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The Higgs boson is delightfully stirring the mud puddle in the astrophysics community even after found! Instead of clearing everything up, now more questions have to be asked.
British cosmologists are puzzled: they predict that the universe should not have lasted for more than a second. This startling conclusion is the result of combining the latest observations of the sky with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. Robert Hogan of King's College London (KCL) presents the new research on June 24 at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth.
The controversy seems to be about one of the predictions of BICEP2 allegedly being observed, and if so, Robert Hogan seems to think that if they did see this effect, then the universe would not exist today, it would have went straight to 'Big Crunch' right after the 'Big Bang'.
Pop the corn, this may be a good one!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @10:36PM
It is only lasting for one second. But our perception is skewed by time dilation. C'mon, do I have to do everything for these guys?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday June 25 2014, @11:08AM
My question is how fast am I moving? Relative to the Earth, I am quite slow, but how fast am I moving in relation to the Universe? Not just the observed universe, as the boundaries of just how far out we can sense has been expanding since I was a kid. I get the idea that we see our redshifts and draw conclusions from the observed data, but I get the strong idea we have only scratched the surface of what is out there.
I get the idea that in the absolute frame of things, I am traveling extremely close to the speed of light. The time dilation resulting from that velocity is why I am experiencing time. Everything around me is also going at that same speed, with only infinitesimal differences in velocity.
I do not report this as any sort of fact... its just my concept of why I think we have time.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday June 25 2014, @03:08PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @04:55PM
We do however have the CMB which provides us with, if nothing else, a bath of radiation relative to which we can define "preferred observers" (those who see a CMB without a dipole caused by Doppler effects). It's the nearest thing to an absolute reference frame we're going to get -- and it isn't very near, since it's nothing more than a consequence of relativity rather than a central tenet of physics -- and relative to the CMB we seem to be moving at around 330km/s.
So the best answer we're going to be able to give to the guy you're replying to is "around 330km/s".