space.com— Astronomers might have seen the very first stars in the universe. If so, these are incredible stars, some 1,000 times as massive as the Sun.
Dec 18, 2006View in Crawl 4
"It is simply amazing how powerful our tech has come"hahaha digg down, that was terrible. But yes i do agree, our technology has come a long way in a very short timespan, I just can't help but wonder where we'd be now if the Romans were still around, probably be on Mars already.
i'm sorry you guys, but i'm going to have to lay the smackdown on this thread and pick on scientific inaccuracies. First off, the "sound" that they're defining isn't a conventional sound by any means. The guy took angular temperature fluctuations, fit the data with sinusoids and produced a .wav file with those frequencies. The frequencies drop as time goes on because the temperature variations in the universe spread out. ie. "the universe gets more bassy" So I don't see what you're talking about here fenderjazz; the guy arbitrarily maps angular frequencies to time frequencies so there's no basis behind saying that the "actual" sound from the big bang is at frequencies too low to hear.
They're not just arbitrary frequencies, though. By taking this cosmic microwave background radiation, you can tell how "bunched up" everything was at the beginning of our universe. You can use those clumps to come up with a feasible frequency of a sound wave (which would have happened. You can get sonic waves in things other than air). However, those frequencies would have been far too low for our ears to pick up, as can be seen from the microwave background radiation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand it.
i agree that the absence of CNO would surely allow for the formation of more massive stars but I don't know which process has greater effect. We'd have to consult the literature. Unfortunately this is final exam week and i can only afford to procrastinate on message boards and not journal websites....
the WMAP data that he's talking about is a map of the sky in temperature. You point the microwave telescope at a spot in the sky and after reducing the data, you know the temperature of the cosmic microwave background at that spot. If you move the telescope slightly you'll see a different temperature. The temperature that you see changes as you change the telescope's pointing angle. Therefore temerature varies as a function of angle. The variation is periodic at a multiple angular wavelengths (lengths of arc on the sky that characterize the temperature changes) so the author measured those frequencies in units of "per degree on the sky". All frequencies are measured as "per" something. Sound is measured in hertz which is "per second". The author took frequencies in "per degree" and made them into Hz which can be played over a speaker. That's the arbitrary change that i'm talking about.
forceflowDec 19, 2006
The idea that we can see the beginning of time is simply mind blowing.
agretDec 19, 2006
"It is simply amazing how powerful our tech has come"hahaha digg down, that was terrible. But yes i do agree, our technology has come a long way in a very short timespan, I just can't help but wonder where we'd be now if the Romans were still around, probably be on Mars already.
einstevoDec 19, 2006
i'm sorry you guys, but i'm going to have to lay the smackdown on this thread and pick on scientific inaccuracies. First off, the "sound" that they're defining isn't a conventional sound by any means. The guy took angular temperature fluctuations, fit the data with sinusoids and produced a .wav file with those frequencies. The frequencies drop as time goes on because the temperature variations in the universe spread out. ie. "the universe gets more bassy" So I don't see what you're talking about here fenderjazz; the guy arbitrarily maps angular frequencies to time frequencies so there's no basis behind saying that the "actual" sound from the big bang is at frequencies too low to hear.
fenderjazzDec 19, 2006
They're not just arbitrary frequencies, though. By taking this cosmic microwave background radiation, you can tell how "bunched up" everything was at the beginning of our universe. You can use those clumps to come up with a feasible frequency of a sound wave (which would have happened. You can get sonic waves in things other than air). However, those frequencies would have been far too low for our ears to pick up, as can be seen from the microwave background radiation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand it.
einstevoDec 19, 2006
i agree that the absence of CNO would surely allow for the formation of more massive stars but I don't know which process has greater effect. We'd have to consult the literature. Unfortunately this is final exam week and i can only afford to procrastinate on message boards and not journal websites....
einstevoDec 19, 2006
the WMAP data that he's talking about is a map of the sky in temperature. You point the microwave telescope at a spot in the sky and after reducing the data, you know the temperature of the cosmic microwave background at that spot. If you move the telescope slightly you'll see a different temperature. The temperature that you see changes as you change the telescope's pointing angle. Therefore temerature varies as a function of angle. The variation is periodic at a multiple angular wavelengths (lengths of arc on the sky that characterize the temperature changes) so the author measured those frequencies in units of "per degree on the sky". All frequencies are measured as "per" something. Sound is measured in hertz which is "per second". The author took frequencies in "per degree" and made them into Hz which can be played over a speaker. That's the arbitrary change that i'm talking about.
rationalistDec 19, 2006
Hear no reason, See no reason, Speak no reason.
pantsbanditDec 19, 2006
Universe's only object possibly seen, not on main street.