Was Mad Max Right All Along? The Parallel Universe

[gHari]

Explanation of techno-radical terms below available here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020806.html

<blockquote>How fast do fundamental particles wobble? A surprising answer to this seemingly inconsequential question is coming out of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, USA and may not only indicate that the Standard Model of Particle Physics is incomplete but also that our universe is filled with a previously undetected type of fundamental particle. Specifically, the muon, a particle with similarities to a heavy electron, has had its relatively large wobble under scrutiny since 1999 in an experiment known as g-2 (gee-minus-two), pictured above. The result galvanizes other experimental groups around the world to confirm it, and pressures theorists to better understand it. The rate of wobble is sensitive to a strange sea of virtual particles that pop into and out of existence everywhere. The unexpected wobble rate may indicate that this sea houses virtual particles that include nearly invisible supersymmetric counterparts to known particles. If so, a nearly invisible universe of real supersymmetric particles might exist all around us.

</blockquote>

[Guest guest]

They say only a small proportion of the mass of the universe is what we can currently see (planets, stars, gases etc...). The rest they can't seem to find. Could dark matter be the mass of heavenly planets, creatures etc....? Has Sadaputa Prabhu written about this dark matter in any manner?

[theist]

I have had the same or similar question. Added to dark matter scientists now claim they detect the existence of dark energy, along with dark matter.

 

Of course this dark stuff may be far more luminous than our present perceptions allow us to detect. Actually it is our vision that is darkened. Ultimately we are surround by worlds of eternal light, even interpenetrating our current space, as well as subtle temporary worlds.

 

This is why I get so baffeled reading some stories from the Purana's. That which sounds like an allegory may be literal fact, just taking place outside our current sense perception, or it may just be an allegory or fable.

 

Either way its a wild universe. Hang on, I think the ride only gets more fantastic as our understanding grows.

 

I bet Avinash knows something about dark matter and dark energy.

[Guest guest]

dark matter is a hoax to cover up bad science that

they are stuck on concerning the big bang. see electric -cosmos .org

[theist]

Well we know there is matter that is more subtle than our present senses can directly perceive. We also know that this subtle matter is the source of this visible matter. that there is still influence from that realm onto this one doesn't seem unreasonable.

[Guest guest]

 

dark matter was created to cover up the fact that

the big bang theory had numerous flaws that became apparent as technology got better.

 

the big bang theory states that at the beggining of time,all space and time including all of the matter in the universe today existed scrunched together ,compressed into a tiny

space.

 

then it blew up,or expanded very quickly, space expanding

with matter expanding with it.

 

this theory has many flaws,to many to mention here,

like how can space be scrunched into one spot, what is outside of that spot ?

 

but back to the matter at hand, the theory if teneable

for expansion needs there to be a certain quantity

or density of matter in the universe for the big bang to have happened, that quantity can be difined as 1.

 

the universe needs to have that quantity of matter or the big bang doesn't add up,it couldn't happen.

 

this was all well and good for them until they were able to measure the amount of matter, the actual amount is 1/100

needed.

 

so 99 per cent of the universe is missing.

enter dark matter, they reasoned that the big bang happened,

so the matter must be ,but can't be seen or detected.

 

they call this science.

 

the plasma physics school started by Hannes alfven ,

has utterly destroyed all and every aspect of the big bang,along with almost every other theoretical aspect

of astro physics, like what are black holes, how does the sun work, how do galaxies and solar systems form and work,

and on and on.

 

the establishment astro physics world is loath to admit defeat, their academic world for years has supported and maintaned and expanded all useless information,not based on

on data, or experiment,but made up by mathameticians

and theoretical speculators, whereas the plasma physicists are the exact opposite.

 

it all goes back to maintaning position and respectability

in the academic world, they will not teach the truth for fear of ridicule and loss of positions.

 

even one of there basic maxims has been proved by quantum physics to be incorrect, that matter can never be created destroyed just changed from one state to another,all matter

in the universe existed at the pre big bang state, and there is no new or loss of matter today.

 

in fact quantum physics has shown that particles come into and out of existence all the time in space, where from

has been the cause of a lot of speculation, David Bohm

has it down though,taking from his Vedic study,

the concept of Brahman, is his "sub quantum potential"

another dimension that is a unified field of unknown

energy, where particles pop out of and back seemingly

endowed with internal commands to make them act

in a specific way, creating for themselves positive

and negative charges, whcih cause atomic bonding, which causes all matter to take shape in grosser and grosser

forms.

 

in effect, non matter, the sub quantum field of potential

manifests in our dimension as matter, with apparent

inherent codes.

[Guest guest]

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/darkmatter.htm

[Avinash]

I was not following this thread. Just now, I read your post. I will post on dark matter and dark energy latter.

[Avinash]

Scientists can use 21 cm wavelength to detect hydrogen clouds. This wavelength is characteristic of hydrogen atoms. A hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron. The proton and the electron can be spinning in the same direction or in opposite directions. The state in which they are spinning in opposite directions has lower energy. When an atom of hydrogen changes from the higher energy state to the lower energy state, then the difference in energy is released in the form of radiation which has wavelength of 21 cm.

 

In 1970s, scientists studied the movement of hydrogen clouds in and around our galaxy to calculate the force of gravity at various points. The result was surprising. The result showed that there is mass even where no mass has been detected. It was found that there is mass even beyond what is thought to be the known boundary of our galaxy. It is thought that there is also matter which we have not been able to observe. That matter is called as "dark matter". Many other observations have also indicated that there is some missing mass. I will post some of those observations below.

[vsdprasad]

I guess it is dark matter that is also known as antimatter. Release of antimatter particles accounts for the missing energy released during a nuclear fusion reaction.

 

A few weeks ago, there was a program on PBS that showed scientists whose only aim in life was to observe the supernovae in the universe!, and it showed how they do it using BIG big telescopes mounted @ various places on earth.

This is the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/universe/

 

Supernova is an extreme glare coming out of a star when it is about to kick the bucket! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

-Prasad.

[theist]

I saw that Nova show on supernova's. Very cool. I don't care if all the deatils and theories are correct as I can't really follow them anyway. I'm in it for the mind blowing AWE effect at Krsna's magnificent glory.

 

Scripture is everwhere. Alas, my illiteracy.

 

Keep this thread going guys, just remember many of us are not very technical.

 

Hare Krsna

[Avinash]

The stars near the perimeter of our galaxy, have typical observed orbital velocities of 200 kilometers per second. If the galaxy consisted of only the matter that we have observed, these stars would very quickly fly off from the galaxy, because their orbital speeds are four times larger than the galaxy's escape velocity (calculated on the basis of known mass). Since galaxies are not seen to be spinning apart, there must be mass in the galaxy that we are not accounting for when we add up all the parts we can observe.

 

vsdprasad has mentioned that dark matter could be antimatter. Rather than continuing to post observations which suggest that there is missing mass, I will post what scientists think dark matter could consist of.

[theist]

Avinashji,

 

Are the scientists saying that those stars are being held i orbit by the gravitational force of the unseen mass?

[Guest guest]

Haribol, interesting stuff, but I always think of Yudhisthira's explanation to the crane who killed his brothers at the poisoned pond prior to their entering Virata. The crane was Yamaraja, Dharma, who was testing the TRUE known by his son. The crane asked him about the universe, and Yudhisthira replied, Black emptyness and nothing more.

 

All that stuff out there is really huge, but blackness is the totality, with the planets and stars only taking a minute portion of what we see.

 

There is just as vast an area under a microscope as there is on a telescope, and just as much life, systems, the whole game. But it amounts to nothing at all, because we have no access to any of it.

 

Haribol, ys, mahaksadasa

[theist]

Haribol Mahak,

 

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to conduct a less clumsy investigation of the atom and other timy things that are buzzing about.

 

You know, just as spiritual spark and intelligence fly right into an atom and check it out. Electrons and photons and the occasional quark whizzing around. From that perspective it may even seem like slow motion.

 

I think I picked this up from seeing some old film about physcians being shrunk and injected into the blood stream. What a way to get a prognosis.

[Guest guest]

Haribol, theist. Yes, it is the wee things that concern me, the little cities of bagdads that infuse our lungs to produce disasterous results.

 

When we study life force, we must acknowledge that all life is simulytaneously existing in the same space. I may see mahaksadasa as a singular being, but that is only spiritual recognition of individuality, and has no translation into the physical/biological world. It is impossible to calculate the quantity and quality of life force individuals occupying the same physical space. Not just microbes and other virus type beings, but perhaps even other human forms as well.

 

Take a microscpoe and analyze phlegm. It may seem gross to us the way we relate to it, but the smaller we go, the rounder we get (sorry hunter, I borrowed an old deadhead phrease from the alligator era, the true deadhead reign). We see crystals signifying abodes, and globes signifying living beings occupying these worlds. There is no yuckky stuff there, it is all pure and uncontaminated matter. Some of this matter heppens to be the matter other spiritual beings are operating in.

 

From a movie was a cool description of the wee beings. Sure, there are milky ways and adromedas, but there may be entire universes with brahmas to insignificant bugs occupying one of those crystals that make up our spleen. In the first Men in Black movie, a universe needed help from the agents, but this entire universe was in a jewel that was around the neck of a house cat.

 

Who is to say. Krsna says he is the largest of the large, and this is a fact that from the pores of the sleeping and half awake maha Visnu countless universes spring forth. It is all so gigantic. But, Krsna also says he is the smallest of the small, and this alludes to the mad mahax theory presented herewith.

 

There is also the fact that our eyes are made of dirt and water, with a bit of fire, ether, and air. So the things we see have the same proportion of dirt and water, otherwise they cannot be seen. What about other combinations of such matter. What about etherial beings. We feel them in sound, the highway of ether, but wee cannot prove their existance by the scientific method, because the sciences depend on the constitutional makeup of the dirt and water combination of this realm. Srila Prabhupada commented on the moon, stating that if we did go there, all we would see is thing that our vision could relate to. There could be large, advanced cities made of ether, air and fire, but all we would see is rocks.

 

And, we also have layers of planetary systems. Not up in the sky, but both upward and inward. The universe as depicted in Srimad Bhagavatam cannot be drawn because we cannot get artistic perspective of something our dirt and water senses cannot comprehend. The patalas and rasatalas, the lower planetary systems, are stated to be downwars, so where can we look? Under the planet? No, absolutely not, because for a globe structure, underneath means upward as well. If we leave the surface of the earth upward, from Sydney as well as Helsinki, we can never physically find any lower planets, because they are also known as "subterranean" planets. This means that they must co-exist in the same space as this planet, within the globe physics. Not to get into a hollow earth theory, which is just a scientific attempt to understand thing beneath us with dirt and water eyes, we go again to the microscope, where we can see miles and miles of space between the atoms that make up a piece of granite, something we relate no empty space to whatsoever. There could be suns, moons and stars under the outhouse out back.

 

I think this is why yudhisthira made his comment to Dharma. He certainly could recognize the quality of Narayana's creation, but referred to it as empty blackness and nothing more meaning our access to it is unqualified,

 

Cool to talk about, not worth a dime to study something that we will never comprehend in our present state of dirt and water physics. We are reminded to become like Narada Muni in our service to God, then we get to be sent to all these forsms and living arrangements with full ability to comprehend, this is the descending process, become friends with the One who knopws all, and He will tell us everything TRUE that we will need to know. The ascending processes of science and theoretical religiosity only create frustration when we fail every endeavor due to our limited ability to see what is in front of us at all times.

 

Hare Krsna, ys, mahaksadasa

[Guest guest]

the concept of dark matter was created for one purpose,

to prop up the big bang theory.

 

in fact there is no such thing.

 

the new school of plasma astro physics has shown

the real cause of previously speculated phenomena.

 

http://electric-cosmos.org

 

be there or be square.

[Avinash]

You are right.

The scientists are saying that the gravitational force by known mass is not sufficient to hold these stars. The remaining part of gravitational force is provided by unseen mass.

[theist]

Thanks to everyone posting on this subject for helping to pop my faith in external sense perception.

 

Very cool post mahaksadas. I felt my mind turning inside out as i read it and tried to follow along. Yes Krsna is the smallest and inside of Krsna is the totality of existence.POP!

 

I went to the web site shiva and will have to return bit by bit. As I started reading I remembered I don't even know what electromagnetic energy is, same with gravity Avinash.

 

In fact I can't point to one thing that I really do know. My ignorance seems total. Funny how I get a glimpse of freedom from facing that fact, even if only for a moment.

 

Its all rather astounding isn't it.

[Guest guest]

yeah i know,it's alot to take in.

plasma physics is fairly new, almost everything in the universe is strongly affected by electromagnetic force,

the establishment school of astro physics was set in motion earlier this century, they had no clue about

electromagnetic energy dominating the cosmos, as we now know, all the establishment theories are based on that lack

of knowledge, trying to maintain the academic positions

of the old school theorists,at any cost.

 

so when you hear in the various " astronomy" journals

about this or that new discovery , it's all jive,

the established academics control those journals,

and will rarely if ever publish anything that may jeopardize their careers.

 

Drutakarma talked about this in "forbidden archeaology"

what a professor has called "the knowledge filter",

that is the case alos on astro physics, the leading

powers in a particularacademic field control that field

through funding, publishing, and job security, any discovery that threatens to make their basis for

ascendency in their field obsolete, is vigorously

blacklisted, shunned, and repressed .

 

however the status of Hannes Alfven, a nobel prize winning physicist, and probably the most successfull and important

physicist in recent times, is impossible to discredit as a crank, as was David Bohm when he upset the applecart in quantum physics.

 

[Avinash]

vsdprasad ji mentioned about antimatter. So, I felt it appropriate to say what antimatter is.

 

In 1930 Paul Dirac developed a quantum theory for the motion of electrons in electric and magnetic fields. It was the first theory that correctly included Einstein's theory of special relativity in this context. This theory required the existence of a particle with exactly the same mass as the electron but with positive instead of negative electric charge. This particle, which is called the positron, is the antiparticle of the electron, and it was the first example of antimatter. In less than two years Anderson did experiments to confirm the existence of positron.

 

Dirac's prediction applies not only to electron but to all fundamental particles. Hundreds of such pairings have been observed.

 

A particle and its corresponding antiparticle are same in all respects except in the sign of electric charge and magnetic moment (and, of course, any property which is dependent on electric charge and magnetic moment). If a partcle does not have electric charge and, also, does not have magnetic moment, then it is its own antiparticle, example: photon.

 

A particle and its antiparticle will annihilate each other to produce radiation. This is why the antiparticles made in labs are unstable.

 

Take any particle which is not its own antiparticle. Even though Physics says that both of them must exist, both have not been observed in equal amount; one of them is negligible compared to the other. As an example, the no. of positrons is negligible compared to the no. of electrons. But it is possible that some matter exists which is made up of antiparticles of the particles which are found in the matter we have observed. That matter is called as antimatter. So, antimatter is made up of positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons instead of electrons, protons and neutrons.

 

It is possible that there is some Theist who is made up of antiparticles of the particles of which our Theist is made. But, our Theist should not try to shake hands with him. Otherwise, they will annihilate each other and both of them will get converted into radiation.

 

[vsdprasad]

Thanks Avinash ji, that was informative.

While I was preparing for JEE in my +2, our physics professor made us work on some equations relating to nuclear reactions and told us that it also releases some antimatter particles. Those classes were highly interesting to work on those energies & particles. Though I couldn't make it to those top IITs /images/graemlins/frown.gif (unlike intelligent beings like you!), I did acquire some knowledge in the process. Sometime I pondered over those antimatter particles and thought about their usage in spying. Imagine you have Television camera or any of the recording gadgets, made of antimatter particles. Assume they can record real matter particles. Imagine a Theist made of antimatter particles & working for FBI or CBI. No wonder he can go wherever he wants and observe the events without being noticed.

 

Of course, as you said he shouldn't go to "Berlekeley" and meet our real Theist! LoL

 

-Prasad.

[Guest guest]

A New Slice on Physics

Is the world we see trapped on a thin membrane separating us from vast

other realms? Some scientists say that would explain a lot.

 

Plato considered it first.

 

What if everything we hold dear is but a thin slice of some larger,

unreachable reality, like a flickering shadow cast on the craggy wall

of a cave? What if the moon and stars, your home, your thoughts, your

cat, are but projections on this wall -- mere suggestions of

unfathomable realms beyond?

 

In the last few years, a mathematically rigorous version of Plato's

2,000-year-old thought experiment has been refashioning the way

physicists think about everything from subatomic particles to the Big

Bang. The universe we see, according to this scenario, is stuck on a

thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos. And our

membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, wiggle,

connect and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions.

Physicists call this new frontier the "brane world."

 

The idea could help solve a long list of outstanding mysteries. Among

them: What is the "dark matter" that seems to make up 90% of the

universe? And why is gravity trillions of times weaker than

electromagnetism?

 

The revolution was set off in the mid-1990s when UC Santa Barbara

physicist Joe Polchinski determined through mathematics that branes

were a surface to which things attach, like hair to skin -- except the

"things" in this case were the minuscule "strings" that may well be

the fundamental ingredients of the universe.

 

"I was just fiddling around with mathematics.... Within a week or two

[other physicists] had done things with it I hadn't envisioned. It was

like taking the stopper out of the dam. Things poured through."

 

Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creator of the

currently accepted version of the Big Bang, said recently he felt a

little like Rip Van Winkle -- picking up his head from a long sleep

only to notice that the landscape of physics he thought he knew had

suddenly, drastically, changed.

 

Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, among others,

envisions brane worlds bubbling up out of the void, giving rise to

whole new universes. He ends his latest book, "The Universe in a

Nutshell," with a call to explore this "brane new world."

 

One might well wonder why such a seemingly bizarre concept has

attracted so many well-established physicists. The short answer is:

desperation.

 

The laws of nature that describe the large-scale universe to an

astonishing degree of precision (Einstein's general relativity) are

incompatible with the laws that describe the small-scale universe with

the same astonishing exactness (quantum theory). This means either

that one of these well-tested theories is wrong (all but

inconceivable) or that there is some larger, more encompassing theory

that somehow accommodates both.

 

To date, the only theory that comes close to marrying the two is

"string theory" -- a mathematically elegant set of ideas that has

swept the world of physics over the last few decades. According to

string theory, the basic ingredients of the universe are not

point-like particles, but tiny strings vibrating in 10-dimensional

space. Although still untested, string theory has scored a spectacular

series of theoretical successes, earning it an ever-widening circle of

admirers.

 

And yet string theory remains a realm apart from day-to-day physics --

lovely to behold but innately aloof.

 

For one thing, the strings are so small that it would take a particle

accelerator larger than the solar system to create the energies needed

to "see" them. This means, in effect, that strings can never be

detected.

 

For another, the complex mathematics required to deal with the

tortured 10-dimensional landscape is beyond the reach of most

physicists.

 

Brane models change all that: Unlike in string theory, the extra

dimensions in brane worlds can be big, infinitely big. "It led to a

whole new bunch of possibilities that could be experimentally tested,"

said physicist Jim Cline of McGill University in Montreal.

 

What's more, branes don't require the full range of mathematical tools

required for string theory, opening the door to new groups of

scientists. "You can use methods that are part and parcel of more

traditional physics," said Columbia University physicist Brian Greene.

"So a person who's not a string theorist can jump into the field and

make contributions."

 

This sense of promise was palpable last summer at the Aspen Center for

Physics, where string theorists and cosmologists -- the scientists who

study the origin and structure of the universe -- gathered for a

workshop to explore links between the smallest scales in the universe

and the largest. Brane scenarios popped up everywhere, enveloped in

the thick fog of uncertainty that clouds the birth of new worlds.

 

The setting was strangely church-like. The faithful . in rows under

spires of white-barked aspens, their round leaves fluttering in the

wind.

 

In front, a maestro in sneakers tapped out symbols on a blackboard,

chalk flying like fairy dust, black jeans covered in white handprints.

There was lots of talk about the infinite. Lots of recitation and

response. Everyone strained to channel some larger reality through

equations.

 

"Your bulk could contain many 3-branes," one physicist said.

 

"The 9-branes could still annihilate."

 

"I'm lost."

 

This was not your grandmother's physics. There were no objects in the

usual sense. No matter, no particles. Not even numbers. Only

"instantons,alpha vacua" and multidimensional membranes wrapping

around one another, traveling down throats of black holes and bouncing

back, transformed.

 

Even to physicists, much of this seems unbearably strange. But in

physics, strangeness comes with the territory. "When I first learned

about quantum physics as an undergraduate, it just about destroyed my

mind," said Stanford post-doctoral fellow Stephon Alexander. "And now,

12 years later, it's just a tool."

 

There's actually nothing particularly new about the idea that space

may extend into unseen dimensions, or even that the world we know is

somehow trapped on a membrane.

 

Extra dimensions were such a hot topic in the 19th century that

Victorian schoolmaster Edwin Abbott wrote a famous science fiction

novel, "Flatland," based on the notion that our limited perceptions

prevented us from seeing worlds existing right in front of our

three-dimensional noses. Albert Einstein made extra dimensions an

integral part of physics when he used a fourth dimension, time, in his

theory of relativity in 1905. Ten years later, he showed that this

interwoven fabric of space-time could warp under the influence of

massive objects -- "causing" the force we know as gravity.

 

Extra-dimensional membranes were kicking around in string theory since

at least the mid-1980s, but no one took them very seriously. One of

the first suggestions that the world we know might be stuck to such a

membrane appeared in a 1985 paper that was a parody of string theory

titled "The Super G-String" by V. Gates, et al., from the University

of Cauliflower (actually, physicist Warren Siegel of State University

of New York, Stony Brook). "It was based on a serious paper that was

totally overlooked because it was before its time," Polchinski said.

 

The branes playing such a large role in physics today are richer and

more mathematically rigorous than early versions.

 

Essentially, a brane is a discontinuity in space-time, a boundary

where things meet, like the surface of a pond where the water meets

the sky.

 

"It's a defect in the quantum fabric," said Ruth Gregory of the

University of Durham in Britain. On one side of the defect would be

the vacuum of empty space. A vacuum with somewhat different properties

might exist on the other side.

 

Imagine our brane as pond scum -- a thin film that divides the air

above from a deep (perhaps infinitely deep) body of water below. Most

of what we experience is trapped in the scum. But beyond is a whole

other world of currents swirling beneath the surface. Their motion

might tug on our scum. We'd feel it as nothing but a gentle

disturbance, never dreaming of what lurks below.

 

A brane doesn't always divide one thing from another. It may just be a

condensation of stuff, "a localized lump of energy and curvature that

likes to hang together," Stanford University physicist Steve Shenker

said.

 

Either way, it's a place where things get stuck -- like the scum on

the pond. "That was the revolution," said Harvard University physicist

Lisa Randall. "To realize that branes were honest-to-goodness

objects."

 

Randall played a pivotal role in the revolution when she and Johns

Hopkins University physicist Raman Sundrum realized that branes could

be infinitely large and yet remain invisible.

 

The reason: We can't see anything outside our brane, because light

can't escape or enter it. We can't hear anything outside, because

sound travels through matter, and matter is stuck to our brane. We

can't use radioactivity to sense what's beyond, or even break through

with nuclear bombs, because nuclear forces are also firmly nailed to

our brane. There could be a big blue elephant sitting not a millimeter

away in another dimension, but we wouldn't know it's there because

everything we use to "see" is stuck to our brane.

 

Only gravity can't be glued to a particular brane. Gravity, as

Einstein revealed, is the curving of space-time itself, so it wanders

willy-nilly where it will, leaking off our brane into what physicists

call "the bulk" -- the rest of space-time.

 

Brane scenarios offer an elegant explanation for why gravity is such a

weakling: Maybe it's not any weaker than the other forces. Maybe it's

just concentrated somewhere else in the bulk, or on another brane.

 

Explaining the wimpiness of gravity is but a taste of what this Brane

New World might do.

 

Consider another embarrassing problem that has stumped astronomers for

decades. At least 90% of the matter in the universe is AWOL. Or more

precisely, it is known to exist because of its gravitational pull

(without it, galaxies wouldn't hold together) but can't be detected by

any other means. The standard approach has been to populate the

universe with exotic new forms of matter, too elusive to be readily

seen.

 

If our brane is but a small slice of a much larger cosmos, however,

the "dark matter" might be nothing but ordinary matter trapped on

another brane.

 

Such a shadow world, Hawking speculates, might contain "shadow human

beings wondering about the mass that seems to be missing from their

world."

 

Or take the mystery of why elementary particles always appear in

triplets, each set heavier than the next.

 

One possibility is that each triplet is the same particle repeating

itself on three layers of branes. They would have different masses on

our brane for the same reason as shadows on a wall can be different

sizes depending on the distance of the object that casts them.

 

"One of the neat things about the whole extra-dimensional idea,"

Polchinski said, "is that all the physics that we see -- all the kinds

of particles and their detailed properties -- are reflections of some

inner geometry."

 

As in real estate, value depends on location, location, location.

 

The physicists most entranced with brane worlds are cosmologists. Over

the last decade, a new array of telescopes and satellites has provided

them with sophisticated tools for taking the measure of the universe.

What was once little more than navel gazing is fast becoming a

data-drenched science.

 

But cosmologists need string theory to understand the origin of the

universe, because laws of physics break down at the tiny distances and

immense gravity at play in the Big Bang. For now, cosmologists can see

back in time only so far, and no farther.

 

Consider the Big Bang. According to current theory, the universe

sprang from an infinitely small speck of space-time known as a

"singularity" -- a paradox in the accepted laws of physics, which hold

that nothing can be infinitely small.

 

"A singularity is a euphemism for: 'Things have gone haywire....

Things make no sense,' " said Greene, one of the coordinators of the

Aspen workshop. "The Big Bang singularity is an 'It doesn't make

sense' on the most important problem -- namely, how did it all begin."

 

Branes can enclose the Big Bang singularity like a sheet of cellophane

-- avoiding the problem of the infinitely small by giving the

singularity some dimension.

 

Not surprisingly, the string-cosmology connection that brane worlds

brought about is also producing something of a culture clash. Until

recently, string theorists have remained skeptical of the grand

theories of cosmologists. String theory is mathematically rigorous.

Cosmologists are a wilder bunch, willing to try out almost any model

of the universe and see where it leads.

 

"We know how branes work," said string theorist Nathan Seiberg of the

Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. "We know what are

properties of branes, and what are not properties of branes.

[Cosmologists] violate all the rules. Is this good or bad? I'm not

sure. Because if they come up with something which violates the rules

of string theory but does all sorts of other wonderful things, then

maybe we in string theory will have a motivation to look into it."

 

Branes already have brought a whole new zoo of exotic species into the

world of physics. There are skinny branes and fat branes; empty branes

and full; active and still.

 

"A brane which is wiggling a lot would translate to a brane that has

excitations on it, particles on it," said McGill's Cline. That would

be a brane with atoms, forces, us. "But I could also have a cold

brane," he said. "That would be like a cold, empty universe. The brane

still has some energy density, but there's no particles living there."

 

And while the term brane derives from membrane -- a two-dimensional

surface -- branes could also exist in every possible dimension. A

string is a "1-brane," for one-dimensional object. Brane worlds (like

the one we might live in) must by necessity be "3 plus 1" branes --

three dimensions of space plus one of time. But you can just as easily

have a pair of 10-dimensional branes bounding an 11-dimensional

universe.

 

For now, no one knows whether the building blocks of the ultimate

theory will be strings or branes. "You can't really say," Polchinski

said. "It's kind of Zen-like, but in a very precise way."

 

Ultimately, brane worlds will stand or fall, like all science, on the

twin tests of consistency and experiment. Whatever bizarre brane

worlds may exist in some larger dimensional landscape, they can't

change what we perceive. The stars can't slip off into hyperspace. The

cat can't be disturbed from the couch. Physics has to answer to nature

as we know it.

 

Experimental evidence could come in the next decade from two very

different realms. A new particle collider under construction in Europe

could reach high-enough energies to produce, say, a five-dimensional

"particle" of gravity -- a telltale sign of brane worlds beyond. This

particle might be detected as energy missing from a collision because

it "leaks" into an extra dimension.

 

At the same time, cosmologists are figuring out ways to read the

signature of extra dimensions in the microwaves that pervade space as

the afterglow of the Big Bang; the effects would be subtle but

detectable, with a new generation of satellites.

 

"We just have to keep hoping that nature will be kind," Cline said.

 

In the end, there's always the chance that all these ideas will turn

out to be too, well, off-the-wall. "Who knows?" said University of

Chicago physicist Sean Carroll. But even if brane worlds aren't real,

Carroll said, "they will have taught us a useful lesson that we should

have known all along, which is that we don't have a clue to what's

going on."

 

Polchinski, for one, believes that branes are probably real, even

though he isn't sure where the idea will lead. "It's possible that

nature doesn't work that way," he said. "But it's so rich with

possibilities, if it's not good for this, it's probably good for

something else."

[Avinash]

I was not continuing with this thread because I felt that some may get bored (and irritated) if I keep on posting messages in this thread. But now I recall that I had promised to post what dark matter could consist of. So, I will describe the categories of dark matter very briefly. After that I will let this thread rest. I will post another message if I find some post in this thread which I feel would require replies from me.

 

The two main categories that scientists consider as possible candidates for dark matter have been dubbed MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects), and WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). MACHOs range in size from small stars to super massive black holes. MACHOs are made of 'ordinary' matter, which is called baryonic matter. They are thought to be primarily brown dwarf stars and black holes. WIMPs are smaller than atom subatomic dark matter candidates, which are thought to be made of stuff other than ordinary matter, called non-baryonic matter.

[Guest guest]

300 is a great movie full of visual effects and graphics which made it different and much better.

Acting was great, director did a wonderful job and chose great actors, full of action, and it is based on a true story.