Masturbators who are interested in the standard model of big bang cosmology may have an interest in resources which are available on the internet.

A discussion of big bang cosmology titled “Misconceptions About the Big Bang,” was published in the March, 2005, issue of “Scientific American”, and is available online.

http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~charley/papers/LineweaverDavisSciAm.pdf

The question of a finite vs infinite universe, and the large-scale topology of the universe, was discussed in an April, 1999, SA article titled “Is Space Finite”.

http://cosmos.phy.tufts.edu/~zirbel/ast21/sciam/IsSpaceFinite.pdf

There are various “Cosmology Calculators” on the internet which convert astronomically observed redshift data to distances, recession velocities, size of the observable universe at various points in cosmological time, etc. This is a good one.

http://www.einsteins-theory-of-relativity-4engineers.com/cosmocalc_2013.htm

For example, the light travel time (look back time) of an astronomical observation is calculated from the redshift. For an object within a fairly localized gravitationally bound region of space, the numerical value of the light travel time immediately infers the distance to the object. One Million Years of light travel time equals a distance to the object of One Million Light Years, for example. But for observations in which the light travel time is a major fraction of the total age of the expanding universe, then the distance, and various other cosmological parameters, cannot be so easily inferred.

Cosmology calculators convert redshift data to the parameters of interest based on the FLRW metric and the LambdaCDM standard model of the expanding universe. The most distant object ever observed to date has a redshift of 11.9. So simply enter z = 11.9 and click “Calculate”. It shows that the light has traveled for 13.379 billion years from an object that when the light left it was at a distance of 2.545 Billion Light Years, and receding at 4.4732 times the speed of light. And now as the light has arrived, the object (if it still exists) is at a distance, far beyond the present light horizon, at 32.825 Billion Light Years, and is moving with a recession velocity of 2.3393 times the speed of light.

A cosmology calculator is a handy device, for example, to determine the pertinent physical parameters of the far distant objects in the Hubble Space Telescope’s Deep Field and Ultra Deep Field photographs whose redshifts are just now being measured and reported.

On the Cosmos episode last weekend, Tyson spent the bulk of the episode talking about the light spectrum of stars, their absorption lines, and distances, then at the end BREEZED over the whole red shift-expansion component. Hoping that he provides more info on it and explains the system so ppl can understand the method of determining the expansion speed.

Thanks for reminding me about the Tyson Cosmos series. I must be sure to start watching it and try to pick up the previous episodes. It appears that today's episode delves into the world of particle physics and the discovery of the neutrino.

I don't know how much more he will get into cosmology, and the use of the astronomical red shift as a measure of the metric expansion of space. But in its simplest terms, the light of a celestial body can be split into its constituent spectrum of colors. If the object is moving away from us, the spectrum is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. If the object is moving toward us, the light is shifted toward the blue. This shift is quantitatively determined by measuring the precise movement of absorption lines (narrow black lines due to absorption by elements in its path) toward the red or toward the blue, with the use of a spectrograph.

The landmark discovery of Edwin Hubble in the 1920's was that beyond our local gravitationally bound group, ALL the objects in the universe are red shifted, and the amount of the redshift is directly proportional to their distance from us. This distance was determined by the measurement of the brightness of Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda galaxy. Since Cepheids have a known intrinsic brighness, their distance can be directly measured from brightness measurements, and they are called "standard candles" for this reason. So the measurement of the red shift of a Cepheid provides a calibration of redshift against known distance.

The implication of astronomical observations in which everything is moving away from everythig else at large distances.....with the distance proportional to the measured redshift....is that the universe itself is expanding. This began to receive solid theoretical underpinnings with the work of a Jesuit Priest and theoretical physicist named Georges Lemaitre, and the work of Alexander Friedmann and others based on Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

Today the standard model of cosmology is based on the expansion of the universe according to the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric, representing a solution of the field equations of General Relativity for an isotropic and homogeneous universe. The LambdaCDM model is usually considered to represent the standard model of big bang cosmology, and based on the latest Planck satellite data, produces an excellent fit to the astronomical data using only six physical parameters.

Few of us mere mortals can ever hope to grasp the mathematics of the General Relativity field equations, the mathematics of the Friedmann equations, the FLRW metric, or the LambdaCDM model. But the guys who can crunch these numbers have published the "cosmology calculators" of the kind I linked to. So when you have a redshift measurement, you can plug it into the calculator, click CLACULATE, and get a readout of the distance, the velocity, the former and current locations in the expanding universe, the lookback time of the light travel, the age of the universe then and now.....all kinds of really neat stuff.

I provided the example for an object observed in the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field image with a measured redshift z = 11.9. The concept of a double digit redshift is something that would have made Edwin Hubble's jaw drop.

The smoking gun of the big bang was the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation by Penzias and Wilson in 1964-1965. This radiation is massively redshifted into the microwave region of the spectrum at z = 1090 give or take. The implications of this huge redshift can be calculated in the same way using the cosmology calculator, and represents the state of the universe about 375,000 years after the big bang. It's the oldest light in the universe.

This YouTube clip might be of interest. Although short on scientific detail, it covers the high points of the history of big bang cosmology theory. It also has interesting film of Edwin Hubble at the focus of the 100 inch reflector at Mount Wilson Observatory. Of particular interest is film of the Jesuit priest and great theoretical physicist Georges Lemaitre who came up with the early form of big bang theory, and film of Lemaitre and Albert Einstein visiting Hubble at Mount Wilson in 1931.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq-cE_reCAQ

Fantastic information and links provided here -- thanks Kent and Fred!

YW. Glad you found it of interest.

Yeah, I remember when the NASA COBE mission produced their high res map. Always refining the big picture.

Indeed, the ever increasing resolution of the light data from the surface of last scattering of the Big Bang has been a triumph of science and the field of cosmology. It's amazing to think that it was only about 50 years ago that Penzias and Wilson first detected the "fossil" radiation from the Big Bang -- the first light in the universe massively red shifted -- with AT&T's giant horn antenna tuned to a single radio frequency of the microwave spectrum. Since then, the COBE, WMAP, and Planck satellite data have, each in their turn, imaged with ever increasing resolution, the important anisotropies of the radiation from the surface of last scattering, and clearly established the black body spectrum of matter and radiation in thermodynamic equilibrium, of which Penzias and Wilson had only sampled a single energy in the microwave region. The satellite images of the last scattering surface show the "Recombination" epoch in which electrons combined with protons to form atomic hydrogen, and the photons (previously subject to electron-photon scattering) de-coupled from matter and could move freely through the universe in their 13.7+ billion year journey to our telescopes of today.

Latest data from the Planck satellite place the redshift of those photons at a small decimal fraction over 1090. You might be interested in entering a redshift z = 1090 into the cosmology calculator to find out the distances and recession velocities of the surface of last photon scattering. You get a flight time of the photons (look back time) of 13.757 billion years, and the present proper distance of the surface of last scattering of 45.718 billion light years, near the outer limit of the observable universe as expected from the massively redshifted light which has traveled through space for almost the entire age of the universe (time since the big bang.) Also of interest is the proper present recession speed of the surface at 3.2582 times the speed of light. Finally, note that the photons left the source just 377,426 years after the big bang......exactly the magnitude of the time expected for the end of the Recombination Epoch and the decoupling of photons from matter.

Also noteworthy is the calculated value of the recession velocity of the expanding universe at this very early stage of big bang expansion. This calculation for a redshift of 1090, gives a proper recession speed of the source when the light left it of 65.9736 times the speed of light.

I found a couple of very fine YouTube uploads from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory about astrophysics and cosmology science, and the latest data from the Planck satellite. Contrary to what one usually finds in the popular media, this is heavy on the specifics of the scientific data, and does so without getting into the deep weeds of the mathematics of the General Relativity field equations, the FLRW metric of the expanding universe, or the LambdaCDM model.

Doctor Charles Lawrence, Planck Project Scientist - Jet Propulsion Laboratory - von Karmen Lecture - 2013. "The Planck Space Telescope: Revealing the Ancient Universe":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCZdrfDHwgU

With some elements identical to the Planck Satellite lecture, but with some additional detail about the science of the subject, this is a 2009 von Karmen Lecture from Dr. Lawrence titled "The Really Big Picture: Things We Know About the Universe and How We Know Them":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qpV3vQYb5E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCZdrfDHwgU

In this link about the Planck satellite data, Dr. Lawrence mentions that data will later be released about the polarization of the radiation.

Just two or three weeks ago, there was big news media coverage of the announcement of data from the Bicep II South Pole Observatory which shows gravity wave polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. This, if solidly confirmed, simultaneously demonstrates the existence of gravity waves (predicted theoretically in 1916 by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity), and the reality of the "Cosmic Inflation" theory of big bang expansion which accounts for the extreme homogeneity of the CMB radiation between vast regions of space whose spheres of causality could never have overlapped.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/science/space/detection-of-waves-in-space-buttresses-landmark-theory-of-big-bang.html?_r=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlfIVEy_YOA

I enjoy the hell out of big thinking, space exploration, science. The new Cosmos series is definitely a big deal. I love that there's a hard core science show on American TV in Prime Time on Sundays. This country needs better science education, there are far too many people that reject evolution, the heliocentric model, quantum physics, etc.

The Nobel prize in physics was announced on October 6. It is shared between Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/science/nobel-prize-physics-takaaki-kajita-arthur-b-mcdonald.html?_r=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-50Mjvu9BdQ

EINSTEIN WAS RIGHT (Again)

Landmark Scientific Discovery

Scientists announced last Thursday that they have detected gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime that were predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in 1915, but have never before been confirmed. The gravitational wave was generated by the merger of two rotating black holes, which occurred 1.3 billion years ago. The wave in spacetime was detected after it traveled across the universe and swept through the earth late last year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html

Mornington Crescent

A clear demonstration of the principle of warp drive? Surfing the waves in spacetime seems to be the next step.

Sorry, vodka made me do it.