| Tikalon Blog is now in archive mode.
An easily printed and saved version of this article, and a link
to a directory of all articles, can be found below: |
|
This article |
| Directory of all articles |
Cosmic Alignment
December 8, 2014
They say that there's a fine line between
genius and
insanity. There are several real life examples of this, but I've always enjoyed the
exposition of a milder form of insanity in the relatively unknown
Sean Connery film, "
A Fine Madness."[1] In this film, Connery plays Samson Shillitoe, a mad genius of a
poet plagued by
writer's block. Perhaps his madness stemmed from the idea that you can make a
decent living by writing poetry.
Although the
cinema loves the idea of the "
mad scientist,"
scientists are typically just
compulsive, not mad. This is true, also, for
mathematicians, but there's a
counterexample in
Kurt Gödel. Kurt Gödel is noted for his 1931
incompleteness theorems that essentially state that nothing in the world is certain. Of course, I simplify, since the
theorems are about
mathematics, not
physical objects, but
physicists always suppose a
deep connection between the mathematical and the physical.
After that early success, Gödel's career was on the ascendant, and he ended up at the
Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey. After conversation with his Princeton
colleague,
Albert Einstein, Gödel developed a
theory of a
rotating universe, one
consequence of which is that
time looped back on itself. It was reassuring to Gödel that he would in this way be
reincarnated, and he compulsively sought evidence for his theory in the possible alignment of the
spin axes of
galaxies.
Gödel had a fragile
personality, having episodes of
depression and
paranoia, and he fell apart after his
wife was admitted to a
nursing home. He was afraid to eat, fearing his
food was
poisoned. When he died, on January 14, 1978, after a two week
hospital stay, the cause of death was ascribed to "
malnutrition and
inanition caused by personality disturbance."[2, p. 66]
Kurt Gödel (1906 - 1978)
This portrait, circa 1924-1927, is from his days at the University of Vienna.
Gödel became good friends with Albert Einstein after their meeting during his first visit to the United States in 1933.
(Via Wikimedia Commons.)
Gödel's rotating universe theory has been discredited, but there might be some unusual alignment of objects in the universe.
Astronomers at the
Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique of the
Université de Liège (Liège, Belgium) and the
Argelander-Institut für Astronomie of the
University of Bonn (Bonn, Germany) have found that the axes of rotation of the central
supermassive black holes in a sample of
quasars are
parallel to each other over distances of billions of
light-years.[5] Not only that, but the rotation axes of these quasars are closely aligned with the regions of the "cosmic web" where they're located.[5]
A computer simulation of the cosmic web in a region about 300 million light years across.
This simulation includes dark matter (blue), along with gas distribution (orange).
(Image: Illustris Collaboration.)
The
cosmic web is the
filamentary structure formed by the
walls of galaxies that surround huge
voids in the universe. I wrote about these voids and their defining walls in a
previous article (Our Lumpy Universe, June 6, 2014). The observations on 93 quasars were made using the
FORS instrument of the
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Very Large Telescope (VLT) in
Chile. The quasars date from a time when the Universe was just one third of
its current age.[5]
Four quasar groups at a redshift of 1.3 and their orientations in the sky. The right ascensions and declinations are in degrees.
The 93 quasars of the study are shown as points on this graph.
(Fig. 4 of ref. 4, via arXiv.)
Says team leader of the investigation,
Damien Hutsemékers of the University of Liège in
Belgium,
“The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars’ rotation axes were aligned with each other - despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years."[5]
The astronomers measured the
optical linear polarization of these quasars with
redshift of about 1.3, and they found that 19 of the 93 are significantly polarized. The polarization
vectors were either parallel or
perpendicular to the filaments in which they reside.
Statistically, the
probability that this would
randomly happen is about 1%.[4] These polarization observations, combined with other information, indicate that the quasar spin axes are parallel to the filaments.[4-5]
References:
- A Fine Madness (1966, Irvin Kershner, Director) on the Internet Movie Database.
- Ed Regis, "Who Got Einstein's Office?" Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (New York: 1987), 336 pp. (via Amazon).
- Damien Hutsemékers, Lorraine Braibant, Vincent Pelgrims, Dominique Sluse, "Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures," To Appear, Astronomy & Astrophysics.
- Damien Hutsemékers, Lorraine Braibant, Vincent Pelgrims, Dominique Sluse, "Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures," arXiv, September 22, 2014.
- Spooky Alignment of Quasars Across Billions of Light-years, ESO Press Release No. eso1438, November 19, 2014.
Permanent Link to this article
Linked Keywords: Genius; insanity; exposition; Sean Connery; film; A Fine Madness; poet; writer's block; profession; decent living; cinema; mad scientist; scientist; compulsive behavior; mathematician; counterexample; Kurt Gödel; incompleteness theorems; theorem; mathematics; physics; physical object; physicist; The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences; Institute for Advanced Study; Princeton, New Jersey; colleague; Albert Einstein; rotation; rotating; universe; logical consequence; time; reincarnation; reincarnated; rotation around a fixed axis; spin axis; galaxy; personality; depression; paranoia; wife; nursing home; food; poison; hospital; malnutrition; starvation; inanition; University of Vienna; United States; Wikimedia Commons; astronomer; Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique; Université de Liège (Liège, Belgium); Argelander-Institut für Astronomie; University of Bonn (Bonn, Germany); supermassive black hole; quasar; parallel; light-year; computer simulation; dark matter; gas; Illustris Collaboration; cosmic web; galaxy filament; filamentary structure; walls of galaxies; void; FORS instrument; European Southern Observatory; Very Large Telescope; Chile; age of the universe; redshift; right ascension; declination; degree; point; Cartesian coordinate system; graph; arXiv; Damien Hutsemékers; Belgium; optics; optical; linear polarization; redshift; vector; perpendicular; statistics; statistical; probability; randomness; random; Internet Movie Database.