Scientists Take Most Accurate Reading Yet of Universe's Cooling 91
angry tapir writes "An international team of astronomers has used the CSIRO-run Australia Telescope Compact Array to measure the cooling of the universe since the Big Bang. According to the CSIRO, it is the most accurate reading yet of how hot the universe used to be. When the universe was half its current age its temperature was -267.92 degrees Celsius (5.08 Kelvin), the team found, which is warmer than today's universe (-270.27 degrees Celsius)."
Reaffirms my theory (Score:1)
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I'd rather fantasize than permanently not be able to breathe floating around in a vacuum with no other life forms for a millennia/ever.
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Re:Reaffirms my theory (Score:5, Funny)
Or in 6 billion years a great white hot flash will pass through all the known universe...
Galactic Menopause?
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No, the great core explosion; this is why the Puppeteers have sent the fleet of worlds to escape the disaster.
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it will be sad to see the Earth engulfed in a red giant
Don't worry, although that fate is inevitable there's no chance you will be there to see it. Besides, it's only 0.5 billion years until the oceans evaporate and Earth resembles Venus.
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So, it'll be a dry heat?
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This article says 1 billion years, but we will run out of atmospheric carbon dioxide long before that.
The solution? Start pumping it into the atmosphere now.
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We can hope the world will end in an infinity extrapolated heat death. But,
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Yeah, heat death is most probably how the world will end, unless some radical new insight is thought up.
I am sure someone will come up with a way to reverse the entropy.
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Re:Reaffirms my theory (Score:5, Funny)
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"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost [ketzle.com]
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
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'Poetry sucks! When I grow up, I want to be a fireman.'
Found written in a cartoon speech bubble above Robert Frost's head on the used copy of 'Robert Frost's Poems' I was forced to buy/read in HS.
That phrase was the best thing in/on that book.
Universal cooling (Score:4, Funny)
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Don't worry this universal cooling thing is just a great big hoax designed to spur the passage of anti-freedom pollution regulations before the supposed "heat death of the universe." Just ignore the alarmists, the universe has been cooling for a long time and I'm sure it can adapt.
Fail, fail, fail. (Score:5, Informative)
267.92C is 5.23 K, not 5.08 K, and 270.27C is freaking hot.
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... and also, Slashdot ate my unicode characters. Come on, Slashdot, join us in the 21st century! You'll be fine, I promise!
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He was presumably talking about the degrees symbol (U+00B0).
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it's 541.07K
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-273.15
So, next time, be smart and use a browser which doesn't mangle your input! (pun intended)
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That's U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, which is in ASCII. But U+2212 MINUS SIGN, assuming that's what he tried to use, is not in ASCII.
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As I said in one other comment, the minus sign is in all character sets, even the oldest one, because it is a sign for an arithmetic operation. And arithmetic signs were present in character sets since the dawn of the computing age, since computation was their primary purpose b
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...And arithmetic signs were present in character sets since the dawn of the computing age, since computation was their primary purpose back then. ...
Technically, the only proper mathematical operator that's ever been available for use on any keyboard is the + character. The proper symbol for subtraction has never been available (instead, we've made do with the hyphen), and the asterisk and forward slash have all but entirely replaced the '×' and '÷' characters*.
The proper arithmetic signs for multiplication and division have also (to my knowledge) never been properly recognized in programming languages as a routine, variable, or anything el
Re:Fail, fail, fail. (Score:5, Funny)
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I dropped a "-" damn it.
see? there it is, the minus!
So no need to blame Slashdot for dropping a character which is plain ASCII...
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...no, it almost never does, except in accounting.
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The - is the correct way to express negativity, unless you are using word or wordpress, in which case it may end up getting mangled.
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parenthesis around a number almost always indicate a negative number
So from the summary:
(5.08 Kelvin)
would be negative Kelvin? OK.
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Get out beancounter. We don't like your kind around here.
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uni cooling? (Score:3, Funny)
/joke
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Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
That's why I attack with
Raw magic instead.
--Archmage Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice and Arcane [wikipedia.org]"
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Both. WE'RE FUCKlNG DOOMED!!!
Is this news? (Score:3)
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No.
Hipster cosmologists (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, they knew about the universe before it was cool.
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Bruce Schneier knew about the universe before it was cool.
FTFY.
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Yeah, they knew about the universe before it was cool.
Actually, according to the poster, it's heated up by a considerable margin. "Which is warmer than today's universe (270.27 degrees Celsius)." I'd like to buy a math transform, an inverse abs() function please?
I screwed up the temperature by dropping a "-" (Score:2)
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The platonic kind of love, not the 'I want to have your babies' kind, so don't get any funny ideas.
I hate to break it on you, but the love you're thinking about doesn't lead to babies either in this case. Or do you really believe that there any girls here on Slashdot?
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not the 'I want to have your babies' kind, so don't get any funny ideas.
That's a good idea, sir, kidnapping his napping kids would be a federal offense!
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In this case 0K is minus 272.15 degrees C-off by the decimal portion.
No, it's -273.15 C
Oh, and you can type the - sign. You know, this has been used to signify subtraction since the dawn of the computing age (... and even before). So, do you really believe that this sign was not present in the oldest character encodings such as ASCII?
Sure the universe is cool, but so are black holes (Score:1)
Has anyone got a number for the amount of heat locked up in black holes?
And when a black hole forms does the temperature of the universe experience a quantum drop?
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Since the heat "locked up" in black holes hasn't disappeared from the universe, just become locked in a black hole, no, the average universe temperature doesn't drop.
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In fact since due to time dilation, everything that drops into a blackhole seems to freeze at the event horizon, the energy radiating from the black hole must equal the energy that will be lost as a function of the matter that falls in.
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If an observer dropped into a black hole their time would slow.
To an outside observer the stuff just falls in.
Dude! (Score:1)
That's really cool
Climate change (Score:2)
And how did they take its temperature? (Score:2)
Fix for global warming? (Score:2)
So I guess the real way to solve global warming is universal cooling. Hmmm.
Scientist says... (Score:2)
The early universe was warm, almost balmy... a popular place for ancient New Yorkers to go in the winter.
Wow, cool! (Score:2)
Oh, come on, somebody had to say it.
colder (Score:2)