UT: WMAP Shows Evidence of Activity Before Big Bang

[bystander]

Penrose: WMAP Shows Evidence of ‘Activity’ Before Big Bang
Universe Today | Cosmology | 22 Nov 2010

WMAP data of the Cosmic Microwave Background. [i](Credit: NASA)[/i]

---

Have scientists seen evidence of time before the Big Bang, and perhaps a verification of the idea of the cyclical universe? One of the great physicists of our time, Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford, has published a new paper saying that the circular patterns seen in the WMAP mission data on the Cosmic Microwave Background suggest that space and time perhaps did not originate at the Big Bang but that our universe continually cycles through a series of “aeons,” and we have an eternal, cyclical cosmos. His paper also refutes the idea of inflation, a widely accepted theory of a period of very rapid expansion immediately following the Big Bang.

Penrose says that inflation cannot account for the very low entropy state in which the universe was thought to have been created. He and his co-author do not believe that space and time came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang, but instead, that event was just one in a series of many. Each “Big Bang” marked the start of a new aeon, and our universe is just one of many in a cyclical Universe, starting a new universe in place of the one before.

Penrose’s co-author, Vahe Gurzadyan of the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia, analyzed seven years’ worth of microwave data from WMAP, as well as data from the BOOMERanG balloon experiment in Antarctica. Penrose and Gurzadyan say they have identified regions in the microwave sky where there are concentric circles showing the radiation’s temperature is markedly smaller than elsewhere.

These circles allow us to “see through” the Big Bang into the aeon that would have existed beforehand. The circles were created when black holes “encountered” or collided with a previous aeon.

Scientists glimpse universe before the Big Bang
PhysOrg | General Physics | 23 Nov 2010

In general, asking what happened before the Big Bang is not really considered a science question. According to Big Bang theory, time did not even exist before this point roughly 13.7 billion years ago. But now, Oxford University physicist Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia have found an effect in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that allows them to "see through" the Big Bang into what came before.
...
The discovery doesn't suggest that there wasn't a Big Bang - rather, it supports the idea that there could have been many of them. The scientists explain that the CMB circles support the possibility that we live in a cyclic universe, in which the end of one “aeon” or universe triggers another Big Bang that starts another aeon, and the process repeats indefinitely. The black hole encounters that caused the circles likely occurred within the later stages of the aeon right before ours, according to the scientists.

Cosmic rebirth
Science News | Atom & Cosmos | 26 Nov 2010

[url=http://www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/66526/title/rc_Penrose_inside.jpg]Circular Reasoning[/url] [i](Credit: VG Gurzadyan/R Penrose)[/i]

---

Most cosmologists trace the birth of the universe to the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. But a new analysis of the relic radiation generated by that explosive event suggests the universe got its start eons earlier and has cycled through myriad episodes of birth and death, with the Big Bang merely the most recent in a series of starting guns.

That startling notion, proposed by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford in England and Vahe Gurzadyan of the Yerevan Physics Institute and Yerevan State University in Armenia, goes against the standard theory of cosmology known as inflation.

The researchers base their findings on circular patterns they discovered in the cosmic microwave background, the ubiquitous microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. The circular features indicate that the cosmos itself circles through epochs of endings and beginnings, Penrose and Gurzadyan assert. ...

The circular features are regions where tiny temperature variations in the otherwise uniform microwave background are smaller than average. Those features, Penrose said, cannot be explained by the highly successful inflation theory, which posits that the infant cosmos underwent an enormous growth spurt, ballooning from something on the scale of an atom to the size of a grapefruit during the universe’s first tiny fraction of a second. Inflation would erase such patterns.

Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity - VG Gurzadyan, R Penrose

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1011.3706 > 16 Nov 2010

[neufer]

Foreplay

[Beyond]

Well...at least it's a start. NO Art, not the foreplay, the seeing BEFORE the Big Bang.

[Ann]

Well, this reminds me of the time before the supernova teams had made their discovery that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating. Before that, it seemed to me as if everybody was trying to prove that the universe was about to start contracting, much to the consternation of me, the claustrophobiac. The idea of the universe actually collapsing in on itself and crunching itself out of existence - can anything be worse?

Yes, apparently, because the idea of a contracting, cyclic universe was incredibly popular, and lots and lots of people did their absolute best to dress the universe up in bouncing shoes:



I even bought a book about it way back when, and I remember that the author said that we have no actual proof of the cyclic universe at the moment, but the "bouncing universe model" is so compellingly beautiful and symmetrical that no doubt the proof of its inevitability will eventually emerge!

So I wonder if this latest foray into the cyclical universe territory is an attempt to revive that "beautiful and symmetrical" bouncing cosmos ideal. If there are circles there in the cosmic microwave background - and I'm not saying that there aren't - does their presence give strong support for the idea that the universe is on a perpetual loop?

Ann

[bystander]

Penrose’s Cyclic Cosmology
Discover Blogs | Cosmic Variance | 07 Dec 2010

Roger Penrose and his collaborator Vahe Gurzadyan made a splash recently by claiming that there was evidence in the cosmic microwave background for a pre-Big-Bang era in the history of the universe. (Here’s the paper.) The evidence takes the form of correlated circles in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, as pictured here. They claim that they have found such circles at a level of significance much higher than would be predicted in a conventional scenario, where perturbations were random and uncorrelated on various scales.

That would be pretty amazing, if true. But it looks like it isn’t. Here are two skeptical papers that just appeared on the arxiv. (Hat tip to David Spergel. Peter Coles was an early skeptic.)

• A search for concentric circles in the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps
  
  Authors: I. K. Wehus, H. K. Eriksen
  
  Abstract: In a recent analysis of the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps, Gurzadyan and Penrose claim to find evidence for violent pre-Big Bang activity in the form of concentric low-variance circles at high statistical significance. In this paper, we perform an independent search for such concentric low-variance circles, employing both chi^2 statistics and matched filters, and compare the results obtained from the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps with those obtained from LCDM simulations. Our main findings are the following: We do reproduce the claimed ring structures observed in the WMAP data as presented by Gurzadyan and Penrose, thereby verifying their computational procedures. However, the results from our simulations do not agree with those presented by Gurzadyan and Penrose. On the contrary we obtain a substantially larger variance in our simulations, to the extent that the observed WMAP sky maps are fully consistent with the LCDM model as measured by these statistics.
  
  No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky
  
  Authors: Adam Moss, Douglas Scott, James P. Zibin
  
  Abstract: In a recent paper, Gurzadyan & Penrose claim to have found directions on the sky centred on which are circles of anomalously low variance in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). These features are presented as evidence for a particular picture of the very early Universe. We attempted to repeat the analysis of these authors, and we can indeed confirm that such variations do exist in the temperature variance for annuli around points in the data. However, we find that this variation is entirely expected in a sky which contains the usual CMB anisotropies. In other words, properly simulated Gaussian CMB data contain just the sorts of variations claimed. Gurzadyan & Penrose have not found evidence for pre-Big Bang phenomena, but have simply re-discovered that the CMB contains structure.

The basic message is simple: sure, you can find some circles in the sky if you look there. But they are simply what you would expect from random alignments, not a new signal over and above the usual predictions. The authors here are respected CMB analyzers, and I strongly suspect that they are correct. Which reminds us of an important lesson: analyzing the CMB is hard! It’s a very messy universe out there, and if you don’t take every single source of error correctly into account, you can convince yourself of all sorts of things.

Just because this particular signal is there doesn’t mean the underlying model — Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) — isn’t right. I’m all in favor of pre-Big-Bang cosmologies myself, and Penrose more than anyone has been correct in insisting that the low entropy of our early universe is a crucial problem that is not well-addressed in modern cosmology. But I’ve been hesitant because, frankly, I don’t really get it.

As far as I know, there isn’t any exposition of the CCC in the form of a freely-available technical paper. There is a book, which hasn’t officially been released in the U.S. but you can get your hands on if you try hard enough, which I did.

• Roger Penrose, Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

Even with the book in my hands, however, I can’t quite discern the underlying physical mechanism that makes it all work.

The basic point is this. The very early universe is smooth. The universe right now is lumpy, with stars and galaxies and black holes all over the place. But the future universe will be smooth again — black holes will evaporate and the cosmological constant will disperse all the matter, leaving us nothing but empty space. (Just wait about 10100 years.) So, Penrose says, we can map the late universe onto a future phase that looks just like our early universe, simply by a conformal transformation (a change of scale). Do this an infinite number of times, and you have a cyclic cosmology — the universe goes through a series of “aeons” that start with a smooth Big Bang, get lumpy as structure forms, smooth out again, and then gets matched onto another smooth Big-Bang-like phase, etc.

If you’re sketchy on that last bit, join the club. Sure, mathematically we can map the smooth late universe onto the smooth early universe. But what physical process would actually cause that to happen? Despite having the book in my hands, I’m still unclear on this. (I absolutely confess that the answer might be in there, but I simply haven’t read it carefully enough.) While the early and late universes are both smooth, they are very different in other obvious ways, such as the energy density. What causes the low-density late universe to come alive into something like the high-density early universe? Something like that happens in the Steinhardt-Turok cyclic universe, but in order to make it happen you need to specify some particular matter fields with very specific dynamics. This isn’t a trivial task; there are things you can try, but they generally are plagued by instabilities and singularities. I don’t see where Penrose has done that, so I’m not even sure what there is to be criticized.

Regardless, I am highly skeptical of cyclic cosmologies no matter what flavor they come in. The most obvious empirical fact about our observable universe is its temporal asymmetry — the early phase is very different from the late phase, even though no such difference is to be found in the fundamental laws of physics. (I wrote a book about this, if you’re interested — Roger Penrose blurbed it.) Our goal should be to explain that asymmetry. But cyclic cosmologies simply extend it over an infinite number of cycles, without any explanation. If you took a typical state of the universe today and played it backwards in time, you wouldn’t expect to get anything like these cyclic cosmologies; it would just collapse into a mess. What you would need to do is argue that this kind of behavior arises robustly from a wide variety of possible initial conditions. If you need some special conditions, fine — but you’re not doing any better than the ordinary Big Bang.

[bystander]

No evidence of time before Big Bang
Nature News | 10 Dec 2010

Our view of the early Universe may be full of mysterious circles — and even triangles — but that doesn't mean we're seeing evidence of events that took place before the Big Bang. So says a trio of papers taking aim at a recent claim that concentric rings of uniform temperature within the cosmic microwave background — the radiation left over from the Big Bang — might, in fact, be the signatures of black holes colliding in a previous cosmic 'aeon' that existed before our Universe.

The provocative idea was posited by Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia and celebrated theoretical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford, UK. In a recent paper¹, posted on the arXiv preprint server, Gurzadyan and Penrose argue that collisions between supermassive black holes from before the Big Bang would generate spherically propagating gravitational waves that would, in turn, leave characteristic circles within the cosmic microwave background.

To verify this claim, Gurzadyan examined seven years' worth of data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, calculating the change in temperature variance within progressively larger rings around more than 10,000 points in the microwave sky. And indeed, he identified a number of rings within the WMAP data that had a temperature variance that was markedly lower than that of the surrounding sky.
...
Now Gurzadyan and Penrose's idea is being challenged by three independent studies, all posted on the arXiv server within the past few days, by Ingunn Wehus and Hans Kristian Eriksen of the University of Oslo²; Adam Moss, Douglas Scott and James Zibin of the University of British Columbia³ in Vancouver, Canada; and Amir Hajian of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto, Ontario⁴.

All three groups reproduced Gurzadyan's analysis of the WMAP data and all agree that the data do contain low-variance circles. Where they part company with the earlier work is in the significance that they attribute to these circles.
...
They point out that the WMAP data clearly show that there are far more hot and cold spots at smaller angular scales, and that it is therefore wrong to assume that the microwave sky is isotropic. All three groups searched for circular variance patterns in simulations of the cosmic microwave background that assume the basic properties of the inflationary Universe, and all found circles that are very similar to the ones in the WMAP data.

Moss and his colleagues even carried out a slight variation of the exercise and found that both the observational data and the inflationary simulations also contain concentric regions of low variance in the shape of equilateral triangles. "The result obtained by Gurzadyan and Penrose does not in any way provide evidence for Penrose's cyclical model of the Universe over standard inflation," says Zibin.

Gurzadyan dismisses the critical analyses as "absolutely trivial", arguing that there is bound to be agreement between the standard cosmological model and the WMAP data "at some confidence level" but that a different model, such as Penrose's, might fit the data "even better" " — a point he makes in a response to the three critical papers also posted on arXiv⁵. However, he is not prepared to state that the circles constitute evidence of Penrose's model. "We have found some signatures that carry properties predicted by the model," he says.

1. Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity - VG Gurzadyan, R Penrose
   • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1011.3706 > 11 Nov 2010
2. A search for concentric circles in the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps - IK Wehus, HK Eriksen
   • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1268 > 06 Dec 2010
3. No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky - A Moss, D Scott, JP Zibin
   • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1305 > 06 Dec 2010
4. Are There Echoes From The Pre-Big Bang Universe? A Search for Low Variance Circles in the CMB Sky - A Hajian
   • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1656 > 08 Dec 2010
5. More on the low variance circles in CMB sky - VG Gurzadyan, R Penrose
   • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1486 > 07 Dec 2010

[neufer]

No evidence of time before Big Bang
Nature News | 10 Dec 2010

Our view of the early Universe may be full of mysterious circles — and even triangles — but that doesn't mean we're seeing evidence of events that took place before the Big Bang. So says a trio of papers taking aim at a recent claim that concentric rings of uniform temperature within the cosmic microwave background — the radiation left over from the Big Bang — might, in fact, be the signatures of black holes colliding in a previous cosmic 'aeon' that existed before our Universe.

The provocative idea was posited by Vahe Gurzadyan and celebrated theoretical physicist Roger Penrose. In a recent paper, Gurzadyan and Penrose argue that collisions between supermassive black holes from before the Big Bang would generate spherically propagating gravitational waves that would, in turn, leave characteristic circles within the cosmic microwave background. To verify this claim, Gurzadyan examined seven years' worth of data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, calculating the change in temperature variance within progressively larger rings around more than 10,000 points in the microwave sky. And indeed, he identified a number of rings within the WMAP data that had a temperature variance that was markedly lower than that of the surrounding sky.
...
Now Gurzadyan and Penrose's idea is being challenged by three independent studies, all posted on the arXiv server within the past few days, by Ingunn Wehus and Hans Kristian Eriksen; Adam Moss, Douglas Scott and James Zibin; and Amir Hajian. All three groups reproduced Gurzadyan's analysis of the WMAP data and all agree that the data do contain low-variance circles. Where they part company with the earlier work is in the significance that they attribute to these circles. Moss and his colleagues even carried out a slight variation of the exercise and found that both the observational data and the inflationary simulations also contain concentric regions of low variance in the shape of equilateral triangles. "The result obtained by Gurzadyan and Penrose does not in any way provide evidence for Penrose's cyclical model of the Universe over standard inflation," says Zibin.

Angelika Kauffmann: L'Allegra, 1779

---

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals such as beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve. It was first made around the 16th century. It is historically associated with calling people to dinner, especially in 19th century depictions.

On a triangle instrument, one of the angles is left open, with the ends of the bar not quite touching. This causes the instrument to be of indeterminate or not settled or decided pitch. It is either suspended from one of the other corners by a piece of thin wire or gut, leaving it free to vibrate, or hooked over the hand. It is usually struck with a metal beater, giving a high-pitched, ringing tone.

Although the shape is today generally in the form of an equilateral triangle, early instruments were often formed as isosceles triangles. In the early days the triangles had jingling rings along the lower side. The triangle (known in Cajun French as a tit-fer) is popular in Cajun music where it serves as the strong beat, especially if no drums are present.

In European classical music, the triangle has been used in the western classical orchestra since the middle of the 18th century. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven all used it sparingly. The first piece to make the triangle really prominent was Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1, where it is used as a solo instrument in the third movement, giving this concerto the nickname of "triangle concerto". In the 19th century, the triangle was used in some music by Richard Wagner, such as the "Bridal chorus" from "Lohengrin".

The triangle appears to require no specialist ability to play and is often used in jokes and one liners as an archetypal instrument that requires no skill to play. The Martin Short character Ed Grimley is the best known example. However, triangle parts in classical music can be very demanding, and James Blades writes that "the triangle is by no means a simple instrument to play". In the hands of an expert it can be a surprisingly subtle and expressive instrument. Most difficulties in playing the triangle come from the complex rhythms which are sometimes written for it, although it can also be quite difficult to control the level of volume. Very quiet notes can be obtained by using a much lighter beater — knitting needles are sometimes used for the quietest notes. Composers sometimes call for a wooden beater to be used instead of a metal one, which gives a rather "duller" and quieter tone. When the instrument is played with one beater, the hand that holds the triangle can also be used to damp or slightly modify the tone. For complex rapid rhythms, the instrument may be suspended from a stand and played with two beaters, although this makes it more difficult to control.

A notable player of the triangle is John Deacon of the rock group Queen. He would play the triangle in live performances of Killer Queen, hanging it from his microphone. It can be heard in short breaks on the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi". Noted zydeco musician Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin started his musical training on the triangle as a child. The triangle also provides the trademark percussion during the opening bars of Henry Mancini's famous theme for The Pink Panther. The opening theme for Blackadder goes Forth includes Baldrick playing a single note on a triangle at the end of the song. The percussionist with the Foo Fighters had a twenty-second triangle solo in front of 85,000 people each night when the band played Wembley Stadium on the 6th & 7 June, 2008.>>

Art Grimley Tit-fer

[bystander]

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes
Technology Review | the physics arXiv blog | 13 Dec 2010

Click to view full size image

Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background.

There's something exciting afoot in world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang.

This, they say, is exactly what you'd expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. By that, they mean that each cycle ends with a big bang that starts the next cycle. In this model, the universe is a kind of cosmic Russian Doll, with all previous universes contained within the current one.

That's an extraordinary discovery: evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang.

Today, another group says they've found something else in the echo of the Big Bang. These guys start with a different model of the universe called eternal inflation. In this way of thinking, the universe we see is merely a bubble in a much larger cosmos. This cosmos is filled with other bubbles, all of which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to ours.

These bubbles probably had a violent past, jostling together and leaving "cosmic bruises" where they touched. If so, these bruises ought to be visible today in the cosmic microwave background.

Now Stephen Feeney at University College London and a few pals say they've found tentative evidence of this bruising in the form of circular patterns in cosmic microwave background. In fact, they've found four bruises, implying that our universe must have smashed into other bubbles at least four times in the past.

Again, this is an extraordinary result: the first evidence of universes beyond our own.

So, what to make of these discoveries. First, these effects could easily be a trick of the eye. As Feeney and co acknowledge: "it is rather easy to fifind all sorts of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB." That's for sure!

There are precautions statisticians can take to guard against this, which both Feeney and Penrose bring to bear in various ways.

But these are unlikely to settle the argument. In the last few weeks, several groups have confirmed Pernose's finding while others have found no evidence for it. Expect a similar pattern for Feeney's result.

The only way to settle this will be to confirm or refute the findings with better data. As luck would have it, new data is forthcoming thanks to the Planck spacecraft that is currently peering into the cosmic microwave background with more resolution and greater sensitivity than ever.

Cosmologists should have a decent data set to play with in a couple of years or so. When they get it, these circles should either spring into clear view or disappear into noise (rather like the mysterious Mars face that appeared in pictures of the red planet taken by Viking 1 and then disappeared in the higher resolution shots from the Mars Global Surveyor).

Planck should settle the matter; or, with any luck, introduce an even better mystery. In the meantime, there's going to be some fascinating discussion about this data and what it implies about the nature of the Universe. We'll be watching.

First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation - SM Feeney et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1995 > 09 Dec 2010

[neufer]

Cosmic rebirth
Science News | Atom & Cosmos | 26 Nov 2010

[url=http://www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/66526/title/rc_Penrose_inside.jpg]Circular Reasoning[/url] [i](Credit: VG Gurzadyan/R Penrose)[/i]

---

Most cosmologists trace the birth of the universe to the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. But a new analysis of the relic radiation generated by that explosive event suggests the universe got its start eons earlier and has cycled through myriad episodes of birth and death, with the Big Bang merely the most recent in a series of starting guns.

That startling notion, proposed by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford in England and Vahe Gurzadyan of the Yerevan Physics Institute and Yerevan State University in Armenia, goes against the standard theory of cosmology known as inflation.

The researchers base their findings on circular patterns they discovered in the cosmic microwave background, the ubiquitous microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. The circular features indicate that the cosmos itself circles through epochs of endings and beginnings, Penrose and Gurzadyan assert. ...

The circular features are regions where tiny temperature variations in the otherwise uniform microwave background are smaller than average. Those features, Penrose said, cannot be explained by the highly successful inflation theory, which posits that the infant cosmos underwent an enormous growth spurt, ballooning from something on the scale of an atom to the size of a grapefruit during the universe’s first tiny fraction of a second. Inflation would erase such patterns.

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes
Technology Review | the physics arXiv blog | 13 Dec 2010

Click to view full size image

Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background.

There's something exciting afoot in world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang.

Now Stephen Feeney at University College London and a few pals say they've found tentative evidence of this bruising in the form of circular patterns in cosmic microwave background. In fact, they've found four bruises, implying that our universe must have smashed into other bubbles at least four times in the past.

So, what to make of these discoveries.

Two groups of scientists looking at basically the same apparent anomalies and fitting different models to it?

<<The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in India and is used to demonstrate either the relativity, or the inexpressible nature, of truth. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement. The stories differ primarily in how the elephant's body parts are described, how violent the conflict becomes and how (or if) the conflict among the men and their perspectives is resolved.
----------------------------------------------------
The Persian Sufi poet Sanai of Ghazni in Afghanistan presented this teaching story in his The Walled Garden of Truth.[5]

Rumi, the 13th Century Persian poet and teacher of Sufism, included it in his Masnavi. In his retelling, "The Elephant in the Dark", some Hindus bring an elephant to be exhibited in a dark room. A number of men feel the elephant in the dark and, depending upon where they touch it, they believe the elephant to be like a water spout (trunk), a fan (ear), a pillar (leg) and a throne (back). Rumi uses this story as an example of the limits of individual perception:

• The sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the beast.

Rumi doesn't present a resolution to the conflict in his version, but states:

• The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another. Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and night foam-flecks are flung from the sea: oh amazing! You behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water.

----------------------------------------------------
One of the most famous versions of the 19th Century was the poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887).

The poem begins:

• • It was six men of Hindustan
    To learning much inclined,
    Who went to see the Elephant
    (Though all of them were blind),
    That each by observation
    Might satisfy his mind

They conclude that the elephant is like a wall, snake, spear, tree, fan or rope, depending upon where they touch. They have a heated debate that does not come to physical violence. But in Saxe's version, the conflict is never resolved.

• • And so these men of Hindustan
    Disputed loud and long,
    Each in his own opinion
    Exceeding stiff and strong,
    Though each was partly in the right
    And all were in the wrong.
    
    • Moral:
    So oft in theologic wars,
    The disputants, I ween,
    Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
    And prate about an Elephant
    Not one of them has seen!

[bystander]

Cosmic Radiation Features Could Suggest Our Universe Is Not Alone
Science Now | Jon Cartwright | 13 Dec 2010

If you thought the cosmos was a lot to take in, think again. Theorists have long suggested that our universe is just one of many that exist in a complex "multiverse." Now researchers have found hints that this may actually be the case.

The researchers, who claim to be the first to search observational data for the presence of a multiverse, cannot yet prove that our universe is one of many. However, their analysis, published last Friday on the arXiv preprint server, implies that more-precise data could confirm the existence of a multiverse. "It's incredibly exciting to think there is even a chance that actual observational evidence for a multiverse might be found in our lifetimes," says Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who was not involved in the study.

The possibility of a multiverse comes from inflation theory, the idea that our universe went through a rapid expansion shortly after the big bang. Pioneered by Guth and others, inflation theory does a good job of explaining why space is fairly smooth. But researchers can't explain what started the expansion and what stopped it. These problems have led theorists to consider the possibility that inflation could occur at other places and times, generating new universes parallel to our own.

[neufer]

Cosmic Radiation Features Could Suggest Our Universe Is Not Alone
Science Now | Jon Cartwright | 13 Dec 2010

The possibility of a multiverse comes from inflation theory, the idea that our universe went through a rapid expansion shortly after the big bang. Pioneered by Guth and others, inflation theory does a good job of explaining why space is fairly smooth. But researchers can't explain what started the expansion and what stopped it. These problems have led theorists to consider the possibility that inflation could occur at other places and times, generating new universes parallel to our own.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[The Code]

Hi Folks

Interesting stuff All, Great Read. So, If I read this right: Our Universe goes through cycles, Nice. Evidence of activity before Time Started, Excellent. So you don't need all the Matter/Energy in the Universe For A big Bang, Tremendous.

OJ287 Springs to mind, Which could only be: The Next Big Bang. But When?

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... -suns.html

Does the next Big Bang require, 200 billion billion solar masses? Is there a process inside super massive Black Holes that reverses The carbon manufacture Back to hydrogen? What would all this mean to GR ?

tc

[swainy (tc)]

You All sit there thinking there is nothing more economical than hydrogen fusion, Wrong! Carbon re-fusion recycles stars. Beat That! lol We really do, live in a carbon friendly Universe.

tc

[rstevenson]

Wrong! I'm, not sitting here, Thinking any. Such thing. lol

Rob

[bystander]

Space Circles Are Proof of a Pre-Big Bang Universe?
National Geographic | Daily News | 27 Dec 2010

Recycled-universe theory "works on paper," but details missing, critics say.

[bystander]

Theory of Recycled Universe Called Into Question
Wired Science | Lisa Grossman | 2011 May 13

CCC-predicted low-variance circles in CMB sky and LCDM - VG Gurzadyan, R Penrose

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1104.5675 > 29 Apr 2011

No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky - A Moss, D Scott, JP Zibin

• Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (Apr 2011) DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2011/04/033
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1305 > 06 Dec 2010 (v1),07 Apr 2011 (v3)

A Search for Concentric Circles in the 7 Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Temperature Sky Maps - IK Wehus, HK Eriksen

• Astrophysics Journal Letters 733(2) L29 (01 Jun 2011) DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/733/2/L29

[Ann]

Some ideas are just popular. When someone claims to have found evidence for a popular but unproven idea, you can be sure that media will be happy to repeat it. The idea that the world will come to an end is very popular or at least sensational, so when someone claims to know the date when that will happen, media will tell us all about it.

The idea of the cyclic universe is not so well-known among the general public, but it appeals to the widespread belief in reincarnation. So if someone claims that the universe has been through several (or even endlessly repeating) cycles of death and rebirth, and then claims that the evidence is there in the cosmic microwave background, the idea is sure to make a splash in the world of astronomy.

May 21, 2011 passed with no special events to mark the day, except for a rather small eruption of an Icelandic volcano. A truly horrible tornado hit Missouri, but I think that was one day later. So nothing special happened. As for the cyclic universe, simulations of the CMB background show that the circles pop up randomly and for no special reason. That, however, is not important. The next somewhat "established" person claiming to know the date that the world will end will likely get a lot of attention, and Penrose's claim about having found evidence for a cyclic universe will resonate much longer than other astronomers' debunking of his scientific methods.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Eric Saade of Sweden singing that he is going to be popular. But some ideas are sexy without even trying.

Ann

[bystander]

Some Black Holes May Pre-Date The Big Bang
Technology Review | The Physics arXiv Blog | kfc | 2011 May 03

If the Universe expands and contracts in cycles of Big Bangs and Crunches, some black holes may survive from one era to the next, according to a new analysis

---

Black holes are regions of space in which gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. Conventionally, black holes form during a gravitational collapse, after a large supernova for example.

But there is another class of objects called primordial black holes that cosmologists think must have formed in a different way. These are essentially leftovers from the hugely dense ball of stuff from which the universe expanded, some parts of which must have been dense enough to form black holes.

These primordial black holes would then have been widely dispersed as the universe expanded.

Primordial black holes are very different beasts to the ones that form when stars die, in particular because they ought to be much smaller.

Although nobody has yet seen a primordial black hole, our knowledge of them comes from thinking about the processes that must have occurred shortly after the Big Bang.

In recent years, however, cosmologists have begun to think seriously about processes that occurred before the Big Bang. One idea, is that the Universe may eventually collapse leading to an endless cycle of Big Bangs and Crunches.

Today, Bernard Carr at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and Alan Coley at Dalhousie University in Canada, ask what might happen in such a universe in the moments before a crunch.

By some accounts, a Big Crunch generates a singularity that ought to cause everything in the Universe to merge. But Carr and Coley say that in some circumstances, black holes of a certain mass could avoid this fate and survive the crunch as separate entities. The masses for which this is possible range from a few hundred million kilograms to about the mass of our Sun.

That leads to a problem, however. Coley and Carr say that since the mass of primordial and pre-crunch black holes is similar, they will be very difficult to tell apart.

Nobody has yet seen a primordial black hole, although efforts are underway to search for the telltale signatures they ought to produce.

Small black holes ought to evaporate away in relatively short period of time, finally disappearing in a violent explosion of gamma rays. The hope is that observatories such as the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope will see such events. Indeed, some cosmologists say this thinking might explain the gamma ray bursts that we already see from time to time.

What all this means, of course, is that there may be objects in our Universe that predate the Big Bang. And if we can somehow find a way to distinguish them from primordial black holes, we may yet be able to observe these most ancient of objects.

Persistence of black holes through a cosmological bounce - BJ Carr, AA Coley

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1104.3796 > 19 Apr 2011

New theory suggests some black holes might predate the Big Bang
PhysOrg | Bob Yirka | 2011 May 10

Artist's rendering of the M87 black hole. [i](Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA/Lynette Cook)[/i]

---

Cosmologists Alan Coley from Canada's Dalhousie University and Bernard Carr from Queen Mary University in London, have published a paper on arXiv, where they suggest that some so-called primordial black holes might have been created in the Big Crunch that came before the Big Bang, which lends support to the theory that the Big Bang was not a single event, but one that occurs over and over again as the universe crunches down to a single point, then blows up again, over and over.

The idea is based on the fact that the Earth, and the rest of the known universe is occasionally bombarded with unexplained bursts of gamma rays; something that could, according to Coley and Carr, be the result of primordial black holes running out of energy and disintegrating.

Primordial black holes are thought to be of a different type than the regular kind that are formed when a supernova occurs, leaving a void that is filled by the entity that is commonly known as a black hole. Many theorists support the notion that there does exist other types of black holes that were formed in the first “moments” after the Big Bang; black holes that would be smaller and created by the energy of the Big Bang itself. In this new theory, however, Coley and Carr suggest that some of these black holes, if they do actually exist, might have been created by the collapsing universe as part of the Big Crunch, and then somehow escaped being pulled into the pinpoint singularity comprised of everything else. And then, after the Big Bang, they simply assimilated with the newly formed universe. One problem they agree on is that it would likely be impossible to tell the difference between pre and post Big Bang primordial black holes.

It’s all purely speculation of course, as no one has ever actually seen a primordial black hole, or even offered much proof that they exist, but it does raise very difficult questions; ones that are impossible for scientists much less casual observers to answer. Questions such as, if the universe contracts, then blows up, over and over, has this gone on forever? Or is it possible that our view of the universe is so limited that we’re only seeing one tiny fraction of it, and thus, any theories or explanations we offer, are little more than guesses. And finally, maybe the hardest one of all; is it possible that the universe actually goes on forever; that it has no boundaries or borders? Which would mean the Big Bang was actually little more than one tiny event going on in one small part of an endless expanse.

It’s possible that no matter how long we as a people survive, we’ll never really know the answers to such questions, which might in the end mean, we’ll just have to take our theories on faith.

[bystander]

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. — Douglas Adams

[bystander]

First observational test of the ‘multiverse’
University College, London | 2011 Aug 03

[i]The signatures of a bubble collision at various stages in the analysis pipeline. A collision (top left) induces a temperature modulation in the CMB temperature map (top right). The 'blob' associated with the collision is identified by a large needlet response (bottom left), and the presence of an edge is highlighted by a large response from the edge detection algorithm (bottom right). In parallel with the edge-detection step, we perform a Bayesian parameter estimation and model selection analysis.[/i]

---

The theory that our universe is contained inside a bubble, and that multiple alternative universes exist inside their own bubbles – making up the ‘multiverse’ – is, for the first time, being tested by physicists.

Two research papers published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D are the first to detail how to search for signatures of other universes. Physicists are now searching for disk-like patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation - relic heat radiation left over from the Big Bang – which could provide tell-tale evidence of collisions between other universes and our own.

Many modern theories of fundamental physics predict that our universe is contained inside a bubble. In addition to our bubble, this `multiverse’ will contain others, each of which can be thought of as containing a universe. In the other 'pocket universes' the fundamental constants, and even the basic laws of nature, might be different.

Until now, nobody had been able to find a way to efficiently search for signs of bubble universe collisions - and therefore proof of the multiverse - in the CMB radiation, as the disc-like patterns in the radiation could be located anywhere in the sky. Additionally, physicists needed to be able to test whether any patterns they detected were the result of collisions or just random patterns in the noisy data.

A team of cosmologists based at University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics has now tackled this problem.

“It’s a very hard statistical and computational problem to search for all possible radii of the collision imprints at any possible place in the sky,” says Dr Hiranya Peiris, co-author of the research from the UCL Department of Physics and Astronomy. “But that’s what pricked my curiosity.”

The team ran simulations of what the sky would look like with and without cosmic collisions and developed a ground-breaking algorithm to determine which fit better with the wealth of CMB data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). They put the first observational upper limit on how many bubble collision signatures there could be in the CMB sky.

Stephen Feeney, a PhD student at UCL who created the powerful computer algorithm to search for the tell-tale signatures of collisions between "bubble universes", and co-author of the research papers, said: "The work represents an opportunity to test a theory that is truly mind-blowing: that we exist within a vast multiverse, where other universes are constantly popping into existence."

One of many dilemmas facing physicists is that humans are very good at cherry-picking patterns in the data that may just be coincidence. However, the team’s algorithm is much harder to fool, imposing very strict rules on whether the data fits a pattern or whether the pattern is down to chance.

Dr Daniel Mortlock, a co-author from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, said: "It's all too easy to over-interpret interesting patterns in random data (like the 'face on Mars' that, when viewed more closely, turned out to just a normal mountain), so we took great care to assess how likely it was that the possible bubble collision signatures we found could have arisen by chance."

The authors stress that these first results are not conclusive enough either to rule out the multiverse or to definitively detect the imprint of a bubble collision. However, WMAP is not the last word: new data currently coming in from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite should help solve the puzzle.

Testing the Multiverse… Observationally!
Universe Today | Vanessa D'Amico | 2011 Aug 03

[i]Credit: Glenn Loos-Austin[/i]

---

[i]Seven Year Microwave Sky (Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team)[/i]

---

The multiverse theory is famous for its striking imagery. Just imagine our own Universe, drifting among a veritable sea of spontaneously inflating “bubble universes”, each a self-contained and causally separate pocket of higher-dimensional spacetime. It’s quite an arresting picture. However, the theory is also famous for being one of the most criticized in all of cosmology. Why? For one, the idea is remarkably difficult, if not downright impossible, to test experimentally. But now, a team of British and Canadian scientists believe they may have found a way.

Attempts to prove the multiverse theory have historically relied upon examination of the CMB radiation, relic light from the Big Bang that satellites like NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, have probed with incredible accuracy. The CMB has already allowed astronomers to map the network of large-scale structure in today’s Universe from tiny fluctuations detected by WMAP. In a similar manner, some cosmologists have hoped to comb the CMB for disk-shaped patterns that would serve as evidence of collisions with other bubble universes.

Now, physicists at University College London, Imperial College London and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have designed a computer algorithm that actually examines the WMAP data for these telltale signatures. After determining what the WMAP results would look like both with and without cosmic collisions, the team uses the algorithm to determine which scenario fits best with the actual WMAP data. Once the results are in, the team’s algorithm performs a statistical analysis to ensure that any signatures that are detected are in fact due to collisions with other universes, and are unlikely to be due to chance. As an added bonus, the algorithm also puts an upper limit on the number of collision signatures astronomers are likely to find.

While their method may sound fairly straightforward, the researchers are quick to acknowledge the difficulty of the task at hand. As UCL researcher and co-author of the paper Dr. Hiranya Peiris put it, “It’s a very hard statistical and computational problem to search for all possible radii of the collision imprints at any possible place in the sky. But,” she adds, “that’s what pricked my curiosity.”

The results of this ground-breaking project are not yet conclusive enough to determine whether we live in a multiverse or not; however, the scientists remain optimistic about the rigor of their method. The team hopes to continue its research as the CMB is probed more deeply by the Planck satellite, which began its fifth all-sky survey on July 29. The research is published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D.

First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation: Analysis Methods and WMAP 7-Year Results - SM Feeney et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.3667 > 16 Dec 2010 (v1), 12 Jul 2011 (v2)
  Physical Review D, 2011; (in press)

First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation - SM Feeney et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1995 > 09 Dec 2010 (v1), 12 Jul 2011 (v3)
  Physical Review Letters, 2011; (accepted)

Other Universes Finally Detectable?
National Geographic | Dave Mosher | 2011 Aug 09

Looking for the Thumbprints of Parallel Universes
Discovery News | Ray Villard | 2011 Aug 11

Weird! Our Universe May Be a 'Multiverse'
LiveScience | Clara Moskowitz | 2011 Aug 12

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=24521
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23815
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=19696
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=21958
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22010

[bystander]

Abuse From Other Universes – A Second Opinion
Universe Today | Jon Voisey | 2011 Oct 09

[i]Concentric circles interpreted as bruises from collisions with alternate universes. (Credit: Feeney et al)[/i]

---

---

At the end of last year, there was a flurry of activity from astronomers Gurzadyan and Penrose that considered the evidence of alternate universes or the existence of a universe prior to the Big Bang and suggested that such evidence may be imprinted on the cosmic microwave background as bruises of concentric circles. Quickly, this was followed by an announcement claiming to find just such circles. Of course, with an announcement this big, the statistical significance would need to be confirmed. A recent paper in the October issue of the Astrophysical Journal provides a second opinion.

The review was conducted by Amir Hajian at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. To conduct the study, Hajian selected a large number of circles, similar to the ones reported in the previous studies and asked what the probability was that, randomly, the “edge” of the circles would contain hot-spots, similar to the ones predicted. These were then compared to the bruises reported by the other teams by examining their “variance” which is how much the points on the perimeter were spread around the average temperature.

Hajian notes that, with the resolution considered it would be possible to consider some 5 million circles. The results of his comparison demonstrated that it would be expected that some 0.3% of those should have features similar to the ones reported previously. With so many possibilities, this would imply that some 15,000 potential circles could be flagged as candidates for these cosmic bruises. Even the “best” candidate proposed in the Gurzadyan and Penrose study should still exist statistically.

As such, Hajian concludes that the features Gurzadyan and Penrose reported were not statistically anomalous. Hajian does not comment directly on Feeney et al.’s detection, but given theirs were constructed in a similar manner, it should be expected that they are similarly statistically insignificant. It would appear that if the fingerprints of other universes are embedded in the sky, they have been lost in the noise.

Are There Echoes From The Pre-Big Bang Universe? A Search for Low Variance Circles in the CMB Sky - Amir Hajian

• Astrophysical Journal 740(2) 52 (2011 Oct 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/740/2/52
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1012.1656 > 08 Dec 2010