Re: The Big Bang

Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Mon, 03 Nov 1997 10:45:16 +0000


At 09:16 PM 11/1/97 -0800, John Clark wrote informedly as usual, with one
exception:

>In 1949 George Gamow used the Big Bang theory to predict that the universe
>would be full of microwave black body radiation at a temperature of about
>5 degrees Kelvin.

Actually, the prediction by Geo. (which he pronounced `Joe') Gamow was 50
degrees K. So he was out by an order of magnitude. Not bad for a standing
jump.

(I recently wondered whether the background hiss might be due not to
residual heat from a BB but to leakage of what David Deutsch calls `shadow
photons', from other parts of the superposition in the multiverse. Given
the stochastic nature of galactic and stellar formation, there must be
stars in every part of the sky in all those overlapped cosmoses. But I
don't have either the mathematics or the physics to play with this notion.
Anyone for photonic tennis?)

Damien Broderick