Gizmodo Australia » big bang

The Creation Of Time And Space

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:40:00 +0000

Maybe I like this because it looks like a Leopard desktop—I hope Leopard came with the animations—but if you have to watch a science video today, let astrophysicist Janne Levin explain you what the Big Bang was.

Still there? Well, then maybe you want another science video. One mindblowing one.

Yes, I know. I need a vacation too. [DRB]

The Hills Girls Analyse the Large Hadron Collider

Gizmodo US Edition — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0000

I don’t watch The Hills, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entertained when I see Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt prancing around and pretending they aren’t posing for the cameras: in this clip, Audrina attempts to get scientific with the Big Bang theory and the Large Hadron Collider. Her friend explains that the Large Hadron Collider is used for colliding subatomic particles together—but maybe it can be used to see if there are any particles in that organ that lies between Audrina’s ears. [GeekSugar]

Early Spiral Galaxy Captured for the First Time Using Gravitational Lenses

Jesus Diaz — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

For the first time ever, scientists have captured an spiral galaxy in its early stages of formation, only two billion years after the Big Bang. This time, however, they haven’t used the magic Hubble, but the ten-metre Keck telescope in Hawaii helped by something called gravitational lensing, or Mother Nature’s own optical zoom lenses.

A Cosmic Eye is a unique configuration of galaxies in the sky, with one galaxy in the foreground and the other in the background, giving it the appearance of an eye in space. The foreground galaxy– in this case the yellow one, 2.2 billion light years from Earth–acts as the lenses thanks to its gravitational field, which bends the light coming from the background galaxy–in blue, 11 billion light years from Earth. This distortion effect, which was predicted by Einstein theories, has enlarged the early spiral galaxy by eight times.

The technique gives an idea of what would be possible with the next generation of telescopes–the European Extremely Large Telescope and the American Thirty Metre Telescope. [Physorg]

Credit: Cosmic Eye showing the foreground galaxy in yellow at the centre of the image surrounded by the blue arc of the distant galaxy. Credit: Mark Swinbank/Durham University

Does This Finger Sized Tube Carry The Secrets of the Big Bang?

Adrian Covert — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:00:00 +0000

PopSci has a great article about scientists who are trying to recreate the events of the Universe, such as the big bang and black holes, with controlled lab experiments. The Universe in a Teacup, shown above, cools Helium to 0.0003°F above absolute zero, and moves around the particles so that little whirlpools remain after the Helium settles. The state inside this pinky-sized tube is thought to be the condition of the universe just after the big bang.

Scientists also believe that when two large, planar bodies, referred to as branes, collide in the universe, they release enough energy to create a rapid expansion that can spawn a new universe (see explanatory gallery here).
While they can recreate scenarios they believe to be the same as these events, the lack of monitoring tech available makes it impossible to verify. The list of mysteries and theories that scientists have attacked over the last few years makes this an interesting read for fans of Hawking-esque space thinking. [PopSci]