Big Blue Designing Chip to Decode the Big Bang 149
Jerry Beth writes "IBM is working with European astronomy organization Astron to design a chip that will be used to help gather billions-of-years-old radio signals from deep space in the hopes of learning more about the origins of the universe. From the article: 'It's part of Astron's Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope project. The SKA will be linked to millions of antennas collecting radio signals from space. The antennas will be spread over a large surface area of the globe but, in the aggregate, they will form a square kilometer's worth of collection area. [...] The microprocessors will essentially help the antennas capture the signals, filter out extraneous data and then convert the signals into data. Astrophysicists will then analyze the data to look for patterns. The weakest signals are the prize in this project, because they will be the oldest.'"
How else can it be applied? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is very interesting, but it doesn't explain what is being filtered, and how it is being filtered. Assuming the signals that are being filtered are radio waves, that would indicate that the processor would need to be powerful enough to catch the weak waves (as indicated in the article), while still providing enough power to filter out the noise.
I trust the astronomists already know how to do this, but it would be interesting to see what the process would be.
Then it brings up the other question: What else can this processor be used for? If it needs to be produced in the millions to make it financially viable, where else will it be sold?
Perhaps it could be used to filter out wireless microwave radio signals, allowing for better reception in a cell phone, security within a wireless network through filtering, and elsewhere. Imagine having a hard-coded chip that will filter out background wireless "noise" and look for a specific signal from a wireless signal. Assuming it couldn't be easily hacked, it could potentially provide some excellent security to wireless networks.
Re:Look and calculate all you want (Score:2, Insightful)
For the same reason humans concocted religion in the first place: it comforts them. Just as we're always looking and hoping for a parent-analog to take care of us.
We can't know, or even imagine, non-existance, because we've never experienced it. For many, it's too scary and awful to even contemplate. It's why when you ask them to try to imagine and describe death, they always say things like "black" and "cold". They have no other frame of refence to describe 'non-existance'.
We invent supernatural bogeymen as a way of dealing with the unknowable, and we conjure up 'Big Bangs' as a way of getting our minds around the Universe. It's a lot easier than trying to understand infinity and nothingness.
Re:Look and calculate all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason science exists is that some people cannot just "accept" things. They must ask why. They must have proof to back up their assumptions. From what I understand about the Big Bang, these scientists have reason to believe that time DOES have a beginning.
If there are scientists with evidence that time is not finite, then it would be helpful if someone provided a link.
Re:Look and calculate all you want (Score:2, Insightful)
- It's funny to think that the Big Bang happened what 5 billion years ago or something like that and before that what?
- Likewise God Created the heavens and the earth 6,000 years ago. . .
- Likewise I was created 24 years ago and I've never experienced anything before that!
There's a saying in Algebra, as x approaches infinity y approaches 0 or maybe that's tangents in Geometry or maybe I'm off my rocker!I think Einstein was on to something with that relativity thing.
Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste? (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you know where you are going, unless you understand where you come from?
Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste? (Score:2, Insightful)
many of the advances in technology that influence our lives today were unintended consequences of other research.
dude.
Intelligent Life and MySpace (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have a clue about what science is (Score:1, Insightful)
If you think trying to find why the world exists and how it works is a waste of time you must clearly already know why we exist and what is the purpose of the human species. Please enlighten us because since the dawn of time nobody knows how the hell we should use our lives for.
Also many discoveries are useful after 50-100 years.
Look at how Maxwell lost his time finding formulas to calculate and study very abstract electromagnetic waves. Well you know what ? It took a lot of time but eventually these equations were the source of radio telecommunications. From your point of view nobody should have used money to support Maxwell though since during his time it was an abstract and useless concept.
Nobody is wasting time nor money until we know what our goal is. Until then, put everything in science to find out.
Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste? (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point, doesn't it make sense to stop spending Billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Big Bang research?
At some point, yes. Diminishing marginal returns eventually bring down everything. But I wouldn't say we've gone too far; this program doesn't sound like it would cost anywhere near a billion dollars and the chips will probably be useful in other weak-signal applications.
How much does it benefit us to know what happened
Newton couldn't have developed his universal law of gravitation without the observations of Galileo and Kepler that planets are attracted to each other. But now we use his law of gravity all the time. Relativity drew on the results of experiments that involved light reflecting back from the moons of Jupiter; now we need relativity to calibrate the electron guns in our televsion sets. Our understanding of nuclear physics got a huge boost from studies of the stars and the fusion processes going on out there. And nuclear power (and weapons) have impacted society in a grand way. How much does it benefit us to know what happened 0.3 seconds after the Big Bang? It helps us because the closer we get to the Big Bang, the closer we get to observing quantum gravity (in whatever form it takes). And while quantum gravity might not seem terribly useful right now, I have little doubt that it will have useful applications eventually. Basic research is important.
I'd rather see all this money fund research into advanced propulsion systems, robotics, and solar power technologies that will help us explore the Universe, rather than just gaze at it with ever more powerful equipment.
I can't help thinking "why?". At some point, doesn't it make sense to stop spending Billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Space exploration? After all, if looking at the universe with a cheap telescope is a waste of time, wouldn't going out and touching it in an expensive spaceship be an even bigger waste?
Re:Look and calculate all you want (Score:3, Insightful)
First, the human mind and computers cannot actually calculate infinity.
There is not enough brainpower nor matter in the observable universe to calculate such an amount.
Rather than to go insane at the thought of infinity or to try to create a machine that consumes all matter outside the observable universe, we simply create a placeholder.
Secondly, infinity does not actually exist in the physical universe.
As time does not exist other than as a unit of measurement and mostly as a matter of opinion and comparison of atomic decay. Time itself cannot be measured by polling a static unit of measurement like you can with matter or energy... As in... There are so much quantity and quality of matter or energy at any given point. Whereas time is merely a measurement of the comparison of what matter and energy are doing and for how long.
Considering it is also relative depending on how fast the energy or matter is traveling doesn't help the situation.
Even if there is infinite matter and energy in the universe, it would be impossible for anything to observe it all at once because of the space time problem.
Infinity might as well not exist if you can't observe it and even if you could would it really matter? Since, nothing else could exist as a single point of time, matter, and space no information could be transfered before the big bang.
However, this does not take an account of what is happening outside our observable universe or if there other universes. As in... There was a big bang, but there happens to be other big bangs or various other similar events happening elsewhere but so far away that light or xrays from those parts of the universe will never reach us... EVER!
No direct big bang data... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I *hope* it's just you. Just like I don't get what makes a cat do particular things from time to time, I don't get people who aren't fundamentally *curious*. Even stipulating that there may *never* be a single practical application or utility derived from cosmology, it speaks poorly for our species if we have the capability to probe our fundamental origins from our little speck in the cosmos but lack the effort. In all cases, when we probe the Universe with more precise instruments, we find mysteries that we not only cannot explain, but that we never before *imagined*. The subtlety and beauty of the Universe demands enough respect for it that we at least peer through the crack in the door.