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The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

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Page 1: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The Revolution for the Rest of UsGeorge Musser6 October 2006

Page 2: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Zooming Out

Source: Millennium Simulation (http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/)

Page 3: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Zooming Out

Source: Millennium Simulation (http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/)

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Page 4: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The (Very) Big Picture

Page 5: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Our Lineage

Page 6: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Cosmic Lineage

Page 7: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Expansion of Space

Page 8: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Thinning Out

Page 9: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Formation of Coherent Bodies

Page 10: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The “Revolution”

Page 11: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Four Pillars of Big Bang Theory

1. Galaxy recession (expansion of space)

2. Cosmic microwave background radiation

3. Abundance of light chemical elements

4. Arrangement of galaxies

Page 12: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Pillar #1: Expansion Rate

Sources: Sandage, ApJ 307:1 (1986); de Vaucouleurs, PNAS 90:4811 (1993)

Is It Slow? Or Fast?

H0=55 km/s/Mpc H0=86 km/s/Mpc

Page 13: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Source: Freedman et al. (astro-ph/0012376)

Resolving the Dispute

Page 14: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Source: Freedman et al. (astro-ph/0012376)

Resolving the Dispute

Page 15: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Past Expansion Rate

Page 16: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Source: Saul Perlmutter, Physics Today, April 2003

Past Expansion Rate

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Decelerating

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Decelerating

Accelerating

Page 19: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Pillar #2: Afterglow

Page 20: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Source: WMAP Science Team (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_or/mr_media2.html)

COBE resolution Size of observable universe at 400,000 yr

QuickTime™ and aSorenson Video decompressorare needed to see this picture.

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Lots of Spots

Source: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/wmap3.html

Venti Grande Tall

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Pillar #3: Nucleosynthesis

Source: 2006 Particle Data Book (http://pdg.lbl.gov/2006/reviews/bigbangnucrpp.pdf)

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Pillar #4: Large-Scale Structure

Adapted from Gott et al. (astro-ph/0310571)

Page 24: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Master Power Spectrum

Source: Max Tegmark (http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/sdss.html)

Page 25: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Spots Reprise

Source: Eisenstein et al., ApJ 633:560 (2005)

Page 26: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Concordance Model

• How much stuff is there?

• What kinds of stuff?

• What is it doing?

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How Much Stuff?The Omega Problem

0.1

0.5

0.91

1.1

1.5

2

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Relative Size of Universe

Ω

Cluster 0024+1645

Theorists: Ω = 1 Observers: Ω ~ 0.3

Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1996/10/image/a

Page 28: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Settling the Omega Dispute

Source: Tegmark et al. (astro-ph/0608632)

Page 29: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

What Kinds of Stuff?

Source: Ostriker & Steinhardt, Sci Am Jan 2001

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Radiation Era and Matter Era

Page 31: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Overall Composition

Source: Ostriker & Steinhardt, Sci Am Jan 2001

Page 32: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Dark Matter Is Boring. Good!

Time

Radiation Era

Matter Era

Ato

ms

form

Dark matter

Ordinary matter

Adapted from slide by Seb Oliver (http://astronomy.sussex.ac.uk/~sjo/teach/dist2003/lecture19-lss/lecture19.ppt)

Den

sity

con

tras

t

60 kyr 400 kyr

Page 33: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Without DM, Galaxies Are Toast

Source: Max Tegmark (http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/movies_60dpi/fb_movie.html)

28% dark, 3% ordinary

19%, 12%

16%, 16% 0%, 30%

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Source: Sean Carroll (http://cosmicvariance.com/wp-images/dmmotivator_01.jpg)

Page 35: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Overall Composition

Source: Ostriker & Steinhardt, Sci Am Jan 2001

Page 36: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The Dark Energy Era

Page 37: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Cosmic Eras

Radiation Era

Matter Era

Dark Energy Era

Page 38: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Cosmic Eras

Inflation Era

Radiation Era

Matter Era

Dark Energy Era

Page 39: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Structure Formation

Source: Andrey Kravtsovhttp://cosmicweb.uchicago.edu/filaments.html)

Scale: 140 Mlyr

QuickTime™ and aYUV420 codec decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

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Summary So Far• Precision observations

• Tidy end to old debates

• Dark energy given a catchy name

But Is It Really a “Revolution”?• Same model (big bang + inflation)

• Same theoretical basis (relativity)

• Same types of observations (pillars)

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What’s the Cultural Impact?

From Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, 1686

From Annie Hall

Page 42: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Cosmology Fundamental Physics

Large Hadron Collider

• Mysteries

• The Great Big Particle Accelerator in the Sky

Page 43: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Cosmology Fundamental Physics

• Mysteries

• The Great Big Particle Accelerator in the Sky

• The Great Big Microscope in the Sky

Page 44: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The Tree of PhysicsS

impl

er

Page 45: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Hierarchy of Scaleaka The devil isn’t in the details.

Page 46: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Holographic Principle

Page 47: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Possibility vs. Actualityaka What can be, is. (Or is it?)

Page 48: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The Oddities of an Infinite

(or Very Large) Space

Page 49: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

• What do the laws of physics require, and what do they simply allow?

• What is mandated, and what is happenstance?

• What does happenstance mean, anyway?

• If everything that is possible doesn’t happen, then what makes the choice?

Page 50: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Cosmic Coincidence

You are here

Page 51: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

The Best May Be Yet to Come!

• Whole new particle families (Large Hadron Collider)• Evidence for extra dimensions (LHC)• Signals from before the big bang (Planck satellite,

gravitational-wave observatories)• Evidence that spacetime is discrete (gamma-ray

dispersion, interferometer fluctuations)• Detection of dark matter (particle detectors)• Tests of multiverse concept (galaxy observations,

quantum unitarity experiments)

Page 52: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006
Page 53: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Bullet Cluster Slides

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Bullet Cluster

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_082106.html

Optical (galaxies)

Page 55: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Bullet Cluster

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_082106.html

Optical (galaxies)

X-Ray (gas)

Page 56: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Bullet Cluster

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_082106.html

X-Ray (gas)

Page 57: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Bullet Cluster

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_082106.html

X-Ray (gas)

Lensing (mass)

Page 58: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Bullet Cluster

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/06_releases/press_082106.html

X-Ray (gas)

Lensing (mass)

QuickTime™ and aYUV420 codec decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Page 59: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006
Page 60: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Old Expansion Slides

Page 61: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Sources: Freedman et al. (astro-ph/0012376)

Current expansion rate

Page 62: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Sources: Freedman et al. (astro-ph/0012376)

Current expansion rate

Page 63: The Revolution for the Rest of Us George Musser 6 October 2006

Sources: Freedman et al. (astro-ph/0002376Ned Wright (http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/sne_cosmology.html)

Past expansion rateCurrent expansion rate

Best fit