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	Hints of 'time before Big Bang' (bbc.co.uk)
	25 points by dhimes 612 days ago \| 6 comments

3 points by DaniFong 611 days ago | link

This has fallen off the front page, but this article inspired me to give my own treatment of the state of cosmology, and the results mentioned here.

Read Cosmology in Ten Minutes:

http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/cosmology-in-ten-min...

Or on HN:

http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/cosmology-in-ten-min...

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1 point by dhimes 610 days ago | link

Thanks, Dani!

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3 points by dhimes 612 days ago | link

I'd be interested in seeing the Phys Rev Letter on this one. I treat a lot of these ideas as bordering sci-fi, but PRL is a helluva journal.

The many-universe idea has been around for quite a while. They must have added something interesting. The anisotropy is probably pretty significant.

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10 points by hugh 612 days ago | link

I assume it's this one:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0377

which was submitted to PRL by those authors two days ago.

I'm a physicist, but not an astrophysicist or cosmologist, so I'm having trouble making head or tails of it. But most of the highly speculative stuff in the article isn't mentioned in the paper.

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1 point by dhimes 612 days ago | link

Thank you! I'll have a look.

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2 points by herdrick 611 days ago | link

Crappy article. Here's the only new info:

"Detailed measurements made by the satellite have shown that the fluctuations in the microwave background are about 10% stronger on one side of the sky than those on the other.

Sean Carroll conceded that this might just be a coincidence, but pointed out that a natural explanation for this discrepancy would be if it represented a structure inherited from our universe's parent."

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