From boud w astro.uni.torun.pl  Mon Sep  2 14:58:19 2002
From: boud w astro.uni.torun.pl (Boud Roukema)
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 14:58:19 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: How the Universe got its Spots [if it has them]
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.44.0209021453160.563-100000@hevelius.astro.uni.torun.pl>

Cze�� cosmo-torun list,
   There was one positive comment and zero negative comments on
my book proposition:
http://www.astro.uni.torun.pl/sympa/cosmo-torun/2002-08/msg00003.html
so i'll ask for this to be ordered. :)

Cze�� Karolina,
   Could we please order the following cosmology book for the
TCfA library?

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7324.html

> How the Universe Got Its Spots:
> Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space
> Janna Levin
> Cloth | 2002 | $22.95 / ?15.95 | ISBN: 0-691-09657-0
> 224 pp. | 6 x 9 | 68 line illus.


Thanks
boud

 


From boud w astro.uni.torun.pl  Fri Sep 20 06:52:08 2002
From: boud w astro.uni.torun.pl (boud)
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 06:52:08 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Fwd: U Chi: Microwave Background Announcement (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0209200636240.10115-100000@semuramat.camk.edu.pl>

CMB polarization discovered?

Notice how the journalist manages to convert:

"it's in line with theoretical predictions."

into a much stronger statement:

> verifies the theoretical framework that supports modern cosmological
> theory.

But i guess the DASI people will need to struggle to get as much
media attention as MAP...

i haven't followed the debate on CMB polarization, so i don't
know how seriously a detection can constrain any models. Maybe
Micha� F has done some reading on this...?

pozdrawiam
boud



> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 16:26:58 -0400 (EDT)
> From: David Spergel <dns w ...
> To: all w astro.Princeton.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: U Chi: Microwave Background Announcement (fwd)
...


>**This material was sent earlier under embargo to reporters and the
>embargo having expired, is now sent to press officers.**
>
>THE FOLLOWING RELEASE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO,
>IN ILLINOIS, AND IS FORWARDED FOR YOUR INFORMATION.  (FORWARDING
>DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT BY THE AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY.)
>Steve Maran, American Astronomical Society
>
>September 19, 2002
>Contact: Steve Koppes
>773-702-8366
>E-mail: s-koppes w uchicago.edu
>
>Discovery supports astronomers'
>paradoxical views of the universe
>
>The universe really is as surprising as scientists have come to
>suspect it is, according to a discovery that University of Chicago
>astrophysicists will announce Thursday, Sept. 19, at the COSMO-02
>conference at Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum. The discovery,
>which astrophysicists have pursued with increasingly sensitive
>instruments for more than two decades, verifies the theoretical
>framework that supports modern cosmological theory.
>
>Using a radio telescope called the Degree Angular Scale
>Interferometer (DASI) at the National Science Foundation's
>Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, the Chicago scientists measured
>the minute polarization of the cosmic microwave background, the
>sky-pervading afterglow of the big bang.
>
>Most light is unpolarized, its many individual waves jumbled
>together, each wave flickering up and down in a different plane as it
>speeds toward Earth. Unpolarized light becomes polarized whenever it
>is reflected or scattered. This is the principle behind polarizing
>sunglasses that remove the glare from the hood of a car or the
>surface of a pool. In both cases the sunglasses only permit waves
>that tend to flicker up and down in the same plane to pass.
>
>The polarization of the cosmic microwave background was produced by
>the scattering of cosmic light when it last interacted with matter,
>nearly 14 billion years ago. If no polarization had been found,
>astrophysicists would have to reject all their interpretations of the
>remarkable data they have compiled in recent years, said John
>Carlstrom, the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor in
>Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
>
>"Instead of stating that we think we really understand the origin and
>evolution of the universe with high confidence, we would be saying
>that we just don't know," said Carlstrom, who will announce the
>discovery. "Polarization is predicted. It's been detected and it's in
>line with theoretical predictions. We're stuck with this preposterous
>universe."
>
>It's a universe in which ordinary matter, the stuff of which humans,
>stars and galaxies are made, accounts for less than five percent of
>the universe's total mass and energy. The vast majority of the
>universe, meanwhile, is made of a mysterious force that astronomers
>call "dark energy." This vague name reflects the fact that scientists
>simply do not know what it is. They only know that it acts in
>opposition to gravity, accelerating the expansion of the universe.
>
>In addition to the dark energy theory, cosmic inflation theory
>improbably proposes that the universe underwent a gigantic growth
>spurt in a fraction of a second just moments after the big bang.
>
>"This beautiful framework of contemporary cosmology has many things
>in it we don't understand, but we believe in the framework," said
>Clem Pryke, Assistant Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the
>University of Chicago and a member of the DASI team. "This new result
>was a crucial test for the framework to pass."
>
>Carlstrom's other collaborators on the polarization discovery were
>John Kovac and Erik Leitch, University of Chicago; and Nils Halverson
>and Bill Holzapfel, University of California, Berkeley.
>
>The discovery follows in the wake of another important DASI finding.
>Last year Carlstrom's team precisely measured temperature differences
>in the cosmic microwave background, further supporting for the cosmic
>inflation theory.
>
>The polarization signal is more than 10 times fainter than the
>temperature differences that DASI detected earlier. DASI's first
>discovery came after it collected data for 92 days from 32 spots in
>the sky. But DASI needed to watch two spots in the sky for more than
>200 days to detect the polarization.
>
>The discovery opens a new era in cosmic microwave background
>experiments, said the Chicago astrophysicists. They predict that
>increasingly sensitive detections of polarization will yield many
>more discoveries. "It's going to triple the amount of information
>that we get from the cosmic microwave background," said Kovac, a
>Ph.D. student in Physics. "It's like going from the picture on a
>black-and-white TV to color."
>
>The polarization is a signpost from when the universe was only
>400,000 years old, when matter and energy were only just beginning to
>separate from one another. "What's unique about polarization is that
>it directly measures the dynamics in the early universe," Carlstrom
>said.
>
>Temperature differences revealed patterns of lumpy matter frozen in
>the early universe, but by measuring polarization, astronomers can
>actually see how the early universe was moving.
>
>In the coming years, astronomers will attempt to use the CMB
>polarization to measure gravity waves, a form of radiation predicted
>by general relativity that corresponds to ripples in the fabric of
>space-time, said Michael Turner, the Bruce and Diana Rauner
>Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the
>University of Chicago.
>
>"Detection of the polarization opens a new door to exploring the
>earliest moments and answering the deep questions before us," Turner
>said.
>                                   ###
>sk/02-79
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
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>should be sent to the same address.

 


From boud w astro.uni.torun.pl  Fri Sep 20 15:53:39 2002
From: boud w astro.uni.torun.pl (Boud Roukema)
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 15:53:39 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Fwd: U Chi: Microwave Background Announcement (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0209200636240.10115-100000@semuramat.camk.edu.pl>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.44.0209201552220.2323-100000@hevelius.astro.uni.torun.pl>

Here are some more concrete polarization results:
http://astro.uchicago.edu/dasi/polexpert/

On Fri, 20 Sep 2002, boud wrote:

> CMB polarization discovered?


 


From amr w astro.uni.torun.pl  Thu Sep 26 09:57:19 2002
From: amr w astro.uni.torun.pl (Andrzej Marecki)
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 09:57:19 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: CMB Polarisation paper
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.44.0209201552220.2323-100000@hevelius.astro.uni.torun.pl> from Boud Roukema at "Sep 20, 2002 03:53:39 pm"
Message-ID: <200209260757.JAA03055@galileo.astro.uni.torun.pl>

> Here are some more concrete polarization results:
> http://astro.uchicago.edu/dasi/polexpert/

And here are even more concrete:

----- Forwarded message from physnews w aip.org -----

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 606  September 25, 2002   by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and 
James Riordon

[...]

POLARIZATION IN THE MICROWAVE BACKGROUND has been measured by the Degree
Angular Scale Interferometer detector (DASI: http://astro.uchicago.edu/dasi/),
situated at the South Pole. DASI was one of the first detector groups to
see (Update 537: http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2001/split/537-1.html)
several peaks in the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background, the
radiation originating from that era in the early universe (some 300,000
years after the big bang) when stable atoms first formed.  The modern
theory of cosmology says that these microwaves received an orientation
(polarization) when they emerged from the seething plasma (the "surface of
last scattering") then pervading the cosmos.  DASI's measurement of a
faint polarization, reported last week at the COSMO-02 meeting in Chicago,
is consistent with the theoretical prediction. (Preprint at
http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0209478.)

[...]

----- End of forwarded message from physnews w aip.org -----

Andrzej