Panagakos, N.

Waller, P.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

NASA News
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration
Washington DC 20546
AC 202 755-8370
Nicholas Panagakos
Headquarters, Washington, D.C. THURSDAY,
(Phone: 202/755-3680) November 17, 1977
Peter Waller
Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif.
(Phone: 415/965-5091)
RELEASE NO: 77-235
THE BEGINNING; SERENE PROCESS OR CHAOTIC BANG?
Was the Big Bang explosion that marked the beginning of
«
our universe violent and chaotic?
r
Many scientists think so.
But measurements made recently by a team of researchers
using a high flying NASA aircraft suggest that our cosmos
may have started more serenely — with a powerful but tightly
controlled and completely uniform expansion.
(NASA-News-Beleas€-77-235) TEE BEGINNING:
SERVE PROCESS OB CHAOTIC BANG (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration) 6 p
N78-70285
Onclas
00/88 53243
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19780070294 2020-03-22T01:52:13+00:00Z
- 2 -
Using ultrasensitive radio equipment aboard an Ames
Research Center U-2 jet, the research team measured the
cosmic microwave background—the radiation left over
from the Big Bang, the initial, universe-forming event—
and concluded that this initial event was a very smooth,
almost serene process, with matter and energy uniformly
distributed and expanding at an equal rate in all direc-
tions.
The findings were made by Drs. Richard Muller,
George Smoot and graduate student Marc Gorenstein of the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California
at Berkeley, who also designed and operated the radio equip-
ment.
They also found that the Milky Way Galaxy, together
with the solar system and Earth, appears to be hurtling
through space at more than one million miles per hour to-
wards the constellation Hydra.
"The radiation left over from the universe-forming event
about 15 billion years ago is so uniform that it provides a
universal reference for measuring this motion," says Gorenstein,
- more -
- 3 -
"Another major surprise is that the U-2 measurements
seem to show that there is no rotation of the universe,"
says Smoot. "This is surprising because we can see that
everything within the universe is rotating—planets, stars,
and galaxies. If there is rotation, it has to be less than
one hundred millionth of a rotation in the last billion years."
"Our measurements give a picture of an extremely smooth
process," declare the researchers. "The big bang, the most
cataclysmic event we can imagine, on closer inspection
appears finely orchestrated. Either conditions before the
beginning were very regular, or processes we don't yet
know about worked to make the universe extremely uniform."
The uniformity was greater than one part in 1,000 for
matter, one part in 3,000 for energy, and one part in 10,000
for expansion.
According to the currently accepted "big bang" pic-
ture, the universe began as a hot, incredibly dense mass
containing all the matter in the universe. At a certain
"initial" instant, the primeval fireball exploded in the
vastest cataclysm imaginable.
- more -
- 4 -
As the universe continued its expansion and the tempera-
ture dropped, protons and neutrons began to fuse into nuclei
and remained fused for increasingly longer periods of time.
They formed first hydrogen, then deuterium and later helium.
After millions of years, the material had cooled sufficiently
to condense into galaxies and within the galaxies into stars
and planets. As a consequence of the colossal explosion,
the galaxies have continued to separate from each other,
and thus form the expanding universe we observe. Those
galaxies farthest from Earth appear to be traveling the
fastest.
"The large scale regularity we have found in the
expansion of the universe makes the million-mile-an-
hour random local motion we have detected for the Earth
and our galaxy all the more surprising," Smoot says.
- more -
-5-
The U-2 plane, at an altitude of 19,800 meters (65,000 feet),
flies above 90 per cent of the Earth's atmosphere where these
sensitive experiments must be conducted. In charge of the
flights for Ames Center was James Cherbonneaux, U-2 Project
Manager. When it is not investigating the cosmos, the U-2
jet is used for agricultural and Earth resources photography.
The project was funded by the Department of Energy and
NASA. Measurements so far have covered almost the entire
sky over the northern hemisphere, half the celestial sphere.
An illustration to accompany this news release will
be distributed without caarye only to media representatives
in the United States. It ray be obtained by writing or
phoning:
The Public Affairs Audio-Visual Office
Code FV/NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546
Telephone No: 202/755-8366 Photo No: 77-H-706
- end -
SCHEMATIC VIEW OF OUR SECTOR OF THE UNIVERSE
(ff
15 M
Hydra
group
of galaxies
(about 1000
galaxies)
Motion of Earth and our gala
is measured by Doppler shift
uniformly distributed left over
Big Bang radiation
I
CTi
I
Looking out from Earth at
the Universe, and hence
back to the beginning
of time, density of
matter, distribution of
energy, and rate of motion
appear amazingly
uniform in every direction
NASA Photo No: 77 H 706


The beginning: Serve process or chaotic bang

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