If I understand this right (and I probably don't), the universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years old. This estimate is made based upon how much cooler hot bodies have become over time, calculating backwards from present temperatures.

That figuring yields a 13.8 billion year estimated age. However, the size of the universe is inconsistent with this 13.8 billion year figure. The size of the universe suggests an older universe, because things couldn't have moved so far (space couldn't have expanded so much, distant galaxies couldn't have flown away so far) in just 13.8 years.

I think we know how fast galaxies are moving away from each other, and this current speed is not adequate to explain the prodigious distances between them, given the 13.8 billion year estimated age. Therefore, it must be that at some point in the very, very remote past, things (and spacetime itself) were moving much, must faster than they currently seem to be.

So there's a theory to explain why the heat-figured age of the universe (13.8 billion years) diverges from the distance-and-dimension age of the universe (many, many billions of years more than 13.8 billion years): inflation. The theory is that the very early universe, in the opening trillionth of a second of existence, somehow had the property of expanding at the speed of light... or even faster. I believe physical laws weren't quite firmed up yet (the universe created physical laws at the same time it created physical space), so there may be a little wiggle room, in the earliest microseconds of the Big Bang, as to what is and isn't physically possible.

If understand this right (which, again, I don't), cosmologists have been searching for "gravity waves" in the background radiation of the universe, itself an echo of the Big Bang. Background radiation is presumed to be the scattered energy of the once ultrahot, ultradense universe (very understatedly termed "the hot dense state").

I guess they've been searching for variations -- wavelike peaks and troughs -- in this primordial residue.

Einstein, I think, predicted that such "gravity waves" existed and should eventually be detectable by human instrumentation. These gravity waves apparently also prove (or tend to prove) the inflation theory as well.

I think -- again, I don't really understand this -- that gravity waves would represent a "wrinkling" in unfolding spacetime consistent with the inflation sub-theory of the Big Bang Theory. I suppose a lack of gravity waves, and therefore a smoothness in the background radiation, would disprove it or undermine it.

Before getting into that, these waves were detected by a telescope operating at the South Pole, because the South Pole has such thin sky above it, and such little local light. The telescope is called BICEP2. This is a pretty cool picture of the Antarctic telescope:

I wanted to post that picture because it's the only thing I understand on a tangible level here. And because, colors.

From Stanford:

Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as "cosmic inflation." Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

...

These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.

Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.

...

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a "handedness," much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.

"The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness," Kuo said.

Okay, I don't really understand this, but I think they're saying that if spacetime is itself propagating it should propagate like a wave, with peaks and directionality, and this should show up in this "swirliness" detected in background radiation.

And somehow this is due to quantum mechanical effects on the tiniest possible scale becoming visible on a cosmic scale, due to a universe which had previously been smaller than an electron suddenly blowing up to a size thousands of lightyears across. In blowing up in size from much, much smaller than an atom, to much, much bigger than a galaxy in just a second or two, the secondary effects of quantum-level of phenomena, the imprinting of "swirliness" in the background raditation, were blown up like a photograph being increased in size a billionfold.

Subatomic-scale phenomena become visible when you blow them up a billion or trillion times in size. 220, 221, whatever it takes.

Scientists believe that in the fabric of space-time, there are tiny ripples called quantum fluctuations. If you could look at space-time on the smallest scale possible, you would, in theory, see them, even today. Unfortunately, no microscope is capable of seeing something that small.

Such fluctuations also existed at the beginning of the universe. Inflation, said Irwin, blew them up much larger. That is what we think of as gravitational waves.

The gravitational waves suggested by the BICEP2 results would have expanded across the entire universe at that time, Irwin said. The length of one of these waves -- the distance between peaks and troughs -- would have been billions of light years across.

Light from the early universe, called cosmic microwave background radiation, reveals these telltale signs of our universe's history...

Instead of temperature, BICEP2 scientists were looking specifically at the polarization of the cosmic microwave background -- that is, the direction the electric field is pointing across the sky....

In theory, this swirling polarization pattern could only be created from gravitational waves. And that is what BICEP2 found.

"It's a very clean signature of those gravity waves," Irwin said.

As I keep saying, I don't understand this. It seems like big shakes, though, so I've given it my best try.

Incidentally, these waves were apparently detected three years ago, but they've kept the discovery quiet as they've firmed up their case that these are the gravitational waves they've been looking for.

In one of these articles (can't find it now, alas), they speculated that while nothing can move faster in space than light, space itself can move (expand) faster than the speed of light.

I just mention that because, Hyperspace and Warp Drive. We all want it.

Posted by: Ace at 03:04 PM | Comments (442)
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Obama's dwindling fans are encouraged to fill out their own brackets, in which the "Sweetest 16 Reasons to #GetCovered" will be competing as the best reason to sign up for bad, overpriced insurance.

This latest Trivial Social Media Stunt seems inadequate to the task, given that Democrats are now privately admitting that Obamacare is "political poison."

Even former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs now confesses Democratic hold of the Senate is "definitely, absolutely" in danger.

The Wire says Democrats are having a "midterm freakout."

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (302)
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I hope this is just bluster for domestic consumption. I don't want to see a lot of dead Ukrainians.

In the wake of a March 16 referendum in which Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation, Ukrainian leaders refused to cede any part of the peninsula, calling on their troops to prepare for war.

“Crimea was, is, and will be our territory,” said Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh in a statement delivered at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center on March 17.

Former heavyweight boxing champion and leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform Vitali Klitschko announced that Ukrainian troops would remain at their bases, even after March 21, the end of a peace treaty signed by the interior ministries of Ukraine and Russia.

In accordance with the March 16 peace treaty, the Russian Interior Ministry promised to allow Ukrainian soldiers to pass freely into and out of their bases, which Russian troops had surrounded for more than two weeks. Tenyukh said that the Russian military had thus far respected the terms of the treaty.

Russia has, not unexpectedly, immediately recognized the new free and totally legitimate state of Serious You Guys We're Independent Crimea.

The worry is that Putin doesn't just want Crimea, but is looking for a pretext to invade either the eastern half of Ukraine, or all of it.

If Obama expected this morning's sanctions to dissuade Putin from making more aggressive moves, Russia's Deputy PM splashed cold water on that.

U.S. official have warned of additional sanctions for Russian action, hoping it will deter Russia from any further aggression towards Ukraine, but it didnÂ’t appear to upset the often outspoke Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

Rogozin, a friend of actor Steven Seagal, took to Twitter to tweak Obama, tweeting he thinks “some prankster” came up with the sanctions list.

In a later tweet addressed to “Comrade @BarackObama,” he asked, “what should do those who have neither accounts nor property abroad? Or U didn’t think about it?”

Over the weekend the completely free referendum on Crimea's autonomy was held, and the completely plausible results were 96.77% voting in favor of joining the Russian federation.

In other moves, Crimea will nationalize some of its energy companies and of course sell them to Russia. In exchange...

The deputy prime minister of Crimea says the region has set up a new central bank and is expecting to get $30 million in support from Russia. Rustam Temirgaliyev was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Russia will send to Crimea 1 billion rubles "in the coming days" to help it stabilize its financial situation. Temirgaliyev said the new central bank will later function as a regional branch of the Russian central bank.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (367)
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Not sure myself what the truth is here, but the man accused of falsely wearing a Ranger tab eventually takes it off. He doesn't seem to have many answers to the actual Ranger's questions.

The man (who is unidentified) was wearing the uniform on the campus San Joaquin Delta College. It's unclear why he was wearing the uniform; I don't see from this video that he was taking part in an anti-war protest or that sort of a thing.

He's confronted by a Ranger and another veteran who note that his uniform makes no sense (pointing out, for example, that the guy's 75th Rangers tab doesn't go with a 101st division tab:

“You do realize that the 101st is not a Ranger unit?” someone offscreen adds. “You do realize that the 101st is not an E.O.D. unit?”

I may have gotten the details of their argument wrong because I'm pretty clueless about military units and such.

Content warning for yelled expletiives.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (320)
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A comedian rented out his apartment on the "Airbnb" site. It's some kind of short-term, private internet-arranged apartment rental service. If you're going out of town for a week, you could rent your apartment out to make some income while you're away.

The comic says he thought he had rented it out to a family seeking to visit the city to, you know, visit F.A.O. Schwartz and engage in other family-friendly activities.

He was wrong.

A comedian under the impression he had rented out his posh Chelsea pad to a man with family in town for a wedding returned home to a wild orgy, he said.

...

When he returned to the building to grab his luggage, a rowdy sex party featuring “Big Beautiful Women” was in the process of being shut down by building management...

“The worst part of the Internet right there was in my apartment.”

“There were all sorts of people walking out of my apartment and people coming in from the back yard. It was a huge mess.”

Teman said his apartment was trashed by a group of nearly nude, overweight people.

The guy who rented the apartment, one Carter, denies anything untoward happened, and insists it was just some friends and family who stopped by, and that a little partying never hurt anyone.

...

When Teman later searched Carter’s phone number on the Internet, he found the raunchy soiree involving plus-size women advertised online as “Turn Up Part 2: The Pantie Raid.”

One person even blasted out Teman’s Seventh Avenue address in a tweet for an “XXX FREAK FEST.”

Regarding that reference to the comic being evicted: Most rental agreements specifically forbid subrenting rooms. Apparently New York City calls apartments rented in such a manner "illegal transient hotels," and you can be fined by the city, and evicted from your apartment, for so using them.

Per that NYT article, as of 2012, at least, the Airbnb site does caution users to not break any applicable local laws, but does not go into detail about what those laws are, or what the consequences for breaking them might be.

Thanks to @benk84.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (245)
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The law doesn't say that 8-year-olds can marry, per se, but the fact that it encodes the law as to how they may be divorced seems to be a sneaky way to legally endorse the unthinkable.

The law actually specifies 9-year-olds, but, due to the vagaries of the Islamic calendar (which is shorter than an actual year), "9-year-olds" actually means, at their youngest, girls 8 years and 8 months old.

The current law in Iraq says that girls of 18 or older may marry at will, and those as young as 15 may marry with their parents' permission. And 15 seems young, but we've got laws like that in some states of the USA, too.

This new draft law, on the other hand, is unspeakable.

The proposed new measure, known as the Jaafari Personal Status Law, is based on the principles of a Shiite school of religious law founded by Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shiite imam. Iraq's Justice Ministry late last year introduced the draft measure to the Cabinet, which approved it last month despite strong opposition by rights groups and activists.

Of course, when they say "parental permission," they only mean the father: Only the father has the power to bless or refuse an underage marriage.

And they've got even more good stuff in there for women (or 8 year old girls, as the case may be) too:

Also under the proposed measure, a husband can have sex with his wife regardless of her consent. The bill also prevents women from leaving the house without their husband's permission, would restrict women's rights in matters of parental custody after divorce and make it easier for men to take multiple wives.

Well that's just special.

Meanwhile, feminists in America are deep in their own struggle: Bossily demanding that people stop calling bossy people bossy.

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (405)
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Vermont didn't embrace Obamacare. You see, Obamacare didn't go far enough. Vermont instead choose to meet Obamacare's legal mandates on the states by implementing a single-payer system, planned for a 2017 start-up. The law -- is it even a law anymore? -- permits states to seek a waiver from Obamacare's other strictures if they propose their own plan which is at least as generous (that is, socialized) as Obamacare itslef.

It's gone about as well as you might expect.

Rep. Jim Condon [a "Blue Dog Democrat" who voted against the plan when it was proposed in 2011] told Vermont Watchdog it's time for Gov. Peter Shumlin to shelve the ambitious plan immediately.

"The deadlines for proposing financing have been missed two years in a row now, so to me that's very disappointing. It's becoming clearer and clearer that there is no financing plan," Condon told Vermont Watchdog.

As Vermont Watchdog reported, an independent report by the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Avalere Health concluded that the costs of Green Mountain Care would require Vermont to raise tax revenue roughly equal to the state's tax collections from all sources today.

And, um, it's costing a lot more money than originally claimed. Who knew?

Thanks to @johnekdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (222)
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The Malaysia PM now calls the disappearance "deliberate."

Malaysia's prime minister says the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 appears to be "deliberate."

Speaking to the press early Saturday, Prime Minister Najib Razak said the investigation has refocused onto the crew and passengers aboard the missing plane. He added that despite growing evidence to suggest a possible hijacking or sabotage, all possibilities are still being investigated.

..

Earlier, a Malaysian government official who is involved in the investigation said investigators have concluded that one of the pilots or someone else with flying experience hijacked the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

...

The official said that hijacking was no longer a theory. "It is conclusive."

..

Sources told the Reuters news agency on Friday, meanwhile, that the path Flight 370 appears to have taken after diverting from its intended route strongly suggests that a trained pilot was still in control of the aircraft.

More clues keep coming in, some of them, of course, contradictory, as they usually have been in this case.

First, the plane was allegedly dropped to 5,000 feet. There is no reason to fly at such a low altitude -- it's difficult and it eats up fuel -- unless a skilled pilot intends to evade radar.

Second, despite earlier reports that the ACARS system was turned off before the cockpit issued its last communication with air control ("All right, good night"), there now appears to be considerable doubt about that.

Malaysian officials earlier said those words ["All right, good night"] came after one of the jetliner's data communications systems - the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System - had been switched off, sharpening suspicion that one or both of the pilots may have been involved in the plane's disappearance.

However, Ahmad said Monday that while the last data transmission from ACARS - which gives plane performance and maintenance information - came before that, it was still unclear at what point the system was switched off. That opened the possibility that both ACARS and the plane's transponders - which make the plane visible to civilian air traffic controllers - were severed later and at about the same time.

So the earlier report seemed based upon the last transmission from ACARS -- not actual evidence the system had been disabled at any particular time. Also, the way I read this, this seems to strongly undermine previous reports that ACARS and the transponder had been turned off at different times -- because it looks like the guess as to when ACARS was turned off only comes from when its last transmission occurred. Assuming that ACARS only pings a satellite intermittently (which must be true), the last transmission from ACARS gives very little clue at all as to when it was turned off. It can only tell you the last time it was definitely on.

A previous report had suggested that Flight 370 disappeared in a corridor of very little radar cover, in between Malaysia's radar system and Vietnam's, suggesting that whoever stole the plane chose the best possible time and place to disable the transponder. I don't know if that report still holds up; everything seems to be revised 24 hours later.

The Daily Mail now reports that it was not the captain but the copilot who said "All right, good night," but I'm not sure that really matters.

On the other hand, this seems worth looking into:

It has also been revealed that the pilot's wife and three children moved out of the family home the day before the plane went missing.

The report goes on to say that US investigators say that the pilot and co-pilot did not ask to be assigned to fly together, reducing the likelihood of a conspiracy between them.

The Daily Mail also claims that nine people in northern Malaysia claim to have seen either bright lights in the sky, or heard a jet engine, or both, the night of the disappearance.

Investigators told the New Straits Times that they were now convinced the aircraft flow low over Kelantan, which is in the north east - exactly the same area where the villagers and fishermen who saw bright lights in the sky on the night the jet vanished are living.

At least nine people - fishermen, farmers and villagers - have made reports to police about seeing lights in the sky and some said they heard the loud noise of an engine.
These accounts appear to match the conclusions of investigators who say the jet flew low after making a sharp turn and heading west from its course over the South China Sea.

The first report of a 'bright light descending at high speed' came from Alif Fathi Abdul Hadi, 29, who said he saw the light heading towards the South China Sea at 1.45am on the night the aircraft disappeared.

A lot has been written about the captain's ownership of a flight simulator. It wouldn't ordinarily seem very suspicious that a pilot owns a flight simulator, but in the current context, of course, every tiny fact is being examined.

The Daily Mail also says a steward aboard the flight owned a flight simulator as well.

That doesn't seem terribly unusual or important to me, but, again, everything is now being looked at.

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 AM | Comments (639)
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• Will Asians Kill Race Preferences In California
  
• NRA Opposition May Sink Obama's Surgeon General Nominee
  
• Michelle Obama Cited Bogus Statistics In Claim Childhood Obesity Was Reduced
  
• Three Al Qaeda Terrorists Accidentally Blow Themselves Up
  
• Everything Must Be Politicized
  
• Crimea Through A Game Theory Lens
  
• The Face Behind The Ted Cruz Posters
  
• The Quote-Unquote Presidency
  
• Are Economic Sanctions Against Russia Worth It
  
• Crew Saves Dog From Cliff
  

Sorry for the meager offerings but I hurt myself a bit yesterday and needed to sleep in.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:48 AM | Comments (717)
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Happy SnowPatrick's Day.

The Most Transparent Administration Ever^TM has won the distinction of -- more than ever -- censoring or outright denying access to files under the Freedom of Information Act.

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had a moment of candor about the lack of candor from the White House on the possibility of losing the Senate: "I did the same thing a few years ago on your show and I still have tire tracks from Nancy Pelosi for saying what I thought."

Folks over at the Federalist noticed Obama's insane rambling about who is at fault for the high costs of the Unaffordable Care Act. Spoiler: it's Texas.

In foreign policy news, Crimea's parliament declared independence after the referendum at gunpoint. Formal recognition of the annexation of Crimea by Russia is expected to quickly follow.

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (227)
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