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POPSCarl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot I did a search and found several clips for a Pale Blue Dot, but this one is special. This has Carl Sagan himself speaking. Absolutely wonderful!
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POPSIs Time disappearing from the universe? At an everyday level, the change would not be perceptible. However, it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years. The change would be infinitesimally slow from a human perspective, but in terms of the vast perspective of cosmology, the study of ancient light from suns that shone billions of years ago, it could easily be measured Difficult to fathom.
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POPSBefore the Big Bang - the Big Bounce Now, however, Dr Bojowald and fellow physicists are exploring territory unknown even to Einstein - the time before the Big Bang - using his new theory, called Loop Quantum Cosmology. An analysis of this, one of a series of newly-emerging theories which combine Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity) with that of the subatomic world (quantum theory), "is supposed to provide a non-singular framework in which one could address the question of what was there before the Big Bang," he says.
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POPSHow did the Universe Begin ? The no-boundary wave function also states that space-time was not what we see today at the outset of universal expansion. “When the universe started out,” Hartle explains, “there wasn’t ordinary space-time. Instead of three space directions, as we have now, there were four space directions. At some point, a transition was made to ordinary space-time.”
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POPSBefore the beginning of the universe Alan Guth of MIT, who first proposed the inflation theory nearly three decades ago, says he suspects “the reported lopsidedness will more likely turn out to be a fluke.” However, he adds, “the concept of inflation is really only the framework of a theory, and so far experiment has given us very little guidance in trying to fill in the details.
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POPSIs a 'Dark Force' Pushing the Universe Apart? Astronomers now recognize that the eventual fate of the universe is inextricably tied to the presence of dark energy and dark matter.The current standard model for cosmology describes a universe that is 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter, and only 5 percent normal matter.
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POPSDark, Perhaps Forever - Clueless about the universe Whatever proposal is eventually selected, the dark energy satellite will return a tidal wave of data about the universe and its weird denizens, both visible and invisible. This data is likely to transform astronomy in unpredictable ways, but there is no guarantee that it will nail the mystery of dark energy. “We really need new theory, and we have none,” Dr. Krauss said.
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POPSNew twist to matter-antimatter mystery Here is an "almost breakthrough" A major mystery of modern physics is why normal matter particles are the building blocks of the observable universe. Why are we not made of antimatter? Or pure energy? Scientists speculate that a tiny imbalance in the early universe allowed a small fraction of normal matter – one particle for every one billion – to avoid annihilation and survive to form stars, planets, and humans. When we come to know that we don't know, there is a new place for hope...
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POPSCommon Misconceptions This articlecovers a broad field of misconceptions, such as geography, health, even food. Evolution is, to me, the most interesting.
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POPSAn Exceptionally Simple "Theory of Everything" Awesome!! "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'" --------- So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?"
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POPSGraphic: Timeline of the Big Bang An informative graphical timeline of the very creation of time, space, matter, and energy in our universe. Cool! I just clipped the first paragraph of the nicely written description that accompanies it. Of course, cosmology, cosmogony, and quantum physics, and the origins of space-time are some of the hardest fields of study being pursued right now. Any other pointers to clip-size explanations would be welcome additions to Clipmarks.