Special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

Cosmic questions,
answers pending
Throughout human history, great missions of
exploration have been inspired by curiosity,
mission: reveal the
the desire to find out about unknown realms. secrets of the universe
Such missions have taken explorers across
wide oceans and far below their surfaces, THE OBJECTIVE
deep into jungles, high onto mountain peaks For millennia, people have turned to the heavens in search of clues to
nature’s mysteries. Truth seekers from ages past to the present day
and over vast stretches of ice to the Earth’s
have found that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that
polar extremities. countless galaxies dot the abyss of space, that an unknown form of
Today’s greatest exploratory mission is no matter and dark forces are at work in shaping the cosmos. Yet despite
longer Earthbound. It’s the scientific quest to these heroic efforts, big cosmological questions remain unresolved:

explain the cosmos, to answer the grandest What happened before the Big Bang?................................ Page 22
questions about the universe as a whole. What is the universe made of?.......................................... Page 24
What is the identity, for example, of the Is there a theory of everything?........................................ Page 26
Are space and time fundamental?..................................... Page 28
“dark” ingredients in the cosmic recipe, com-
What is the fate of the universe?...................................... Page 30
posing 95 percent of the universe’s content?
And just what, if anything, occurred more than Find tools for the mission on Page 32. For pdfs of this section, and
more resources, visit [Link]/cosmicquestions
13.7 billion years ago, when the universe acces-
sible to astronomical observation was born?
THE WHEREABOUTS
Will physicists ever succeed in devising a theory
to encompass all the forces and particles of
nature in one neat mathematical package Manhattan
(and in so doing, perhaps, help answer some
of these other questions)? Will that package
include the supposedly basic notions of space
and time, or will such presumed preexisting ele- 4 km across 1 x 10 4 km
ments of reality turn out to be mere illusions
emerging from ur-material of impenetrable
obscurity? And finally (fittingly), what about cos-
mic finality? Will the universe end in a bang, a
whimper or the cosmic equivalent of a Bruce
Willis movie (everything getting blown apart)? 6 x 10 20 km

In the pages that follow, Science News writ-

Understanding the universe requires recognizing
ers assess the state of the evidence on these its immense scale. Zooming out from Manhattan
momentous issues. In none of these arenas reveals the Earth, solar system, galaxies and then
are the results yet firm. But as string theorist walls of galaxies separated by voids. At the most
distant scales, the universe looks uniform.
Brian Greene wrote in his book The Elegant
Universe, “sometimes attaining the deepest
familiarity with a question is our best substi-
tute for actually having the answer.”
— Tom Siegfried, Editor in Chief

20  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

THE VITAL STATISTICS PAST MISSION FINDINGS
13.75 billion years (uncertainty +/–0.11): Time since the Big Bang, 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publishes a mathemati-
the creation of the universe. cal description of planetary motion, assuming that
the sun is the center of the solar system. Later
377,730 years (+3,205/–3,200): Time after the Big Bang when work by Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Isaac
photons stopped interacting with charged matter and produced the Newton provides further evidence.
relic radiation known as the cosmic microwave background.
1666 Isaac Newton formulates the law of gravity
70.4 kilometers/second/megaparsec (+1.3/–1.4): Expansion rate and laws of motion, published in 1687.

Top, from lef t: USGS, NASA Earth observatory; reto stÖckli and robert simmon, modis/GSFC/NASA, usgs, dmsp; JPL- Caltech/nasa, T. Pyle/ssc, adapted by t. dubÉ; r. hurt/ssc,
of the universe assuming its spacetime geometry is flat. Also known
as the Hubble constant. 1900 Max Planck formulates the first description
of quantum theory, which will eventually explain the
90 billion light-years: Rough diameter of the known universe. nature of matter and energy on the subatomic scale.

jpl- caltech/nasa; bottom, from lef t: david parker/Photo researchers; nicolle rager fuller; nicolle rager fuller; tablet: Viktor Gmyria/[Link]
–0.980 (+/–0.053): Equation of state, a measure of the (negative) 1917 Albert Einstein applies general relativity to
pressure exerted by dark energy divided by its density. An unvarying value the universe. Later work by Willem de Sitter and
of –1 suggests that dark energy is Einstein’s cosmological constant. independently by Aleksandr Friedmann implies the
possibility that the universe is expanding.
1.0023 (+0.0056/–0.0054): Value of omega, the total mass-energy
density relative to the critical mass-energy density. Omega equal to 1 1924 Edwin Hubble announces that the “spiral
signifies a universe with flat spatial geometry. nebulae” sit beyond the Milky Way and later that the
Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.

1929 Hubble finds that the universe is expanding,

after analyzing the redshifts of distant galaxies.

1933 Fritz Zwicky examines galaxies in the Coma

cluster and determines that there is unseen mass,
what scientists call “dark matter.”

1960s Steven Weinberg, Abdus Salam and

1 x 10 9 km 1 x 10 18 km Sheldon Glashow independently propose a theory to
unify electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force.

1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discover the

cosmic microwave background radiation; in 1990
NASA’s COBE mission confirms that the radiation’s
properties verify the universe’s birth in a Big Bang.

1986 Astronomers Margaret Geller, John Huchra

and Valérie de Lapparent map a section of the
observable universe, revealing a structure that
encompasses large walls and giant voids.

1998 Researchers discover that the universe is

expanding at an accelerating rate, suggesting a mys-
1 x 10 22
km 4 x 10 23
km
terious force dubbed “dark energy” might be at work.

[Link]  April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  21

special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

If the universe occupies a sheetlike

membrane, the Big Bang may have been
just one in a series of collisions, each
“Big Bounce” refreshing the cosmos.

The modern-day notion of the cos-

mos’s tumultuous beginning — known
as the Big Bang — has its roots in Edwin
Hubble’s 1929 discovery that the uni-
verse is expanding. At the time, scientists
envisioned the universe explosively fly-
ing outward from a single point in space
and time.
Though this simple version of the Big
Bang idea can’t fully explain what people
see in the cosmos today, Alan Guth of MIT
added a new ingredient in 1981. Early in
its history, the universe underwent a brief
period of faster-than-light expansion,
known as inflation, he proposed. In the
years since Guth’s suggestion, inflation
has been wildly successful in explain-
ing the structure of the universe and its
arrangement of galaxies.

Bubbling over
Some scientists think that if inflation
happened once, it could happen many
more times — hinting at a cosmos alive
and well eons before the Big Bang. Rapid
expansion, in these interpretations, isn’t
confined to just one neck of the cosmic
woods, like a single expanding balloon.
Instead, distant patches of space keep
inflating, like a child continually blow-
ing soap bubbles, says Alex Vilenkin of
what happened before the big bang?
Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
Every inflated patch becomes a sepa-

Pre-Bang branes
rate universe, with its own Big Bang
beginning (SN: 6/7/08, p. 22). In this
“eternal inflation” scenario, the fireball

and bubbles
that begot the universe seen with today’s
telescopes was preceded by a multitude of
others just as surely as it will be followed
by many more, each popping off at differ-
By Ron Cowen s Illustration by Nicolle Rager Fuller ent times in different parts of the cosmos,
Vilenkin says.

C
osmologists Paul Steinhardt and 13.7 billion years too late to know what Just as the sun is merely one of billions
Neil Turok liken the early his- happened. of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, the vis-
tory of the universe to a play in But that hasn’t stopped Steinhardt, ible universe may be one of countless in
which the protagonists — matter and Turok and other researchers from pon- the cosmic firmament. Cosmologists call
radiation — move across the stage accord- dering whether the universe was born in this ensemble of universes the multiverse.
ing to the laws of physics. Astronomers a giant fireball around that time or might Not only might there have been a
are actors who arrived on the scene have existed before that. plethora of universes that came before

22  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

 the one people know, but each one may travel along an extra dimension. Another might be different, the underlying physi-
also have been different from the oth- brane resides a tiny distance away. cal laws would remain the same.
ers. In combining eternal inflation with When they are separated, the two
string theory, an idea that has become branes are perfectly wrinkle-free, repre- Cosmic clues
popular because it could help unify senting a universe nearly devoid of matter. Whether the Big Bounce or the multi­
the four known forces in nature (see As the two branes pull closer, they develop verse captures reality — if either one
Page 26), each inflated universe would tiny wrinkles. These wrinkles are the does at all — remains a mystery. One
have its own set of physical properties. seeds of galaxies. When the branes finally observation, though, could distinguish
Although the known universe is chocka- collide and bounce apart, they unleash between the Big Bounce and any infla-
block with galaxies, for example, gravity an enormous amount of energy, some of tionary scenario, Steinhardt notes.
in another, earlier universe could have which is converted to matter and radia- Gravitational waves, tiny ripples in the
been too weak to form galaxies. tion. To an observer on one of the branes, fabric of spacetime, are generated during
this Big Bounce would look just like a Big each cycle of the Big Bounce. But in this
Bounce not bang Bang (SN: 9/22/01, p. 184). scenario, the waves would be too weak to
String theory itself — which calls for While the branes are separated, they be detected. Inflation, in contrast, would
a space with many rolled-up dimen- stretch and smooth out; the cosmos is produce a much more powerful set of the
sions — may suggest a different type of expanding just as it is today. But even- waves — strong enough to leave a notice-
pre–Big Bang picture. In a model devel- tually, the two branes are pulled back able imprint on the cosmic microwave
oped by Steinhardt, now at Princeton together for another round of collisions background, the radiation left over from
University, and Turok, now director of and bounces. Each cycle may last a tril- the Big Bang.
the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, lion years or more. The European Space Agency’s Planck
Canada, the Big Bang is replaced with In the Big Bounce model, the universe spacecraft is now searching for the tell-
an endless cycle of contractions and not only existed before the Big Bang, it tale signs that gravitational waves would
bounces; 13.7 billion years is merely the retains the memory of what came before. leave in the cosmic microwave back-
time since the last “Big Bounce.” All of the stars, galaxies, and large-scale ground (SN: 4/11/09, p. 16). If the imprint
In this picture, the known universe structures now present owe their exis- is found, “we’re done,” says Steinhardt.
resides on a three-dimensional version tence to the composition of the universe The Big Bounce would fall flat.
of a sheet, called a brane, which can in the previous cycle. Though the details Whether or not inflation implies a
multiverse is another story, but Planck
In the beginning may offer clues about that too.
Not knowing what came before the Big As bubble universes expand, they can
Bang doesn’t stop physicists from collide with each other. If another uni-
theorizing. In the eternal inflation sce- verse happened to have struck the one
nario, the known universe bubbled in which people reside, Planck might be
out of a larger multiverse (right). able to detect a particular pattern of
Another model (below) suggests hot and cold spots in the microwave
that the universe cycles through a background.
series of contractions and bounces. Even if no sign of a collision can
be spotted, though, other bubble uni-
verses may still exist. Bumps could be so
infrequent that observers might have to
wait a millennium to find the pattern.
If that prolonged uncertainty about
cosmic genesis sounds a bit like pur-
gatory, consider the words of an
unnamed man quoted in St. Augustine’s
Confessions. When asked what God was
doing before making heaven and Earth,
In the cyclic model, An interbrane force The branes collide Once the branes the man replied: “He was preparing Hell
the known universe pulls the two sheets and then rebound, separate, galaxies for those who pry too deep.”
occupies a sheetlike together, amplifying releasing energy in and other cosmic St. Augustine, himself, found the
surface, a “brane.” quantum ripples and what looks like a structures form. The
answer facetious: “More willingly would
E. feliciano

Another brane sits a creating wrinkles in Big Bang. matter spreads out
small distance away. the branes. and the cycle repeats. I have answered, ‘I do not know what I do
source: p. steinhardt not know.’ ” s

[Link] April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  23

special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

Without an as-yet-unidentified
material called dark matter,
clusters of galaxies wouldn’t
hold together.

what is the universe made of?

In the dark
scientists have little insight into where
dark matter and dark energy come from.
But figuring out dark matter would illu-
minate what holds galaxies together.
By Alexandra Witze s Illustration by Nicolle Rager Fuller Figuring out dark energy might help
reveal the universe’s ultimate fate (see

I
n ancient times, listing the ingre- world that we see around us is just the tip Page 30).
dients of the universe was simple: of the iceberg,” says Joshua Frieman, an It’s little wonder that scientists regard
earth, air, fire and water. Today, astrophysicist at the University of Chi- the identities of dark matter and dark
scientists know that naming all of that, cago and the Fermi National Accelerator energy as among today’s biggest astro-
plus everything else familiar in every- Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. nomical puzzles.
day life, leaves out 95 percent of the The rest is, quite literally, dark. Nearly
cosmos’s contents. one-quarter of the universe’s composi- A different matter
From the atoms that make up an tion is as-yet-unidentified material called Dark matter made its debut in 1933,
astronomer, to the glass and steel of a dark matter. The remaining 70 percent when Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky
telescope, to the hot plasma of the stars or so is a mysterious entity — known as measured the velocities of galaxies in a
above — all ordinary stuff accounts for dark energy — that pervades all of space, group known as the Coma cluster and
less than 5 percent of the mass and pushing it apart at an ever-faster rate. found them moving at different rates
energy in the universe. “All the visible “Dark” is an appropriate adjective, as than expected. Some unseen and large

24  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

 amount of “dunkle Materie,” he pro- Mostly unfamiliar The stuff that makes tant galaxies were flying away from each
posed in German, must exist, exerting up people, planets, stars and interstellar gas
other. The universe, Hubble showed, was
accounts for just under 5 percent of the uni-
its gravitational effects on the galaxies expanding. It had been zooming outward
verse. The rest is made of mysterious entities
within the cluster. dubbed dark matter and dark energy. ever since the Big Bang gave birth to it.
Astronomer Vera Rubin confirmed Mass-energy content of the universe Einstein happily ditched his cosmo-
dark matter’s existence in the 1970s, 4.6% ? logical constant, but in 1998 astronomers
after she and colleagues had measured showed that it should have been recy-
the speeds of stars rotating around the Dark energy
cled rather than trashed. That year, two
centers of dozens of galaxies. She found 23% research teams reported their studies
Dark matter
that, counterintuitively, stars on the gal- (non-atomic) of distant supernovas. These exploded
72% Atoms
axies’ outer fringes moved just as rapidly stars can be calibrated to serve like stan-
Neutrinos*
as those closer in — as if Pluto orbited the *neutrino mass
dard light bulbs, shining with a particular
sun as quickly as Mercury. Rubin’s work not precisely
known
brightness. The scientists reported that
demonstrated that each galaxy must be source: WMAP many distant super­novas were dimmer
embedded in some much larger gravita- than expected, even accounting for an
tional scaffold. experiments is now improving to the expanding universe. It was as if someone
Ever since, other lines of evidence point that WIMPs and other candidate had quickly moved the light bulbs into a
have strengthened the case for dark particles should be either spotted or more distant room. The universe was not
matter. It resembles ordinary matter ruled out in the near future. only getting bigger — it was doing so at an
in that it interacts via the well-under- accelerating rate.
stood gravitational force; that’s why it Mysterious forces Something funny was going on, giving
affected Zwicky’s and Rubin’s galaxies. Spotting dark matter may prove to be the cosmos a repulsive push. So Michael
But scientists know that dark matter is easier than understanding dark energy, Turner, a cosmologist at the University of
not ordinary; if it were, it would have whose mysteries make scientists feel like Chicago, dubbed the thing “funny energy”
affected ratios of chemical elements mental wimps. at first, before settling on “dark energy.”
born in the early universe and thus Albert Einstein unknowingly ush- More than a decade later, scientists
thrown off the abundances of such ele- ered dark energy onto the stage in 1917, still don’t have a concrete clue to what
ments observed today. while modifying his new equations of dark energy is (SN: 2/2/08, p. 74). The-
The leading candidate for a dark general relativity. Einstein wondered orists have done their best to explain
matter particle is the vaguely named why gravity didn’t make the universe it, putting forward ideas including a
Magell an/Univ. of Arizona, Lensing Map: STScI/NASA, ESO WFI, D. Clowe et al, Magell an/Univ. of Arizona

“weakly interacting massive particle,” or contract in on itself, like a balloon with seething “vacuum energy” created as
top: t. dubÉ; bottom, X-ray: M. Markevitch et al, CXC/NASA, CFA, Optical: STScI/NASA, D. Clowe et al,

WIMP. Such particles would be “weakly the air sucked out of it. He thus made particles pop in and out of existence, and
interacting” because they rarely affect up a “cosmological constant,” a fixed “quintessence” — named after Aristotle’s
ordinary matter, and “massive” because amount of energy in the vacuum of space postulated fifth element — that changes
they must exceed the mass of most that would provide an outward push to its strength depending on its place or
known particles, possibly weighing in at counter gravity’s inward pull. time in the universe.
as much as 1,000 times the mass of the In 1929, though, Edwin Hubble solved Meanwhile, observers have spent
proton. But nobody has yet definitively Einstein’s problem by reporting that dis- the last decade dreaming up ways to
detected a WIMP, despite decades of probe dark energy from
experiments designed to spot one. the ground and in space
Results from dark matter experiments (see Page 32). In particular,
are mixed: One group in Italy claims to precision measurements
see a WIMP signal seasonally, with more of many distant galaxies
WIMPs hitting detectors as the Earth could help pin down the
moves into a stream of galactic dark mat- nature and distribution of
ter debris, and fewer when Earth moves dark energy. A new camera,
away. But other researchers haven’t been optimistically called the
able to confirm those results. Recent Dark Energy Survey, will
reports from other experiments, includ- see first light this autumn
ing one buried in Minnesota’s Soudan at the Cerro Tololo Inter-
mine, hint that WIMPs might be lighter American Observatory in
than theorists had expected, on the order In this false-color image of galaxies colliding, the Chile. Real light — insight
of 10 proton masses (SN: 8/28/10, p. 22). majority of the mass (blue) is separate from most into the dark — may take
The sensitivity of many long-running normal matter (pink), direct evidence of dark matter. some time. s

[Link] April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  25

special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

is there a theory of everything?

Strung together
for short — ties all of physics into one
neat package by reducing the bewilder-
ing taxonomy of particles in the current
bestiary of physics, the Standard Model,
By Matt Crenson s Illustration by Nicolle Rager Fuller to identical snippets of string, each less
than a billionth of a billionth of a bil-

P
hysics is really two sciences. The clues are expected to come from lionth of a centimeter long. According
There’s quantum mechanics, the the Large Hadron Collider, a ring of to string theory, the particles that carry
weird tumultuous world where superconducting magnets in the Alps the three forces included in the Standard
particles pop into and out of nothingness designed to smash protons together at Model — the photon (electromagnetism),
and cats can be simultaneously living energies never before seen on Earth. the gluon (strong force) and the W and
and dead. And there’s general relativ- The collider began operating in March Z bosons (weak force) — are all just the
ity, Einstein’s majestic vision of massive 2010 and is expected to reach full power same tiny dancers each following their
objects bending space and time. in 2014, when it will attempt to smash own distinct rhythms.
Ever since these two very different its protons together with double the vio- And unlike the Standard Model, string
views of the universe emerged early in lence it does today. theory has room for gravity.
the 20th century, generations of physi- Even then, the LHC will be far from Though proposals besides string
cists have tried to unite them in a single powerful enough to re-create the sin- theory attempt to explain how all the
theory that would ideally describe all gle, unified force that physicists believe forces of nature might fit together, most
four of nature’s basic forces to boot. Even existed for a fraction of a second after the of those other theories come with major
Einstein tried, and failed. Now, after Big Bang — you’d need a collider as big as flaws. Some predict the existence of par-
an especially frustrating few decades the universe itself for that. But the LHC ticles that can’t exist, for example.
with little new evidence to guide them, might be able to test some of the predic- String theory’s primary drawback is
today’s physicists may be about to get tions made by the leading theory that that it requires there be much more to
some tantalizing hints about how the joins gravity and the other forces. the universe than physicists can probe,
forces fit together. Superstring theory — string theory making the theory very difficult to test.

26  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

 Superstring theory attempts to unify ing,” Randall says. “But this is one of the
gravity with quantum mechanics by things we could find, and this is one of
describing particles and forces as tiny the things they should be looking for.”
vibrating strands and loops. Most physicists think it’s more likely
that the LHC will find evidence for super-
For string theory to say anything symmetric partners of the particles in
about how the forces arise, physicists the Standard Model. Which partners
have to figure out how all those extra appear, and their properties, would put
dimensions roll up, or “compactify,” into some helpful constraints on how the
the four familiar ones. universe compactifies the 11 dimensions
String theory also conjures up a predicted by string theory.
shadow population of partner particles For example, if the lightest super-
for all of the ones currently known to particle turned out to be the wino, the
exist — a notion called supersymmetry. superpartner of the weak force–carrying
In fact, supersymmetry may be neces- W boson, that would be consistent with
sary to join the strong, weak and electro­ a version of string theory known by the
magnetic forces, so it is important even pithy moniker “M-theory compactified
if string theory isn’t correct. on 7-D manifold of G2 holonomy.”
Such supersymmetric particles may
When forces collide already have been observed, in fact — not
Many physicists have high hopes that the on Earth, but in space. Some of the dark
LHC will find evidence for both super- matter that is thought to make up more
symmetric particles and extra spatial than 80 percent of the matter in the
dimensions. universe could be composed of super-
“Even if we don’t go out to the other symmetric particles left over from the
dimensions, in some sense the other universe’s earliest moments (see Page
dimensions can come to us,” says Harvard 24). In the last few years two space-based
physicist Lisa Randall. instruments, the Fermi Gamma-ray
For example, most versions of string Working in the 1990s with colleague Telescope and the Italian-led PAMELA
theory require that the universe have Raman Sundrum, now at the University mission, have seen evidence of dark
10 or 11 dimensions — nine or 10 of space of Maryland in College Park, Randall matter in the Milky Way in the form of
and one of time, rather than the four showed that it might be possible to detect gamma rays and antimatter that could
that people experience: up-down, front- the decay of a gravity-carrying particle have been produced by super­symmetric
back, left-right and past-future. coming from an extra dimension. Find- particles colliding.
“The forces are unified in 11 dimen- ing such a particle at the LHC would both Because the LHC and any future col-
sions, but they split apart when you go verify the existence of extra dimensions liders can carry physicists only so far
to four dimensions,” says Gordon Kane, and suggest why gravity is much weaker back toward the moment just after the
a physicist at the University of Michigan than the other three forces. Big Bang, science’s understanding of a
in Ann Arbor. “I think it would be somewhat surpris- unified theory is ultimately going to have
to come from exploring the vastness of
Back to one Strength of the four forces back in time the universe. Some physicists wonder
One of the enduring if such a strategy, which relies on find-
puzzles in physics is Strong nuclear force
why gravity — which ing and interpreting clues left behind by
guides matter on the Electromagnetism Unified nature, can produce results comparable
Relative strength of force

force
scale of planets and to the high-precision experimental data
e
galaxies — is so much r forc
n uclea that led to the Standard Model during
intrinsically weaker Weak
than the other three the 20th century.
forces. In the moments But string theory is not 20th century
just after the Big Bang,
science — in fact, string theorist Edward
some researchers
think, the forces may Gravity Witten has described it as “21st century
have been united as
Temp. (kelvins) physics that fell accidentally into the
one, separating into 1015 1029 1032 20th century.” Now that the 21st century
forces with differing Age of the universe (sec)
strengths as tempera- 10 –12 10 –35 10 –43
has arrived, it’s string theory’s time to be
tures decreased. Recent era Distant past put to the test. s

[Link] April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  27

special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

A 2-D projection contains all the details

needed to map a 3-D black hole. Some
physicists think space and time may
emerge via a similar correspondence.

built from more primordial ingredients,

so far unperceived.
Newton simply declared space and
time as absolute and constant, providing
a convenient arena for the operation of
his laws of motion and gravity. Einstein
saw, and showed, that space and time
actually shift shape or speed as events
unfold; mass and motion warp space and
alter the flow of time.
Coping with these inconveniences
required a merger, space and time
becoming space­time. From that merger
emerged a bonus: a model for the evolu­
tion of the cosmos, from an initial speck
of matter and energy to a gigantic bal­
looning multi­galactic network.
Nowadays, though, spacetime’s abil­
ity to accommodate nature’s phenomena
has begun to fade as physicists push their
probes to the limits of distance and dura­
tion. Below a certain very tiny distance,
the dimension of length can no longer
be explored, or even defined. Time faces
a similar limit when durations approach
the very brief.
Today’s leading theories for answer­
ing the greatest cosmic questions
suggest that neither time nor space
appear in reality’s ultimate recipe.
Somewhere between the stove and the
table, space and time emerge, cooked
up out of equations underlying an exis­
are space and time fundamental? tence without rulers and clocks. At least
that is “the widespread current belief,”

Out of the fabric

says physicist Joe Polchinski of the Kavli
Institute for Theoretical Physics at the
University of California, Santa Barbara.

By Tom Siegfried s Illustration by Nicolle Rager Fuller Space as society

To illustrate this, Fotini Markopoulou of

O
f all the mysteries of life and the achieved them: Euclid (who cataloged the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical
universe, none resist the sleuth­ the insights preceding him), Galileo, Physics in Waterloo, Canada, compares
ing of science’s best private eyes Newton, Einstein. Yet each advance space to society. Space, like society, has
more obstinately than the ultimate left deeper questions unanswered. And features that can be described — geom­
nature of space and time. now the 21st century’s best brains still etry textbooks catalog space’s proper­
Every several centuries or so, pro­ cannot say for sure whether space and ties and their implications. But space
found insights do occur, immortalizing time are fundamental building blocks as reflected in geometry need not have
the names of the investigators who of natural existence, or are themselves been present at the beginning. It could

28  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

have emerged from the interactions of becomes impossible to probe space to beginning, but that beginning would
matter and forces, just as society mate­ any arbitrarily short distance, Seiberg be stillborn without time to get reality
rializes from interactions among people. observes. That’s another way of saying going.
“We have capitalist societies, agricul­ that at distances less than some (very Seiberg, though, believes time and
tural societies, totalitarian societies,” short) length, the idea of space becomes space will both go down the cosmic drain
Markopoulou wrote in a 2008 paper meaningless. together.
([Link]/abs/0909.1861). Nobody is Further study of spaceless theories “My personal prejudice is that these
confused by phrases such as “our society may help solve serious problems con­ objections and questions are not obsta­
is addicted to credit.” But that doesn’t fronting physicists today, Seiberg cles to emergent time,” Seiberg writes.
mean society is a fundamental feature believes. String theory implies count­ “Instead, they should be viewed as
of existence. less possible vacuum states — that is, challenges and perhaps even clues to
“A society does not exist independent spaces of differing physical proper­ the answers.”
of its members,” Markopoulou pointed ties — with no obvious method for More intriguingly, he observes, space
out. “We can see space­time geometry determining which one the visible uni­ and time’s ultimate status in nature may
as the analog to society, with the role verse should have chosen. Knowing have something to say about the prac­
of individuals played by matter and its how space emerges from spacelessness tice of science. Much of modern science
dynamics.” might help explain why humans exist is based on the concept of reduction­
As Polchinski notes, specifying space­ in one particular space from among the ism — explaining large-scale phenomena
time’s status in relation to matter is part countless possibilities. from laws operating at smaller scales.
of the quest for a theory of quantum Doing away with time poses more dif­ That notion will eventually break down
gravity — the math that would unify ficult problems, Seiberg acknowledges. if there’s a smallest scale below which
Einstein’s relativity theory, which Basic notions in physics, such as that of space no longer exists.
describes space­time in bulk, with the causes preceding effects, or predicting “Therefore, once we understand how
quantum physics that governs the micro­ the outcome of experiments before the spacetime emerges, we could still look
world (see Page 26). A key clue in that experiment is done, seem to lose their for more basic fundamental laws, but
quest is a correspondence between the meaning if there is no time to define these laws will not operate at shorter
surface of a black hole, a gravitational before and after. So some physicists, distances,” he writes. “This follows
bottomless pit from which nothing can Markopoulou for one, have suggested from the simple fact that the notion of
escape, and the space within it. It turns that even if space is emergent, time may ‘shorter distances’ will no longer make
out that a mathematical description of remain fundamental. In fact, she conjec­ sense. This might mean the end of stan­
the black hole’s outer boundary (the tures, time is needed to allow quantum dard reductionism.” And the beginning
point of no return for objects falling in) processes to create the illusion of space. of a new view of not only space and time,
contains all the information needed to Space may not have been around at the but of science itself. s
specify the three-dimensional interior.
In essence, that means the 3-D space
inside somehow emerges from the phys­ As small as it gets
ics of the 2-D surface. Current theories are unable to describe space and time below certain limits
defined by what are called “natural units.” These units, proposed by the Ger-
Time materialized man physicist Max Planck, are derived from fundamental quantities such as the
Generalizing the peculiarities of black speed of light. A theory uniting quantum mechanics with gravity will be needed
holes to ordinary space and time remains to reveal whether space and time are meaningful concepts at smaller scales.
a research challenge for quantum grav­
ity physicists. But most agree that
Planck length: 1.616 x 10–35 meters
sooner or later space and time will have The Planck length is derived from Newton’s gravitational constant, the speed of light
and Planck’s own constant from quantum theory. It is unfathomably small: Comparing
to go. String theory — the most-studied its size to a bacterium is like comparing the size of a bacterium to the visible universe.
approach to quantum gravity — offers Many physicists believe that at shorter lengths space cannot be probed and the con-
several examples of how space, rather cept of distance becomes no longer meaningful.
than being fundamental, emerges into
existence, as physicist Nathan Seiberg Planck time: 5.391 x 10–44 seconds
of the Institute for Advanced Study in The Planck time is also calculated from the gravitational constant, the speed of light
Princeton, N.J., outlined in a 2006 paper and Planck’s constant in such a way that moving at one Planck length per one Planck
time would be equal to the speed of light. Current theories are unable to describe the
([Link]/abs/hep-th/0601234). universe at an age younger than the Planck time; physicists hope that a theory of quan-
If matter at its most basic is made of tum gravity could illuminate that epoch.
tiny vibrating strings, for instance, it

[Link] April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  29

Special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

what is the fate of the universe?

Hanging  
analyzing the data, both teams reported
in 1998 that the universe’s expansion
isn’t just cruising along — it is accelerat-

in the balance
ing. Some mysterious force, now known
as dark energy (see Page 24), is driving
space apart, faster and faster.

By Elizabeth Quill s Illustration by Nicolle Rager Fuller A dark twist

Before dark energy’s discovery, the

T
he fate of the universe was sup- leftover champagne went flat. More than forecast was surprisingly simple. If the
posed to be sealed by the turn of a decade later, scientists are still vigor- gravitational pull of all the matter in
the millennium. ously debating what their finding means the cosmos was strong enough to rein
“I imagined we’d be walking around not only for the universe’s future, but in expansion — like the Earth’s pull on
holding a sign saying ‘the world is com- also for all of cosmology. a rocket that can’t quite reach escape
ing to an end’ or ‘the world is not coming Perlmutter, of the University of Cali- velocity — the universe would eventually
to an end,’ ” recalls astrophysicist Saul fornia, Berkeley, led one of two teams come crashing in on itself. That ending,
Perlmutter. that set out in the early 1990s to get a dubbed the Big Crunch, would mirror the
But as Y2K soothsayers readied for grip on the far future by studying distant Big Bang that started the cosmic expan-
impending doom, Perlmutter and his supernovas. These stellar explosions sion in the first place. If, though, the
colleagues delivered a surprising dis- serve as distance markers to help astron- universe’s expansion escaped the claws
covery suggesting that the world’s omers measure how fast the universe is of gravity, it would go on growing forever.
fate would stay in limbo long after expanding — a key factor in determining Expansion would slow but never halt,
the Times Square ball dropped and any if and when it will meet its end. But after and instead of ending, the universe would

30  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

 In one end-time scenario, the entire Figuring out whether the universe of sound waves in the early universe. A
universe — from galaxies down to would end with this Big Rip, or a Freeze proposed mission named Euclid, from
atoms — would rip apart at its seams. or Crunch, requires determining a prop- the European Space Agency, and a cam-
erty of dark energy called its equation era mounted on a telescope in the Andes
become a cold, dark, lonely place where of state. That quantity is the ratio of the will further the efforts.
life could not survive — a Big Freeze. pressure exerted by the dark energy to its
But dark energy gives the fleeing density. The most recent findings, based Beyond the end
rocket some extra oomph, making end- on data that come from seven years of But others say that a theoretical break-
time predictions quite a bit fuzzier. mapping the glowing radiation left over through is necessary. Measuring the
“A crucial issue is how the dark energy from the Big Bang, suggest that the equa- equation of state with enough precision,
will behave in time,” says cosmologist tion of state is close to that expected for they argue, is impossible; a tiny devia-
Rocky Kolb of the University of Chicago. the cosmological constant, deviating by tion could always linger.
“Until we have some way to grapple with no more than 14 percent. “We don’t just want to measure a
that, the fate of the universe hangs in the But over billions of years, even a much number,” Kolb says. “We want to under-
balance.” tinier deviation — undetectable with stand how this crucial piece of physics
If the strength of dark energy’s extra current instruments — could dramati- fits into the overall fabric of the theory
push remains forever unchanging, it cally alter the universe’s fate, especially of nature. And until we do that, I am not
could be the cosmological constant — a if the dark energy’s strength is not con- going to be comfortable with any expla-
term Albert Einstein added to his equa- stant but can change over time. nation of dark energy.”
tions for general relativity in 1917 and “The million dollar question is an Kolb thinks no current proposal
later dismissed as his “biggest blunder.” experimental question,” Tegmark says. adequately explains dark energy, thus
In this case, something like the Big Scientists need better measurements to no proposal decides among a Freeze,
Freeze would play out. But if dark ener- determine whether dark energy’s equa- Crunch or Rip scenario.
gy’s strength decays over time, then a Big tion of state is perfectly constant. Of course, the right theory might even
Crunch of sorts remains an option. So some experimentalists are turn- predict that the universe meets its doom
If instead dark energy grows stron- ing back to those very same stellar by some other, unknown means. One such
ger, exceeding the repulsive force of explosions that revealed dark energy’s possibility presents itself if the observ-
Einstein’s cosmological constant, a existence to begin with. A paper by able universe is just one of many bubble
more painful scenario awaits: “In a Perlmutter and collaborators, appear- universes constantly being created and
finite amount of time, dark energy gets ing in 2009 in the Astrophysical Journal, growing in some larger space. In this
infinitely dense,” says cosmologist Max describes an ongoing effort to com- “multiverse” scenario, bubble universes
Tegmark of MIT. “First denser than our pile the world’s supernova datasets. can collide. If another bubble encroached
galaxy, and our galaxy flies apart. Then Many scientists have their hopes set on on the bubble that people occupy, it would
denser than Earth, and that flies apart. a future observatory, WFIRST, which be bad news, says Anthony Aguirre of the
Then denser than atoms, and atoms would look for the signal of dark energy University of California, Santa Cruz. “We
fly apart. In a finite time, everything is in the appearance of distant galaxies and would just be sitting around,” he says,
ripped apart.” in the imprint of the cosmic equivalent “and this other bubble would smash into
us at the speed of light with some huge
Cosmic Armageddon The discovery of dark energy made the fate of the universe much energy and we would die.”
more difficult to forecast. Scientists typically talk about three possible endings (depicted below), Beyond predicting another possible
depending on what this mysterious force actually is and how it behaves over time.
end, the multiverse ushers in a new way
Expansion of the universe over time of thinking about what an “end” actually
Big Rip means. “We’d have to be living in a lucky
Constant dark
energy (for cosmologists) or simple universe for
(Big Freeze)
the part that we see to be telling us about
Scale of the universe

the whole thing,” Aguirre says.

Imagining the death of the observable
Big Crunch
universe as the ultimate end may be just
tion as naïve as imagining that the destruction
Accelera
on of the Earth, for that matter, means the
rati
ele end of all life in the galaxy. There might
Dec
be much more out there. Even if the
Big Bang Present Future bubble occupied by people bursts, other
Time
source: CXC/NASA, M. Weiss universes could live long and prosper. s

[Link] April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  31

special section  |  cosmic questions, answers pending

tools for the mission

Fermi

LHC Planck

Hunting data shown), scientists hope to spot signs

A number of instruments now operating or proposed can troll the skies or other- of supersymmetry and find evidence for
wise help to answer some of the most puzzling questions about the universe. string theory — possibly pointing to a
theory that unifies the forces of nature.
Planck A European Space Agency 12/5/09, p. 9) and captured unexpected The collider, in a 27-kilometer tunnel
observatory launched in 2009, Planck is changes in emissions from the Crab straddling the border of Switzerland and
recording a more detailed picture of the Nebula (SN: 1/1/11, p. 11). Fermi could France, began regular operations in 2010
cosmic microwave background, the relic offer clues to the identity of dark matter but has yet to operate at full energy.
radiation left over from the Big Bang, and to the birth of the universe.
than its predecessors COBE and WMAP LSST Proposed to sit atop Cerro
did. The mission is searching for pri- WFIRST The Wide-Field Infrared Sur- Pachón in the Chilean Andes, the Large
mordial gravitational waves, which could vey Telescope, a proposed NASA obser- Synoptic Survey Telescope (mirrors and
provide a test for inflation theory, and vatory, would probe a wide swath of the lenses depicted) will capture the entire
looking for clues to the nature of dark sky with two main goals: to settle key visible sky twice each week, helping
matter and dark energy. questions about dark energy by map- astronomers better understand the
ping large-scale structures and to look large-scale structure of the universe
Fermi Launched in 2008, the Fermi for signs of extrasolar planets in the throughout its history. Knowing how
Gamma-ray Space Telescope has opened Milky Way’s central bulge. stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters are
scientists’ eyes to astronomical objects distributed can offer insight into cosmic
that emit very high-energy radiation, LHC By smashing protons together at ingredients, including dark matter’s
including super­massive black holes and high speeds, the Large Hadron Collider distribution and dark energy’s strength.
colliding neutron stars. Since its launch, is re-creating energies present just after
Fermi has found evidence of anti­matter the Big Bang. In the spew of particles Dark Energy Survey Atop another
above thunderstorms on Earth (SN: emitted (computer-generated image mountain in the Chilean Andes — Cerro

32  |  science news  |  April 23, 2011  [Link]

 Euclid IXO

Fermi image: nasa; LHC: ©cern geneva; Planck: c. carreau/esa; LSST: todd mason/mason productions inc., lsst corporation; Euclid:
LSST LISA XENON

esa; IXO: nasa; lisa: ESA; Xenon: Francesco Arneodo/INFN, XENON Collaboration; tablet: Viktor Gmyria/[Link]
Tololo — researchers are mounting a and silicon detectors. Though claims of IXO Proposed by NASA, the European
sensitive digital camera on an existing detection have been made, dark matter’s Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace
4-meter telescope in an attempt to identity remains unknown. Exploration Agency, the International
uncover the nature of dark energy. The X-ray Observatory would take in radia-
camera will survey a large swath of the JWST The James Webb Space tion emitted from neutron stars and
southern sky over five years to gather Telescope will have a primary mirror from the vicinity of black holes. Search-
information about more than 300 million 6.5 meters across and will orbit about ing in the X-ray regime would allow
galaxies. An effort that includes scien- 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. the observatory to peer through dust
tists from 23 institutions, the survey is The observatory will probe how stars and gas clouds that might otherwise
expected to see first light in fall. and galaxies first emerged and will obscure its view. IXO may reveal how
look for Earthlike planets. Launch had matter behaves in extreme conditions
Dark matter experiments The been scheduled for 2014, but has and help reveal the nature of dark mat-
XENON Dark Matter Project, operating been pushed back to no earlier than ter and dark energy.
underground at Gran Sasso National 2016 because of cost overruns (SN:
Laboratory in Italy, looks for signs of 4/25/11, p. 22). LISA The Laser Interferometer Space
dark matter particles by recording scintil- Antenna, a proposed NASA-ESA mission,
lations in liquid xenon (detector shown Euclid Named for the father of geome- would actually be three identical space-
above). The DAMA/LIBRA experiment, try, the proposed Euclid spacecraft (two craft that form a triangle. By recording
at the same lab, records seasonal varia- concepts shown) would measure dark how the craft move in relation to each
tions in faint flashes of light from 25 matter distribution and try to under- other, scientists hope LISA will detect
sodium iodide detectors. And an experi- stand the nature of dark energy by look- gravitational waves. Background undula-
ment in a mine in northern Minnesota, ing back 10 billion years, before dark tions left over from the early universe
the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, tries energy began to dominate over matter could offer clues to its origin and expan-
to spot dark matter jostling germanium in the universe. sion history.

[Link]  April 23, 2011  |  science news  |  33