GIGO: words unreadable aloud
Mishrogo Weedapeval
 

 

  Wednesday 13 November 2002
The first 100 Million Years

This December's Discover magazine has an article by Tim Folger, about some cosmological universe simulation program that Tom Abel is using to research what it was like for some time after the Big Bang. Apparently, there was about 100 million years of a dark but expanding universe, mostly clouds of hydrogen. Then finally the hydrogen clouds coalesced into huge super-stars, which were so big that they burned fast, fused most of the heavier elements, blew up, and ... well, after a while, the more normal-sized stars, galaxies, and black holes started forming.

So I wonder ... Where'd the hydrogen come from? Just loose protons capturing loose electrons? Did these huge super-stars leave behind black holes when they blew up? Were those the nuclei of the galaxies we see out there?

When I was young, the only subatomic particles we knew about were protons, neutrons, and electrons. Then they discovered quarks and other teeny, short-lived particles. But I wonder how often those things "matter" in the real universe. Can simulations like Abel's ignore the "weird" particles and just model the big clouds of hydrogen with mostly classical physics?

Inquiring minds want to know!
9:40:21 PM   comment/     



Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. Click to see the XML version of this web page. © Copyright 2007 Doug Landauer .
Last update: 07/2/6; 12:22:10 .
Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

November 2002
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Oct   Dec

Previous/Next