light infinite. Planck's value has only been measured for about a century. Recording these numbers in the pages of a book does not make them constant. The Rydberg is now a "supposed constant," preparing for a day when we may regard it as variable.

While we hear of Newton's gravitational constant and even a Hubble constant, a "speed of light constant" has never entered the vocabulary. Constant c is just a hypothesis barely 100 years old. It has spread through a school system that emphasis memorization by rote, telling students what to think but not how to think. Those who preach a constant speed of light look increasingly old and foolish. From a vantage point encompassing just a small part of the Universe, human concerns look small indeed.

University Defies Nature

The Contra Costa Times reported this little story. Contra Costa County is over the hills East of Berkeley. The University of California is facing serious money problems. Somehow the University and its local papers didn't want to report this.

"University of California librarians are urging professors not to submit research to Nature or 66 related journals to protest a 400 percent increase in the publisher's prices.

"A new contract with Nature Publishing Group would raise the university's subscription costs by more than 1 million, library and faculty leaders wrote in a letter this week to professors throughout the 10-campus system. With recent budget cuts, UC libraries simply can't handle the higher price, which would take effect in 2011, the letter said."

The University of California was ground zero for "dark energy." Though their press claimed the "two independent groups" made the discovery, they were far from independent. One group was led from Lawrence Berkeley Labs. the other group's lead author had offices in Campbell Hall, not 500 meters away. The "independent" groups constantly were in contact checking each other's work.

Discovery of a cosmological constant or "dark energy" was hailed by SCIENCE magazine as "discovery of the year." Funding and praise were expected to flow to researchers if they embraced the Dark Side. Instead the University faces serious budget problems and can't even afford its NATURE subscription. Most people, even astronomers, doubt that DE exists. Going to the Dark Side has led to nothing but trouble.

Rush Fans Are Loyal

This has been a busy week, but the GM=tc^3 thread at Counterparts continues! This forum is run by fans of the band Rush, who have more varied interests than most scientists. Rush has a new album and tour this year! My post from Sunday:

Hello All: Your interest is most appreciated. In this exciting year of a new Rush album and tour (in Houston September 25), it is very nice to see you take time for this thread. I've been quite busy with experiments involving the Moon, but I will answer your curiosity as much as possible. Special thanks to Nunavuter, who obviously knows a lot about science:

"The biggest revolution in cosmology since Einstein may be quietly brewing.

"The speed of light may not be as rock-steady as it has been deemed to be. Rather, the value of this fundamental constant may be changing -- slowing down -- as time passes.

"A number of observations made in recent years have pointed in this direction. If verified, we can bid goodbye to both the Inflationary Model of the early universe, and dispense with the idea of Dark Energy."

Thank you, Nuna, for your thoughtful words. To explain this Universe in a nutshell: Relativity states that Space and Time are one phenomenon, related by c. Applied to the Universe as a whole. its characteristic radius R would be our timelike distance from the Big Bang. R = ct, where t is about 13.7 billion years. As time t increases, the Universe expands.

We can imagine the Universe as a sphere of 4 dimensions, where the 3 dimensions we inhabit are confined to the surface. There is no centre in Space, but there is a centre in Time which we call a Big Bang. The fourth dimension, Time, measures our increasing distance from that centre. A spherical Universe was promoted by Einstein, Pascal, and even Edgar Allen Poe.

The Universe can't expand at the same rate forever, for mass and gravity slow it down. Speed of light c is further related to t by GM=tc^3. There are a number of ways to derive this, which Space does not allow me to describe. We can equate a particle's rest energy to its potential. We can also calculate the orbital velocity of photons orbiting a mass M. GM=tc^3 may also be derived from General Relativity. In Planck units, the two expressions combine in the even simpler form M = R = t.

To Quote Valium: "Another revolution that won't be televised." To quote Bastille: "You just KNOW that something is right, but it's going to take 100 years of 'proper data collection' to prove you right. And then you still have to fight the media and the politics."

Perhaps it would be nice to have more press, but the current media narrative focuses on "dark energy" and the failure of scientists to explain it. Most people, even its proponents, doubt that DE really exists. The hypoithetical reoulsive energy is considered a placeholder until something better comes along. Publishing papers about changing c is still quite difficult, so I appreciate your finding this. However there are ample reasons for optimism:

The inflationary paradigm is 30 years old with no compelling idea for its cause. Faster-than-light inflation violates both the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy conservation) and Relativity's stipulation that nothing travels faster than light. Inflation can never be proven--we can not time travel to the first 10^(-33) seconds to observe inflation, or even approach the titanic energies near the Big Bang.

It is impossible to prove the speed of light constant, because a better measurement can always prove that foolish. Scientists must construct elaborate hypotheses, complete with dark fudge factors, based on fixed c. There are many ways to measure c changing, some of which are being investigated.

As you may have seen in http://riofriospacetime.blogspot.com, NASA has allowed a scientist access to priceless Apollo samples from the Moon. The lunar surface is over 4 billion years old, and may offer a record of the Sun's variability. Additional data from the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, some of which is still unpublished, offers compelling evidence that c has changed.

Finally, Roger Rigid should be encouraged for trying to calculate M. However in the MKS (meter-kilogram-seconds) system, age of the Universe t is 4.34 x 10^17 seconds. Corrections are added below:

Roger: "Of the 4 variables in Louise's formula, only one is currently a guesstimate - M (the mass of the universe). The others are pretty firmly fixed.

c = 299,792,458 m/s
t = 13,750,000,000 (13,750,000,000 yrs = 4.34 x 10^17 sec)
G = 6.67428 x 10^-11

"Rearranging Louise's formula:
M = (tc^3)/G

With corrections, we get M = 1.75 x 10^53 kg. This is very close to Roger's observational estimate:

"From observation (according to wiki), we can predict that the number of stars in the universe is about 9 x 10^21.
The mass of our Sun is 2 x 10^30 kg. If our Sun is of average size for a star, the total star mass in the universe is about 1.8 x 10^52 kg."

So, Roger's estimate of star masses is very roughly 10% of M. As readers of the 2004 paper know, the baryons that stars are made of are predicted to total 4.507034%, as also observed by WMAP. From quantities measured in a lab (speed of light, graviational constant) and visible through a telescope (age of Universe, calculated from Hubble recession) one can calculate the mass of the Universe!

In conclusion, though science may appear to be gripped by dark energies, there is a light of hope. It may be possible to find the size, shape and mass of the Universe. These can be calculated from quantities found in the lab. As Aritotle suggested long ago, we may predict our Universe from pure math. It could be simple as M = R = t.

Again I appreciate the intelligence of Rush fans and your interest in diverse subjects like science.