The discovery that could rewrite physics
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0:01 - 0:04If you look deep into the night sky,
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0:04 - 0:06you see stars,
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0:06 - 0:09and if you look further, you see more stars,
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0:09 - 0:11and further, galaxies, and
further, more galaxies. -
0:11 - 0:15But if you keep looking further and further,
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0:15 - 0:18eventually you see nothing for a long while,
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0:18 - 0:22and then finally you see a
faint, fading afterglow, -
0:22 - 0:25and it's the afterglow of the Big Bang.
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0:25 - 0:28Now, the Big Bang was an era in the early universe
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0:28 - 0:30when everything we see in the night sky
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0:30 - 0:33was condensed into an incredibly small,
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0:33 - 0:37incredibly hot, incredibly roiling mass,
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0:37 - 0:40and from it sprung everything we see.
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0:40 - 0:43Now, we've mapped that afterglow
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0:43 - 0:44with great precision,
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0:44 - 0:46and when I say we, I mean people who aren't me.
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0:46 - 0:48We've mapped the afterglow
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0:48 - 0:49with spectacular precision,
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0:49 - 0:51and one of the shocks about it
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0:51 - 0:54is that it's almost completely uniform.
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0:54 - 0:56Fourteen billion light years that way
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0:56 - 0:58and 14 billion light years that way,
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0:58 - 0:59it's the same temperature.
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0:59 - 1:02Now it's been 14 billion years
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1:02 - 1:04since that Big Bang,
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1:04 - 1:07and so it's got faint and cold.
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1:07 - 1:09It's now 2.7 degrees.
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1:09 - 1:11But it's not exactly 2.7 degrees.
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1:11 - 1:14It's only 2.7 degrees to about
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1:14 - 1:1510 parts in a million.
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1:15 - 1:16Over here, it's a little hotter,
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1:16 - 1:18and over there, it's a little cooler,
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1:18 - 1:21and that's incredibly important
to everyone in this room, -
1:21 - 1:23because where it was a little hotter,
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1:23 - 1:25there was a little more stuff,
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1:25 - 1:26and where there was a little more stuff,
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1:26 - 1:28we have galaxies and clusters of galaxies
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1:28 - 1:30and superclusters
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1:30 - 1:32and all the structure you see in the cosmos.
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1:32 - 1:35And those small, little, inhomogeneities,
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1:35 - 1:3820 parts in a million,
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1:38 - 1:40those were formed by quantum mechanical wiggles
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1:40 - 1:42in that early universe that were stretched
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1:42 - 1:45across the size of the entire cosmos.
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1:45 - 1:46That is spectacular,
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1:46 - 1:48and that's not what they found on Monday;
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1:48 - 1:50what they found on Monday is cooler.
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1:50 - 1:52So here's what they found on Monday:
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1:52 - 1:56Imagine you take a bell,
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1:56 - 1:57and you whack the bell with a hammer.
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1:57 - 1:59What happens? It rings.
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1:59 - 2:01But if you wait, that ringing fades
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2:01 - 2:03and fades and fades
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2:03 - 2:05until you don't notice it anymore.
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2:05 - 2:07Now, that early universe was incredibly dense,
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2:07 - 2:10like a metal, way denser,
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2:10 - 2:12and if you hit it, it would ring,
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2:12 - 2:14but the thing ringing would be
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2:14 - 2:16the structure of space-time itself,
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2:16 - 2:19and the hammer would be quantum mechanics.
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2:19 - 2:21What they found on Monday
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2:21 - 2:23was evidence of the ringing
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2:23 - 2:25of the space-time of the early universe,
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2:25 - 2:27what we call gravitational waves
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2:27 - 2:29from the fundamental era,
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2:29 - 2:31and here's how they found it.
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2:31 - 2:33Those waves have long since faded.
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2:33 - 2:34If you go for a walk,
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2:34 - 2:36you don't wiggle.
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2:36 - 2:39Those gravitational waves in the structure of space
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2:39 - 2:42are totally invisible for all practical purposes.
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2:42 - 2:45But early on, when the universe was making
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2:45 - 2:47that last afterglow,
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2:47 - 2:48the gravitational waves
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2:48 - 2:51put little twists in the structure
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2:51 - 2:53of the light that we see.
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2:53 - 2:56So by looking at the night sky deeper and deeper --
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2:56 - 2:58in fact, these guys spent
three years on the South Pole -
2:58 - 3:01looking straight up through the coldest, clearest,
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3:01 - 3:03cleanest air they possibly could find
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3:03 - 3:06looking deep into the night sky and studying
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3:06 - 3:09that glow and looking for the faint twists
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3:09 - 3:12which are the symbol, the signal,
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3:12 - 3:13of gravitational waves,
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3:13 - 3:16the ringing of the early universe.
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3:16 - 3:17And on Monday, they announced
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3:17 - 3:19that they had found it.
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3:19 - 3:22And the thing that's so spectacular about that to me
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3:22 - 3:24is not just the ringing, though that is awesome.
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3:24 - 3:26The thing that's totally amazing,
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3:26 - 3:28the reason I'm on this stage, is because
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3:28 - 3:31what that tells us is something
deep about the early universe. -
3:31 - 3:33It tells us that we
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3:33 - 3:34and everything we see around us
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3:34 - 3:37are basically one large bubble --
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3:37 - 3:39and this is the idea of inflation—
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3:39 - 3:43one large bubble surrounded by something else.
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3:43 - 3:45This isn't conclusive evidence for inflation,
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3:45 - 3:47but anything that isn't inflation that explains this
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3:47 - 3:49will look the same.
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3:49 - 3:50This is a theory, an idea,
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3:50 - 3:52that has been around for a while,
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3:52 - 3:53and we never thought we we'd really see it.
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3:53 - 3:55For good reasons, we thought we'd never see
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3:55 - 3:57killer evidence, and this is killer evidence.
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3:57 - 3:59But the really crazy idea
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3:59 - 4:02is that our bubble is just one bubble
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4:02 - 4:07in a much larger, roiling pot of universal stuff.
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4:07 - 4:09We're never going to see the stuff outside,
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4:09 - 4:11but by going to the South Pole
and spending three years -
4:11 - 4:14looking at the detailed structure of the night sky,
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4:14 - 4:16we can figure out
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4:16 - 4:19that we're probably in a universe
that looks kind of like that. -
4:19 - 4:21And that amazes me.
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4:21 - 4:23Thanks a lot.
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4:23 - 4:26(Applause)
- Title:
- The discovery that could rewrite physics
- Speaker:
- Allan Adams
- Description:
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On March 17, 2014, a group of physicists announced a thrilling discovery: the “smoking gun” data for the idea of an inflationary universe, a clue to the Big Bang. For non-physicists, what does it mean? TED asked Allan Adams to briefly explain the results, in this improvised talk illustrated by Randall Munroe of xkcd.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 04:42
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Madeleine Aronson approved English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Madeleine Aronson accepted English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics | ||
Madeleine Aronson edited English subtitles for The discovery that could rewrite physics |