Now, you have to admit that this is a question that will twist the bawain just a bit.  Why? because if you subscribe to either Newtonian or Eisensteinian physics - your going to look at the question differently and therefore your answer is going to vary accordingly.

The question at hand is one that was posited on Slashdot

The question at hand was "How Big Was the Universe When it Was First Born?"  You would think "simple enough" at first blush, that was until it was time to actually answer.   My very first inclination was to answer like a good quantum particle man and answer "at the time of the big bang, the
structure that would come to be the universe was an infinitely small potential but still, calling it potential is really unfair.  Much as calling a Nuclear reaction, "potential" after the first control rod has been raised. Nothing has happened yet, but the release of a great amount of power is all but a given.

So considering how everything tends to be relative, we know how far or the distance covered by a contemporary light year, but what of pre-big bang?

Why?  Well according to the article - traveling back from the big bang  to the very end of inflation and the start of the hot, dense state that scientists identify with as pre-Big Bang, and ask how  big would it be? (I really have to ask here if relativity can be brought into play. If we are asked about a definitive state, isn't that state relative?)  Depending on the particulars of when inflation came to an end, the answer is somewhere between the size of a soccer ball and the size of a city block, no smaller and no larger. 

But that would almost have to be relative to where you are making the observations and could you even make an observation outside?

my bwain hurtz :(

Cern? New Particle? Maybe....

Not so long ago we were watching CERN do it's thing and crunch it's numbers - hunting for the elusive Higgs Boson particle.   When confirmed it seemed most of the research community had a collective release, followed almost immediately with a "now what?"

I have to step back here with an observation.  Many of the news outlets treat a possible discovery as the real thing.  Not a maybe but an IS.  

Case in point.  Once the H.B. was confirmed, the data was re-examined for data that seemed to point towards another much more complex particle.   Nothing was confirmed but the data suggested a follow on particle, nothing was confirmed though.   So you can imagine my consternation when I was informed that CERN indeed HAS discovered a new ultra dense particle, leaving Higgs Boson in some sort of particle physics, jerk water by-way, buuuuuuuuuuut..... 

Reading the Wired UK article  - The team at Switzerland's Cern Large Hadron Collider may have discovered a new particle.

Since it's upgrade earlier this year, LHC researchers have observed spikes that could be the
result of particle collisions between a new boson even larger than the Higgs.  In my book, this is a MAY have not an HAS made a discovery. 

The particle -- if truly a new discovery --  would be about four times larger than the top quark,
the heaviest particle so far discovered. And it would be six times bigger than the Higgs. 

In any event, this is still an amazing piece of research on a totally amazing machine. 

To read the complete Wired article  Click Here

Is Light a Particle or a Wave?

 

Now there is a question that drove many scientists over the hill and completely around the corner.

Einstein really threw in a wrench when he proposed that light consisted of both particles and waves but the kicker was that only one state could be represented at a time as both states collapse even though only one is being "viewed".

It now seems that restriction is a thing of the past.  Scientists at the EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) have succeeded in capturing light’s wave-particle duality, in a what can only be described as tremendously exciting first-ever image.