ANSWERS TO COSMOLOGY QUIZ
1. FALSE. Recent studies of of ancient supernovae (Riess, et al. 1998, and Perlmutter, et. al., 1998) have indicated that the universe is speeding up in its expansion, and thus the driving force is not the attractive gravity, but a cosmic force of repulsion.
2. The Great Attractor, which we can't see because of obscuring dust in the Milky Way's center is an anomalous lump in the universe, and may indicate the universe is not homogeneous on the largest scale.
3. The hypothesis of a cosmic repulsion force was 'Einstein's Greatest Blunder', but it may be his greatest coup with the latest finding that one is necessary to explain universal expansion.
4. Speeding up!
5. All of the above. Galactic rotation curves, movements of galaxies in clusters, and the inflationary theory were all invoked as reasons for a dark matter hypothesis. Now, however, space itself may provide the reasons for the first two. As for the last one, inflation may a continuing phenomena, not just an ancient terminated phase. I predicted this in 1985--my abstract appears in Astrophysical Journal--but they thought the idea was too speculative for publication of the full paper. (P. S. Petersen)
6. FALSE. An increasing expansion rate would smooth out the background radiation without the need for more dark matter and momentary inflation.
7. Galaxies and quasars are older than the time since the standard Big Bang--without a cosmological constant. Wendy Friedmann, et. al., (1996) have found a large Hubble constant by observing Cepheid variables in the nearby Virgo galactic cluster. This indicates the universe cannot be older than 12 Billion years if we assume no cosmological constant. This is only 9 billion years, if we assume that the universe has critical density, as in the accepted inflationary theory. Some galaxies have been found (with the Keck Telescope) to be 13 or 14 Billion years old. Also quasars confirm this time problem. Galactic clusters, in this study, are found to be closer than once thought. This time problem can be resolved, if one assumes. as the latest data on supernovae Type Ia indicates, that the cosmological constant is non-zero. This assertion has a 99% probability of being true from the data.
8. A DeSitter Universe.
9. The latest supernova data suggests the universal expansion is driven in the main by a repulsive force, overpowering gravity. It may even expand exponentially. (Philip Petersen, PhD., predicted this discovery in 1986 in the Astrophysical Journal abstracts..)
10. Space may act as a compressed expansive quantum ether. Andrei Sakharov, the great Soviet dissident, suggested that space is compressible in just this way. Perhaps the Big Bang occurred because space was compressed like a squashed sponge and let go.

Be sure to watch for Cosmic Repulsion: Hounding The White Whale of Cosmology, a work in progress by P. Stephen Petersen, PhD, published by Empyrean Quest Publishers
Home