Strange

Important point. The Big Bang is still happening; it was not an event in the past. And especially not the "creation" of the universe. It just occurred to me: you do realise that inflation is not the same thing as expansion? It is a hypothesis added to the Big Bang model to address the horizon problem. There are alternative hypotheses (such as cyclic models) but inflation solves several other problems and so is favoured at the moment.

When the subject is cosmology, the answer to that question is always NO. Have you ever considered getting help with your anxiety problems?

! Moderator Note I split the Canuck Chat posts off to their own thread: https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/121759-canuck-chat-split-from-is-the-speed-of-light-variable/

Not quite. R records the fact that the page has been accessed (Referenced) M records the fact that the page has been written to (Modified) So reading a page the first time will set the R flag Writing a page the first time will set the R and the M flag Neither of those control what is allowed, they just record what happened to the page. The read/write controls whether the page can be written to or not. Initially it is read only until it is written to

But I explained why that does not change the age of the universe. Don't be ridiculous. The Sun will last longer than that.

This can be important, exciting, revolutionary, dramatic, etc without being anything to worry about. Of course it would be a big deal if we discover something new about the universe. That is what scientists (and people who are interested in science) hope for. Why do you think that learning new stuff is a worry or a bad outcome? Just stop posting that sort of stupid comment.

Is it? Scientists can be very critical of other's theories, but I am not aware that this is treated especially badly. I don't believe you. There is no religious-like orthodoxy. Cyclic universe models are Big Bang models. They are based on the universe expanding from a hot dense state; i.e. the Big Bang model. There are many different attempts to question what happened before the notional Big Bang event (which may never have happened). Lots of people don't like inflation much. Including Steinhardt who did a lot of the original work on the idea. There are lots of alternative hypotheses. It is very difficult to find evidence for any of them. Science is not about beliefs, but about evidence. Penrose claimed that there was evidence for this model in patterns in the CMB, but this has not been confirmed. There are other models that avoid inflation, such as the universe being infinitely old in a meta-stable state before expansion started. But there is no solid evidence for them either yet. So the rational position is to say "we don't know" and hope for some evidence one way or another.

OK. Even if we ignore the fact that you are still wrong about the 10%, let's say the the universe will end in 500 trillion years (just as an example). If you take 10% off that, will that be "in your lifetime". I am now going to report you for trolling.

Sigh. Is there any point when you just read every tenth word and then make up the rest. So it is 10% less in one direction and 10% more in the other. So it is zero on average. No change to the estimated age of the universe.

But that is mixing two different things. Apples and oranges, if you will. If two cars take the same time to drive the same distance, but one of them uses twice as much gas/petrol, does that mean that the one that had the greater energy difference was going faster, even though they were both travelling at the same speed? No, obviously not. You can't just combine random quantities and get a sensible answer.

OK. It looks like some previous measurement of the anisotropy make it slightly less than 10% of the expansion rate. (http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/tecci/v13n24/1909-3667-tecci-13-24-00011.pdf) If I have understood that correctly. So it is 10% less in one direction and 10% more in the other. And it is unchanged in all the other directions. While these results might tell us something interesting about the evolution of the universe, it doesn't;t look like they will substantially change our estimate of the age. (Mordred may have more detail on that.) But even if the universe were 10% older or 10% young than we currently think, it is not a "bad outcome". It is, like all increases in knowledge, a good outcome.

I apologise. Maybe a language problem? When you said "ever existed" did you mean "always existed"?

So it could change what we know. As I say, what we know has changed much more dramatically in the past. I mean, like totally revolutionary, overturn everything we thought we knew, changed. This is just another minor tweak to that understanding. How can improving our understanding of the universe be a "bad outcome"? Why does everything have to be "bad" to you?

But you think that about everything. I assume a conversation with you must be like: Me: Good morning! You: Oh no! Does that mean we are all going to die? Me: No. I was just saying hello. You: Oh but it sounded like you were saying the world was about to end. Me: ... They say that their measurements are consistent with previous measurements. (That is science-speak for "almost the same as") How on Earth can a small difference in the expansion rate in different directions (or even a large difference) be a bad outcome for us? It's not like anything has changed, apart from our understanding.

Not all. Some might have died or exploded or merged or fallen into black holes or ... For example, Betelgeuse is due to go supernova sometime in the next few thousand year. It might have already happened but we won't know until the light reaches us. You probably want to find the thread(s) by Michael123456 on this forum. He also struggles with the concept of light taking a finite time to reach us and what "now" means. His argument might make sense to you. (It makes no sense at all to me.)

I'm not sure how to make it any simpler. How about: they might have important results or they might not. It would be exciting if they have. Is that clearer?

A few quotes from this: So that sounds like it could be confirmation of something that was already observed. But, science is never definite so: So, it is "maybe" and "if" and "more work required". In other words: science. Note that there have been two(*) major paradigm shifts in cosmology in my lifetime. So a third one would be pretty exciting. (*) Studiot said 5 in his lifetime, so either he is much older than me or is willing to accept smaller changes as "major" Please don't copy and paste almost entire articles:it potentially violates copyright.

I'm not surprised. I don't understand the paper. You would need to have studied astrophysics to understand it.

1. You don't know it is a "better test". It is a measurement that has never been made before. So we can't trust it until it has been validated by other people. 2. It doesn't show a speed difference of 30% (for the reasons I explained). 3. We have no idea if or how it will affect our models 4. Stop making up stuff that is not in the sources

Correction: There is how things are and how you want them to be. Or that you are looking for excuses for the things people do. You still haven't acknowledged this is very obviously wrong. There were diseases of animals and plants before humans existed. There were natural calamities and catastrophes (are these different things?) such massive volcanoes that destroyed life over large areas, meteors hitting the Earth, etc., before humans existed. There were calamities and catastrophes caused by other living things before humans arrived (such as the oxygen catastrophe). So it would be nice if you acknowledged that this stamens of your was not just wrong but nonsensical.

This is the universe we are talking about. "Suddenly" would mean "over many billions of years". The rate of expansion won't have changed overnight. Or just while these measurements were being made, and then back to normal afterwards. Interesting. But note that is 30% difference in X-ray brightness. That almost certainly does not equate to 30% difference in expansion rate. I think need to wait for more results on this. It seems odd that this difference is only presence in the X-ray range.

No.

When your spacecraft launches and your fried is watching from a 500 metres away, there will already be a delay of about 2 microseconds. As you fly away that delay will increase. So he will never see things in (your) real time. When you invent impossible scenarios, then science cannot tell you the answer. You can make up whatever you want. My best guess is that in this scenario, if you were to sneeze, dragons would fly out of your nose. Well, one of the things we know about the speed of light is that it is "invariant"; everyone sees light travel at the same speed. So, lets say that your spaceship travels at 87% of the speed of light. If you measured the speed that the light from the star passed you, you would see it go past at the speed of light. But when that light reaches Earth your friend will also measure it as travelling at the speed of light. As a consequence of that, your friend will see your clock running slower than his. And you will see his clock running slower than yours. Also, you will see the distance to that distant star being half what it is measured by your friend.

If it were a huge difference we would have known about it already. The differences that led to the discovery of dark energy (accelerating expansion) are already pretty small. So this must be smaller than that. The current estimates of the Hubble constant (and hence age of the universe) are based on multiple measurements in all directions at many different distances. This anisotropy has not shown up before. Although, as they say, other more localised ones have.

That is just defining what cosmology is: the study of the past and future evolution of the universe.