1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:01,670 The following content is provided 2 00:00:01,670 --> 00:00:03,820 under a Creative Commons license. 3 00:00:03,820 --> 00:00:06,550 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue 4 00:00:06,550 --> 00:00:10,160 to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:12,700 To make a donation or to view additional materials 6 00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:16,620 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:16,620 --> 00:00:17,327 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:24,820 --> 00:00:25,880 PROFESSOR: OK. 9 00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:28,370 I think it's time for us to start. 10 00:00:28,370 --> 00:00:32,590 Last time we talked about the Doppler shift and a little bit 11 00:00:32,590 --> 00:00:34,350 of special relativity. 12 00:00:34,350 --> 00:00:38,480 Today we'll be going on to talk more about cosmological topics. 13 00:00:38,480 --> 00:00:40,190 We'll be talking about kinematically 14 00:00:40,190 --> 00:00:43,240 how one describes a homogeneously-expanding 15 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:44,950 universe like the one that we think 16 00:00:44,950 --> 00:00:48,510 we're living to a very good approximation. 17 00:00:48,510 --> 00:00:51,670 In that case, let's get started. 18 00:00:51,670 --> 00:00:53,920 What I want to do today is talk about some 19 00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:59,720 of the basic descriptive properties of the universe 20 00:00:59,720 --> 00:01:02,100 as we will describe it. 21 00:01:02,100 --> 00:01:05,360 The universe is, of course, a very complicated place. 22 00:01:05,360 --> 00:01:07,065 It includes you and me, for example, 23 00:01:07,065 --> 00:01:09,590 and we're pretty complicated structures. 24 00:01:09,590 --> 00:01:12,630 But cosmology is not really the study of all that. 25 00:01:12,630 --> 00:01:15,890 Cosmology is the study of the universe in the large, 26 00:01:15,890 --> 00:01:19,260 and we'll begin by discussing the universe on its largest 27 00:01:19,260 --> 00:01:22,450 scales in which you view approximated by a very 28 00:01:22,450 --> 00:01:26,570 simple model, which we'll be learning about. 29 00:01:26,570 --> 00:01:29,645 So in particular on very large scales, 30 00:01:29,645 --> 00:01:33,270 the universe is pretty well described by threes properties, 31 00:01:33,270 --> 00:01:36,360 which we will talk about one by one. 32 00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:44,490 The first is isotropy, and that just 33 00:01:44,490 --> 00:01:46,230 comes from some Greek root, which 34 00:01:46,230 --> 00:01:47,735 means the same in all directions. 35 00:02:03,664 --> 00:02:05,830 Now, of course, as we look around say the room here, 36 00:02:05,830 --> 00:02:07,640 the room doesn't look the same in all directions. 37 00:02:07,640 --> 00:02:09,009 The front of the room looks different from the back 38 00:02:09,009 --> 00:02:10,190 of the room. 39 00:02:10,190 --> 00:02:12,080 And looking towards Mass Ave looks 40 00:02:12,080 --> 00:02:14,550 different from looking towards the river, 41 00:02:14,550 --> 00:02:16,940 and looking further out into space, 42 00:02:16,940 --> 00:02:19,370 looking towards the Virgo cluster, which 43 00:02:19,370 --> 00:02:21,842 is the center of our local super cluster, 44 00:02:21,842 --> 00:02:23,300 looks rather different from looking 45 00:02:23,300 --> 00:02:25,870 in the opposite direction. 46 00:02:25,870 --> 00:02:28,970 But when one gets out to looking at things 47 00:02:28,970 --> 00:02:32,600 on the very large scale where in this case very large 48 00:02:32,600 --> 00:03:00,390 means on the scale of a few hundred million light years, 49 00:03:00,390 --> 00:03:03,610 things begin to look very isotropic. 50 00:03:03,610 --> 00:03:06,140 That is no matter what direction you look, 51 00:03:06,140 --> 00:03:09,550 as long as you're averaging over these very large scales, 52 00:03:09,550 --> 00:03:13,100 you find that you see pretty much the same thing. 53 00:03:13,100 --> 00:03:17,730 This becomes most emphatic when one looks 54 00:03:17,730 --> 00:03:20,730 at the cosmic background radiation, which is really 55 00:03:20,730 --> 00:03:23,660 the furthest object that we can look at. 56 00:03:23,660 --> 00:03:29,540 It's radiation that was admitted shortly after the Big Bang. 57 00:03:29,540 --> 00:03:33,720 The history of the cosmic background radiation 58 00:03:33,720 --> 00:03:36,170 in a nutshell is worth keeping in mind here. 59 00:03:40,650 --> 00:03:44,685 I'll refer to it as the CMB for cosmic microwave background. 60 00:04:00,090 --> 00:04:02,970 And in a nutshell, the things to keep in mind 61 00:04:02,970 --> 00:04:06,020 in thinking about this history is 62 00:04:06,020 --> 00:04:17,620 that until about 400,000 years after the beginning, 63 00:04:17,620 --> 00:04:23,200 the universe was a plasma, or maybe I 64 00:04:23,200 --> 00:04:25,200 should say more accurately that the universe was 65 00:04:25,200 --> 00:04:26,290 filled with plasma. 66 00:04:36,790 --> 00:04:41,690 And within a plasma, photons essentially go nowhere. 67 00:04:41,690 --> 00:04:43,870 They're constantly moving at the speed of light, 68 00:04:43,870 --> 00:04:46,490 but they have a very large cross section for scattering off 69 00:04:46,490 --> 00:04:50,530 of the free electrons that fill the plasma. 70 00:04:50,530 --> 00:04:53,050 And that means that the photons are constantly 71 00:04:53,050 --> 00:04:56,660 changing directions and the net progress in any one direction 72 00:04:56,660 --> 00:04:57,490 is negligible. 73 00:05:04,750 --> 00:05:10,754 So the photons are frozen with the matter, 74 00:05:10,754 --> 00:05:19,660 I'll say frozen inside the matter, which 75 00:05:19,660 --> 00:05:23,480 means that the net velocity relative to this plasma 76 00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:25,550 is essentially zero. 77 00:05:25,550 --> 00:05:27,230 But according to our calculations, 78 00:05:27,230 --> 00:05:29,720 and we'll learn later how to do these calculations, 79 00:05:29,720 --> 00:05:32,900 at about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, 80 00:05:32,900 --> 00:05:36,470 the universe cooled enough so that it neutralized 81 00:05:36,470 --> 00:05:39,680 and then it became a neutral gas like the air in this room. 82 00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:41,055 And the air in this room you know 83 00:05:41,055 --> 00:05:43,370 this is very transparent to photons, 84 00:05:43,370 --> 00:05:45,700 and that means that light travels from my face 85 00:05:45,700 --> 00:05:47,895 to your eyes on straight lines and allows 86 00:05:47,895 --> 00:05:51,100 you to see an image of what my face looks like and vice versa, 87 00:05:51,100 --> 00:05:54,020 by the way. 88 00:05:54,020 --> 00:05:56,810 And it's a little dicey to extrapolate something 89 00:05:56,810 --> 00:05:59,419 from the room to the universe. 90 00:05:59,419 --> 00:06:01,210 The orders of magnitude are very different. 91 00:06:01,210 --> 00:06:02,793 But in this case, the physics actually 92 00:06:02,793 --> 00:06:04,440 ends up being exactly the same. 93 00:06:04,440 --> 00:06:08,190 Once the universe becomes filled with a neutral gas, 94 00:06:08,190 --> 00:06:11,260 it really does become transparent to the photons 95 00:06:11,260 --> 00:06:13,810 of the cosmic microwave background. 96 00:06:13,810 --> 00:06:17,150 So these photons have for the most part been travelling 97 00:06:17,150 --> 00:06:20,670 on perfectly-straight lines since 400,000 years after 98 00:06:20,670 --> 00:06:22,360 the Big Bang. 99 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:25,530 And that means that when we see them today, 100 00:06:25,530 --> 00:06:28,620 we are essentially seeing an image of what 101 00:06:28,620 --> 00:06:32,262 the universe looks like at 400,000 years after the Big 102 00:06:32,262 --> 00:06:32,762 Bang. 103 00:06:36,538 --> 00:06:57,120 So at 400,000 years, gas neutralized 104 00:06:57,120 --> 00:07:01,970 and became transparent. 105 00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:21,090 This by the way has a name, which is universally 106 00:07:21,090 --> 00:07:22,924 what is called in cosmology, nobody actually 107 00:07:22,924 --> 00:07:24,798 understands why it's called this, by the way, 108 00:07:24,798 --> 00:07:26,116 but the name is recombination. 109 00:07:35,980 --> 00:07:38,130 And the mystery is what the re is doing there 110 00:07:38,130 --> 00:07:40,550 because as far as we know, the gas is combining 111 00:07:40,550 --> 00:07:43,130 for the first time in the history of universe, 112 00:07:43,130 --> 00:07:45,720 but that's otherwise what everybody calls it. 113 00:07:45,720 --> 00:07:48,290 I did actually once ask Jim Peebles who 114 00:07:48,290 --> 00:07:51,754 might be the person who first called it this why it was 115 00:07:51,754 --> 00:07:53,295 called this, and he told me that this 116 00:07:53,295 --> 00:07:54,990 is what the plasma physicists called it, 117 00:07:54,990 --> 00:07:57,565 so it was natural to just pick up the same word 118 00:07:57,565 --> 00:07:59,840 when he was doing cosmology, so maybe 119 00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:01,256 that's how the word originated. 120 00:08:01,256 --> 00:08:02,880 But coming from the point of cosmology, 121 00:08:02,880 --> 00:08:06,010 it is a misnomer in that for the theory 122 00:08:06,010 --> 00:08:08,380 that we're discussing the prefix re here 123 00:08:08,380 --> 00:08:10,140 has absolutely no business being there. 124 00:08:13,481 --> 00:08:15,730 So what do we see when we look at the cosmic microwave 125 00:08:15,730 --> 00:08:16,540 background? 126 00:08:16,540 --> 00:08:20,900 We see that it is unbelievably isotropic. 127 00:08:20,900 --> 00:08:28,865 What we find is that there are deviations 128 00:08:28,865 --> 00:08:30,365 in the temperature of the radiation. 129 00:08:30,365 --> 00:08:33,900 The intensity is measured as an effective temperature. 130 00:08:33,900 --> 00:08:36,670 There are deviations in the temperature of the radiation 131 00:08:36,670 --> 00:08:43,520 of a fractional amount of about 10 to the minus 3, 132 00:08:43,520 --> 00:08:45,430 which is a very small number, but it's 133 00:08:45,430 --> 00:08:48,260 even stronger than that. 134 00:08:48,260 --> 00:08:51,370 This deviation of one part in 10 to the 3 135 00:08:51,370 --> 00:08:53,565 has a particular angular pattern, 136 00:08:53,565 --> 00:08:55,480 and it's not the angular pattern that you 137 00:08:55,480 --> 00:08:57,770 would expect if the source system were moving 138 00:08:57,770 --> 00:09:00,330 through the cosmic microwave background, 139 00:09:00,330 --> 00:09:03,180 and that's how we interpret this 10 to the minus 3 effect. 140 00:09:09,090 --> 00:09:19,026 Motion of solar system through the CMB. 141 00:09:24,305 --> 00:09:33,760 And after removing the effect of the motion. 142 00:09:37,814 --> 00:09:39,230 Now actually when we move it, it's 143 00:09:39,230 --> 00:09:41,580 not like we have an independent way of measuring it. 144 00:09:41,580 --> 00:09:44,180 We don't really, not to enough accuracy. 145 00:09:44,180 --> 00:09:47,920 So we're really just fitting it to the data and removing it. 146 00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:49,480 But when we do the split to the data, 147 00:09:49,480 --> 00:09:51,210 it's a three-parameter fit, that is, 148 00:09:51,210 --> 00:09:53,235 we have three components of a velocity to fit. 149 00:09:53,235 --> 00:09:55,320 We have a whole angular pattern on the sky, 150 00:09:55,320 --> 00:09:57,754 and we only have three numbers to play with. 151 00:09:57,754 --> 00:09:59,670 So it's strongly constrained even though we're 152 00:09:59,670 --> 00:10:01,980 using the data itself to determine 153 00:10:01,980 --> 00:10:04,240 what we think our velocity is relative 154 00:10:04,240 --> 00:10:06,590 to the cosmic microwave background. 155 00:10:06,590 --> 00:10:09,290 And after removing it, then what we find 156 00:10:09,290 --> 00:10:13,620 is that the residual deviations, delta t over t, 157 00:10:13,620 --> 00:10:16,985 are only at the level of about 10 to the minus 5, 158 00:10:16,985 --> 00:10:22,170 1 part in 100,000, which is really unbelievably 159 00:10:22,170 --> 00:10:25,370 isotropic, unbelievably uniform. 160 00:10:25,370 --> 00:10:29,140 One time I decided to think about how 161 00:10:29,140 --> 00:10:32,505 round that is, how much the same in all directions 162 00:10:32,505 --> 00:10:35,890 it is by asking myself the question, 163 00:10:35,890 --> 00:10:38,920 is it possible to grind a marble that 164 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:43,187 would be spherical to an accuracy of 10 to the minus 5. 165 00:10:43,187 --> 00:10:44,770 And you can think about that yourself. 166 00:10:44,770 --> 00:10:47,610 The answer I came up with was that yes it is, but it really 167 00:10:47,610 --> 00:10:49,340 strains the limits of our technology. 168 00:10:49,340 --> 00:10:51,410 It correspond to sort of the best technology 169 00:10:51,410 --> 00:10:54,470 we have for building highly-precise lenses 170 00:10:54,470 --> 00:10:59,890 basically fractions of a wavelength of light. 171 00:10:59,890 --> 00:11:02,320 So to round to 1 part in 10 to the 5 172 00:11:02,320 --> 00:11:06,657 is really being unbelievable round, unbelievably isotropic. 173 00:11:06,657 --> 00:11:08,240 And that's the way the universe looks. 174 00:11:11,150 --> 00:11:16,175 Next item in our description of the universe is homogeneity. 175 00:11:29,800 --> 00:11:32,860 Homogeneity is harder to test with precision 176 00:11:32,860 --> 00:11:35,410 because it means looking out into space 177 00:11:35,410 --> 00:11:38,210 and trying to see, for example, if the density of galaxies 178 00:11:38,210 --> 00:11:40,782 is uniform as a function of distance. 179 00:11:40,782 --> 00:11:42,990 We always talked about as a function of angle, that's 180 00:11:42,990 --> 00:11:46,683 isotropy, and it's very uniform where 181 00:11:46,683 --> 00:11:48,510 one could make very precise statements 182 00:11:48,510 --> 00:11:51,020 about the cosmic microwave background. 183 00:11:51,020 --> 00:11:53,120 But to talk about homogeneity, one 184 00:11:53,120 --> 00:11:56,150 has to be able to talk about how the galaxy distribution varies 185 00:11:56,150 --> 00:11:58,920 with distance, and distances are very 186 00:11:58,920 --> 00:12:02,060 hard to measure cosmologically. 187 00:12:02,060 --> 00:12:04,230 So as far as we could tell, the universe 188 00:12:04,230 --> 00:12:07,920 is perfectly compatible with being homogeneous, again, 189 00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:11,630 on length scales of a few hundred million light years, 190 00:12:11,630 --> 00:12:15,550 but it's hard to make any very precise statement. 191 00:12:15,550 --> 00:12:18,290 There is, of course, relationships 192 00:12:18,290 --> 00:12:21,860 between isotropy and homogeneity. 193 00:12:21,860 --> 00:12:23,735 Homogeneity, by the way I didn't define that. 194 00:12:23,735 --> 00:12:25,109 I assumed you know what it meant, 195 00:12:25,109 --> 00:12:27,110 but I should definitely define it. 196 00:12:27,110 --> 00:12:29,280 Isotropy means the same in all directions. 197 00:12:29,280 --> 00:12:31,060 Homogeneity means the same at all places. 198 00:12:37,942 --> 00:12:41,870 So sometimes these are just put together and called uniformity 199 00:12:41,870 --> 00:12:44,590 because they are very similar concepts. 200 00:12:44,590 --> 00:12:46,980 They are, however, distinct concepts logically, 201 00:12:46,980 --> 00:12:50,720 and it is worth spending a little time understanding 202 00:12:50,720 --> 00:12:53,760 how they connect to each other, in particular 203 00:12:53,760 --> 00:12:56,290 how you can have one without the other is the best way 204 00:12:56,290 --> 00:13:00,470 to understand what they individually mean. 205 00:13:00,470 --> 00:13:04,220 So suppose, for example, we had a universe 206 00:13:04,220 --> 00:13:08,390 that was homogeneous but not isotropic. 207 00:13:08,390 --> 00:13:10,590 Is that possible, and if so, what 208 00:13:10,590 --> 00:13:12,630 would be an example of a feature that 209 00:13:12,630 --> 00:13:15,810 would be described that way? 210 00:13:15,810 --> 00:13:17,810 Let me throw it out to you. 211 00:13:17,810 --> 00:13:21,750 We want to be homogeneous, but not isotropic. 212 00:13:21,750 --> 00:13:22,250 Yes. 213 00:13:22,250 --> 00:13:25,363 AUDIENCE: It would be parallel universes like a cylinder 214 00:13:25,363 --> 00:13:27,998 pointing in a z direction, and I mean, 215 00:13:27,998 --> 00:13:29,914 matter is all homogeneous with a cylinder 216 00:13:29,914 --> 00:13:32,310 but there is preferred directions for isotropic. 217 00:13:32,310 --> 00:13:33,893 PROFESSOR: A preferred direction fixed 218 00:13:33,893 --> 00:13:35,580 by the direction of the periodicity? 219 00:13:35,580 --> 00:13:36,470 That is an example. 220 00:13:36,470 --> 00:13:37,259 That's right. 221 00:13:37,259 --> 00:13:37,800 That's right. 222 00:13:40,660 --> 00:13:45,640 Let me ask if there are other examples people could think of. 223 00:13:45,640 --> 00:13:46,140 Yes. 224 00:13:46,140 --> 00:13:48,080 AUDIENCE: There are galaxies everywhere 225 00:13:48,080 --> 00:13:50,343 with constant density, but they're all 226 00:13:50,343 --> 00:13:51,970 aligned in a particular direction. 227 00:13:51,970 --> 00:13:52,720 PROFESSOR: That's right. 228 00:13:52,720 --> 00:13:53,261 That's right. 229 00:13:53,261 --> 00:13:55,850 Galaxies have a shape, in particular 230 00:13:55,850 --> 00:13:57,269 they have an angular momentum. 231 00:13:57,269 --> 00:13:58,810 The angular momentum could be a line, 232 00:13:58,810 --> 00:14:02,300 and that would be an example of a universe that 233 00:14:02,300 --> 00:14:05,350 would be homogeneous but not isotropic. 234 00:14:05,350 --> 00:14:05,870 Very good. 235 00:14:05,870 --> 00:14:06,660 Very good. 236 00:14:06,660 --> 00:14:09,310 Another example that I'll just throw out, which I think maybe 237 00:14:09,310 --> 00:14:11,590 is simple to think about is the universe is filled 238 00:14:11,590 --> 00:14:14,330 with this cosmic microwave background radiation. 239 00:14:14,330 --> 00:14:16,440 suppose all the photons going in the z direction 240 00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:17,670 were more energetic than the ones 241 00:14:17,670 --> 00:14:18,961 going in the x and y direction. 242 00:14:18,961 --> 00:14:21,229 That would be a possible situation 243 00:14:21,229 --> 00:14:22,770 that could be completely homogeneous, 244 00:14:22,770 --> 00:14:25,230 but would be an example of something that would not 245 00:14:25,230 --> 00:14:26,445 be isotropic. 246 00:14:26,445 --> 00:14:28,445 So there are many examples you can come up with. 247 00:14:28,445 --> 00:14:30,632 I'm very glad you came up with the ones you did. 248 00:14:30,632 --> 00:14:32,330 That's great. 249 00:14:32,330 --> 00:14:34,794 Going the other way it's harder. 250 00:14:34,794 --> 00:14:36,710 Suppose we try to think of the universe that's 251 00:14:36,710 --> 00:14:38,686 isotropic but not homogeneous. 252 00:14:41,310 --> 00:14:43,560 Isotropic, by the way, does depend on the observer, so 253 00:14:43,560 --> 00:14:48,320 let's first talk about isotropic relative to us. 254 00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:50,440 I was just going to say imagining a universe that 255 00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:52,070 would be isotropic relevant to us, 256 00:14:52,070 --> 00:14:53,369 but would not be homogeneous. 257 00:14:53,369 --> 00:14:53,868 Yes. 258 00:14:53,868 --> 00:14:56,520 AUDIENCE: Could it be like if we lived in some shell. 259 00:14:56,520 --> 00:14:57,520 PROFESSOR: That's right. 260 00:14:57,520 --> 00:14:58,085 A shell structure. 261 00:14:58,085 --> 00:14:59,676 AUDIENCE: In all direction, the shell would be there. 262 00:14:59,676 --> 00:15:00,900 PROFESSOR: That's right. 263 00:15:00,900 --> 00:15:01,500 That's right. 264 00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:03,416 I think I'll even draw that on the blackboard. 265 00:15:06,250 --> 00:15:18,223 Example of isotropy without homogeneity. 266 00:15:22,620 --> 00:15:28,290 So we would be here, and the matter 267 00:15:28,290 --> 00:15:31,390 could be distributed in a perfectly spherically-symmetric 268 00:15:31,390 --> 00:15:34,320 distribution with us at the center. 269 00:15:34,320 --> 00:15:36,095 And that would be an example of something 270 00:15:36,095 --> 00:15:41,050 that would be isotopic to us but not homogeneous. 271 00:15:41,050 --> 00:15:42,450 Now, things like that, of course, 272 00:15:42,450 --> 00:15:45,140 are considered weird because we don't think of ourselves 273 00:15:45,140 --> 00:15:48,080 as living in any special place in the universe, 274 00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:50,790 and that's basically what the Copernican Revolution was 275 00:15:50,790 --> 00:15:51,850 all about. 276 00:15:51,850 --> 00:15:55,810 And the Copernican Revolution is sunken very deeply 277 00:15:55,810 --> 00:15:58,390 into the psychology of scientists. 278 00:15:58,390 --> 00:16:02,730 So I think scientists would be very loathed to imagine 279 00:16:02,730 --> 00:16:04,680 the universe that look like this, 280 00:16:04,680 --> 00:16:09,480 but it does help to understand what these words mean. 281 00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:14,370 If a universe is going to be isotropic to all observers, 282 00:16:14,370 --> 00:16:17,400 then it does have to be homogeneous, 283 00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:18,912 and that's part of the reason why 284 00:16:18,912 --> 00:16:21,120 we're pretty confident that our universe is basically 285 00:16:21,120 --> 00:16:24,380 homogeneous, because we just decided that's isotropic to us, 286 00:16:24,380 --> 00:16:27,890 and we decide we're not special then it 287 00:16:27,890 --> 00:16:29,959 has to be isotropic to everybody and then it 288 00:16:29,959 --> 00:16:30,875 has to be homogeneous. 289 00:16:37,262 --> 00:16:58,350 If the universe is isotropic to all observers, 290 00:16:58,350 --> 00:17:10,596 it is homogeneous 291 00:17:10,596 --> 00:17:11,970 Now, a thought which I will leave 292 00:17:11,970 --> 00:17:14,980 for you to think about between now and the next lecture 293 00:17:14,980 --> 00:17:18,190 is whether or not really knowing that a universe is 294 00:17:18,190 --> 00:17:21,027 isotropic with respect to two observers 295 00:17:21,027 --> 00:17:22,735 is enough to prove that it's homogeneous. 296 00:17:25,032 --> 00:17:26,865 That turned out to be a more subtle question 297 00:17:26,865 --> 00:17:28,339 than it might sound. 298 00:17:28,339 --> 00:17:30,300 I don't know if it sounds subtle or not. 299 00:17:30,300 --> 00:17:33,820 I should maybe just tell you basically what the answer is 300 00:17:33,820 --> 00:17:36,760 and then you can try to think if you can understand the answer. 301 00:17:36,760 --> 00:17:41,890 In the Euclidean space, isotropy about two distinct observers 302 00:17:41,890 --> 00:17:44,096 is enough to make it homogeneous, 303 00:17:44,096 --> 00:17:46,617 which is kind of what you visualize. 304 00:17:46,617 --> 00:17:48,200 But if you can allow yourself to think 305 00:17:48,200 --> 00:17:49,679 about non-Euclidean spaces, and I 306 00:17:49,679 --> 00:17:51,720 know we haven't talked about non-Euclidean spaces 307 00:17:51,720 --> 00:17:55,950 yet so you might not have in the way of tools to think about it. 308 00:17:55,950 --> 00:17:58,994 But think, for example, about surfaces in three dimensions. 309 00:17:58,994 --> 00:18:00,410 Surfaces are very good examples of 310 00:18:00,410 --> 00:18:03,310 non-Euclidean two-dimensional geometries. 311 00:18:03,310 --> 00:18:07,580 And see if you can invent a two-dimensional geometry that 312 00:18:07,580 --> 00:18:10,330 would be isotropic about two points, 313 00:18:10,330 --> 00:18:11,800 but would not be homogeneous. 314 00:18:11,800 --> 00:18:16,670 So that's your thought assignment for next time, 315 00:18:16,670 --> 00:18:19,596 not to be handed in just to be talked about in the lecture 316 00:18:19,596 --> 00:18:22,230 next time. 317 00:18:22,230 --> 00:18:28,610 So isotropy and homogeneity are two of the key properties that 318 00:18:28,610 --> 00:18:34,180 define the simplicity of our universe on very large scales. 319 00:18:34,180 --> 00:18:36,220 The next thing I want to talk about 320 00:18:36,220 --> 00:18:40,390 is the expansion of the universe, which is basically 321 00:18:40,390 --> 00:18:43,240 characterized by Hubble's law. 322 00:18:56,990 --> 00:18:58,490 Last time I think I said I was going 323 00:18:58,490 --> 00:18:59,948 to call it the Lemaitre-Hubble law. 324 00:18:59,948 --> 00:19:01,950 I decided I'll probably call it Hubble's law. 325 00:19:01,950 --> 00:19:03,370 Now, Hubble, I think, really does 326 00:19:03,370 --> 00:19:05,840 deserve credit for demonstrating observations 327 00:19:05,840 --> 00:19:08,164 that the law is true, and that's really 328 00:19:08,164 --> 00:19:10,080 what he is getting credit for and that was not 329 00:19:10,080 --> 00:19:11,530 believed until he discovered it. 330 00:19:11,530 --> 00:19:14,540 So it really did have a tremendous effect 331 00:19:14,540 --> 00:19:17,362 on the course of cosmology. 332 00:19:17,362 --> 00:19:21,140 So Hubble's law says that on average all galaxies 333 00:19:21,140 --> 00:19:25,640 are receding from us with a velocity which 334 00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:29,320 is equal to a constant, H, called the Hubble constant-- 335 00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:31,770 Hubble called it K, by the way, capital 336 00:19:31,770 --> 00:19:37,070 K-- times the distance to the Galaxy, r. 337 00:19:37,070 --> 00:19:40,110 And so it's not true exactly for our universe, 338 00:19:40,110 --> 00:19:43,460 but it's true in some average sense, 339 00:19:43,460 --> 00:19:46,300 just as isotropy and homogeneity are, 340 00:19:46,300 --> 00:19:48,090 we're only true on an average sense. 341 00:19:52,960 --> 00:19:56,170 I want to tell you about the units in which it's measured 342 00:19:56,170 --> 00:19:58,910 and that leads me to the parsec. 343 00:19:58,910 --> 00:20:00,320 Let me write this on the board. 344 00:20:00,320 --> 00:20:06,260 But astronomers always measure the Hubble constant 345 00:20:06,260 --> 00:20:08,810 or I will sometimes call it the Hubble expansion 346 00:20:08,810 --> 00:20:22,483 rate in kilometers per second per megaparsec. 347 00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:30,660 And it's a relationship between a velocity and distance, 348 00:20:30,660 --> 00:20:32,330 so kilometers per second is velocity 349 00:20:32,330 --> 00:20:35,530 and velocity per megaparsec is the velocity 350 00:20:35,530 --> 00:20:38,007 per distance, which is what it should be. 351 00:20:38,007 --> 00:20:39,465 Notice, however, that I wrote that. 352 00:20:39,465 --> 00:20:42,760 A kilometer and a megaparsec are both units of distance. 353 00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:45,400 So they actually just have some fixed ratio. 354 00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:47,510 So in the end, this Hubble constant really 355 00:20:47,510 --> 00:20:50,535 is just an inverse time, and obviously, 356 00:20:50,535 --> 00:20:52,740 if you multiply an inverse time times the distance 357 00:20:52,740 --> 00:20:55,900 you get a distance per time, which is the velocity, 358 00:20:55,900 --> 00:20:56,940 so that works. 359 00:20:56,940 --> 00:21:01,660 But it's very seldom quoted as simply an inverse time, 360 00:21:01,660 --> 00:21:05,340 instead it's quoted by the units that astronomers like to use. 361 00:21:05,340 --> 00:21:09,390 They measure velocities as a normal person would 362 00:21:09,390 --> 00:21:11,510 in kilometers per second, but they 363 00:21:11,510 --> 00:21:13,956 measure distances in megaparsecs, 364 00:21:13,956 --> 00:21:16,980 where a megaparsec is a million parsecs, 365 00:21:16,980 --> 00:21:19,095 and a parsec is defined by that diagram. 366 00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:25,380 The base of this triangle is one astronomical unit, 367 00:21:25,380 --> 00:21:29,340 the mean distance between the Earth the sun. 368 00:21:29,340 --> 00:21:35,540 And the distance at which the angles attended 369 00:21:35,540 --> 00:21:38,820 by one astronomical unit is one second of arc 370 00:21:38,820 --> 00:21:43,960 is what's called a parsec and abbreviated pc. 371 00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:46,940 And a parsec is about three light years. 372 00:21:46,940 --> 00:21:48,840 I'll write these things on the board. 373 00:21:52,020 --> 00:22:04,990 One parsec equals 3.2616 light years, 374 00:22:04,990 --> 00:22:08,970 and a megaparsec is a million of those. 375 00:22:08,970 --> 00:22:13,600 Another useful number to keep in mind for converting, 376 00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:17,500 if you want to think of H as inverse years, 377 00:22:17,500 --> 00:22:33,290 then the useful equality is that 1 over 10 to the 10 years 378 00:22:33,290 --> 00:22:41,560 is equal to 97.8, and it's suitable to remember this 379 00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:45,560 as being 100-- you can look up the exact number when you need 380 00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:54,510 it-- and these funny things kilometers per second 381 00:22:54,510 --> 00:22:55,625 per megaparsec. 382 00:23:04,100 --> 00:23:06,500 So what is the value of Hubble's constant? 383 00:23:09,390 --> 00:23:17,260 It actually has a very interesting and 384 00:23:17,260 --> 00:23:19,750 historically-significant history. 385 00:23:19,750 --> 00:23:24,180 It was first measured in this paper by George Lemaitre 386 00:23:24,180 --> 00:23:27,620 and in 1927, published only in French 387 00:23:27,620 --> 00:23:31,700 and ignored by the rest of world, at the time at least. 388 00:23:31,700 --> 00:23:33,850 It got discovered later. 389 00:23:33,850 --> 00:23:36,460 And Lemaitre was not an astronomer. 390 00:23:36,460 --> 00:23:38,470 He was a theoretical cosmologist. 391 00:23:38,470 --> 00:23:43,150 I mentioned a few times I think he had a PhD from MIT 392 00:23:43,150 --> 00:23:47,740 in theoretical cosmology in physics, in principle. 393 00:23:47,740 --> 00:23:52,290 And the value that he got based on looking at other people's 394 00:23:52,290 --> 00:24:14,500 data, in 1927, had the value of-- I guess actually, 395 00:24:14,500 --> 00:24:15,910 I'll give you the range. 396 00:24:15,910 --> 00:24:18,140 He gave two different methods of calculating it. 397 00:24:18,140 --> 00:24:20,260 We've got two slightly different answers. 398 00:24:20,260 --> 00:24:28,192 So we had 575 to 625 of these [INAUDIBLE] units kilometers 399 00:24:28,192 --> 00:24:29,275 per second per megaparsec. 400 00:24:37,210 --> 00:24:43,120 And two years later in his famous paper 401 00:24:43,120 --> 00:24:53,302 "Hubble," got the value of 500 kilometers 402 00:24:53,302 --> 00:24:54,385 per second per megaparsec. 403 00:24:57,620 --> 00:24:59,986 I have a picture of Hubble too. 404 00:24:59,986 --> 00:25:00,486 Yes. 405 00:25:00,486 --> 00:25:04,101 AUDIENCE: That last in the board right there 406 00:25:04,101 --> 00:25:11,537 where you have 1 over 10 to the 10 amperes, is that H? 407 00:25:11,537 --> 00:25:13,370 PROFESSOR: That's just an equality of units. 408 00:25:13,370 --> 00:25:14,670 AUDIENCE: Quality of units. 409 00:25:14,670 --> 00:25:16,900 PROFESSOR: That's just the unit equality. 410 00:25:16,900 --> 00:25:20,930 It's relevant to H, because H is measured in those units. 411 00:25:20,930 --> 00:25:25,060 But it really is just an equality of units. 412 00:25:25,060 --> 00:25:28,110 1 over 10 to the 10th years has units of inverse time, 413 00:25:28,110 --> 00:25:30,820 and kilometers per second per megaparsec 414 00:25:30,820 --> 00:25:33,850 has units of inverse time also because kilometers 415 00:25:33,850 --> 00:25:36,940 is distance and megaparsec is inverse distance. 416 00:25:36,940 --> 00:25:39,860 So both sides have the same units and the same dimensions, 417 00:25:39,860 --> 00:25:42,500 I should say, and it's just two different ways 418 00:25:42,500 --> 00:25:44,620 of measuring the same thing, inverse times. 419 00:25:48,750 --> 00:25:51,560 So in 1929, Hubble published his famous paper 420 00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:53,750 which he got the value of 500, and there's 421 00:25:53,750 --> 00:25:56,317 an important difference really between the papers by Lemaitre 422 00:25:56,317 --> 00:25:56,820 and Hubble. 423 00:25:56,820 --> 00:25:59,410 First of all, Hubble was using largely his own data. 424 00:25:59,410 --> 00:26:01,430 Lemaitre was using other people's data mostly 425 00:26:01,430 --> 00:26:03,210 Hubble's actually. 426 00:26:03,210 --> 00:26:06,510 And furthermore, Hubble made the claim 427 00:26:06,510 --> 00:26:12,010 that the data justified the relationship 428 00:26:12,010 --> 00:26:14,940 that v is equal to a constant times r. 429 00:26:14,940 --> 00:26:17,150 Lemaitre knew that relation theoretically 430 00:26:17,150 --> 00:26:19,170 for a uniformly-expanding universe, 431 00:26:19,170 --> 00:26:22,000 which we'll be talking about shortly. 432 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:26,710 But he did not claim to be able to get it from the data. 433 00:26:26,710 --> 00:26:29,260 The data he had he decided was not strong enough 434 00:26:29,260 --> 00:26:31,840 to reach that conclusion, but he was 435 00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:36,550 still able to get a value for H by taking the average velocity 436 00:26:36,550 --> 00:26:42,470 dividing it by the average distance and got a number. 437 00:26:42,470 --> 00:26:44,290 I think I have Hubble's data next. 438 00:26:44,290 --> 00:26:46,860 Yeah, here's Hubble's data. 439 00:26:46,860 --> 00:26:51,160 The data obviously was not very good. 440 00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:54,580 It only goes up to about 1,000. 441 00:26:54,580 --> 00:26:57,130 One curiosity of this graph that you might notice 442 00:26:57,130 --> 00:27:00,940 is that the vertical axis is a velocity meaning 443 00:27:00,940 --> 00:27:03,390 it should be measured in kilometers per second, 444 00:27:03,390 --> 00:27:08,210 but nonetheless Hubble wrote it as kilometers. 445 00:27:08,210 --> 00:27:11,164 Not getting his units right, so minus 10 or something 446 00:27:11,164 --> 00:27:15,880 like that on the graded sheet. 447 00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:17,646 But somehow it did not stop the paper 448 00:27:17,646 --> 00:27:20,020 from getting published in the proceedings of the National 449 00:27:20,020 --> 00:27:23,930 Academy of Sciences and had become, 450 00:27:23,930 --> 00:27:27,420 of course, a monumentally-famous paper. 451 00:27:27,420 --> 00:27:30,240 But you can see that the data is scattered, 452 00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:34,230 and it has those nice lines drawn through which 453 00:27:34,230 --> 00:27:36,640 guide your eye, but if you imagine taking away the lines, 454 00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:39,350 it's not that clear on the data itself 455 00:27:39,350 --> 00:27:41,790 that it really is a linear relationship. 456 00:27:41,790 --> 00:27:44,139 But it's suggested, at least, and Hubble 457 00:27:44,139 --> 00:27:46,180 thought it was pretty convincing and later Hubble 458 00:27:46,180 --> 00:27:48,845 gathered more data for this project, 459 00:27:48,845 --> 00:27:50,720 and it did become quite convincing that there 460 00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,040 is a linear relationship, and today there's 461 00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,930 no doubt that there is a linear relationship between velocity 462 00:27:56,930 --> 00:27:57,929 and distance. 463 00:27:57,929 --> 00:27:59,720 At very large distances there's deviations, 464 00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:01,450 which we can understand and we'll 465 00:28:01,450 --> 00:28:06,100 be talking about later, but basically, at least 466 00:28:06,100 --> 00:28:10,821 for moderate distances, one has this linear relationship. 467 00:28:10,821 --> 00:28:13,070 I should mention that the velocity of the solar system 468 00:28:13,070 --> 00:28:16,660 through the CMB is also the velocity of the solar system 469 00:28:16,660 --> 00:28:18,840 through this pattern of Hubble expansion, 470 00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:21,560 and both Hubble and Lemaitre had to make estimates 471 00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:23,230 of the velocity of the solar system 472 00:28:23,230 --> 00:28:25,705 relative to these galaxies and subtract that out 473 00:28:25,705 --> 00:28:27,950 to get things that resemble a straight line. 474 00:28:30,950 --> 00:28:33,900 Lemaitre estimated the velocity of our solar system 475 00:28:33,900 --> 00:28:39,290 as 300 kilometers per second, and Hubble estimated it 476 00:28:39,290 --> 00:28:41,204 as 280 kilometers per second. 477 00:28:41,204 --> 00:28:43,120 So it was a relevant feature because remember, 478 00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:45,298 the maximum velocity there is only 1,000 kilometers 479 00:28:45,298 --> 00:28:48,126 per second, so the correction that he's putting in 480 00:28:48,126 --> 00:28:51,350 is about a third of the maximum velocity seen. 481 00:28:51,350 --> 00:28:55,744 So it's a very important and not that it was easy to determine. 482 00:28:55,744 --> 00:28:57,712 AUDIENCE: What were they using to determine 483 00:28:57,712 --> 00:28:58,696 the [INAUDIBLE] CMB? 484 00:28:58,696 --> 00:29:00,370 PROFESSOR: I think they were just 485 00:29:00,370 --> 00:29:02,520 looking for what they could assume 486 00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:04,640 that would make the average expansion 487 00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:06,936 in all directions about the same. 488 00:29:06,936 --> 00:29:08,606 To be honest, I'm not sure about that. 489 00:29:08,606 --> 00:29:10,980 But that's the only thing I can see that they would have, 490 00:29:10,980 --> 00:29:12,890 so I think that must be what they were using. 491 00:29:18,780 --> 00:29:22,466 Now since these ancient times, there 492 00:29:22,466 --> 00:29:24,840 have been many measurements of the Hubble expansion rate, 493 00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:27,540 and they changed a great deal. 494 00:29:27,540 --> 00:29:32,910 So in the '40s through '60s, there 495 00:29:32,910 --> 00:29:36,290 was a whole series of measurements dominated 496 00:29:36,290 --> 00:29:43,130 by people like Walter Baade and Allan Sandage. 497 00:29:52,764 --> 00:29:54,180 And generally speaking, the values 498 00:29:54,180 --> 00:29:58,052 came down steadily from the high values 499 00:29:58,052 --> 00:29:59,760 that were measured by Hubble and Lemaitre 500 00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:02,320 in the very early days. 501 00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:05,790 When I was a graduate student, if you asked anybody 502 00:30:05,790 --> 00:30:09,050 what the Hubble constant was, you always got the same answer. 503 00:30:09,050 --> 00:30:11,640 It was somewhere between 50 and 100, 504 00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:13,730 still uncertain by a factor of 2, 505 00:30:13,730 --> 00:30:18,200 but much lower by a factor of 5 or 10 from the values 506 00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:23,860 that Hubble was talk about, and was still 507 00:30:23,860 --> 00:30:28,100 a major source of uncertainty in talking about cosmology. 508 00:30:28,100 --> 00:30:38,880 Values started to become more precise around 2001. 509 00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:40,854 So in 2001, there was the Hubble Key Project 510 00:30:40,854 --> 00:30:42,020 that released these results. 511 00:30:45,060 --> 00:30:47,550 The word Hubble here refers to the Hubble satellite, 512 00:30:47,550 --> 00:30:51,140 which was named after Hubble-- Hubble, Edwin. 513 00:30:51,140 --> 00:30:56,160 And they were able to use the Hubble telescope to see 514 00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,140 Cepheid variables and galaxies, that was significantly further 515 00:30:59,140 --> 00:31:01,800 than Cepheid variables can ever be seen before 516 00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,225 and thereby make a much better calibration of the distance 517 00:31:04,225 --> 00:31:05,440 scale. 518 00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:08,100 As you'll learn about when you do your reading, 519 00:31:08,100 --> 00:31:10,370 Cepheid variables are crucial to determining 520 00:31:10,370 --> 00:31:12,950 the cosmological distance scale. 521 00:31:12,950 --> 00:31:20,200 So the value that they got was much more precise 522 00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:24,380 than anything previous, 72 plus or minus 8 of these [? quad ?] 523 00:31:24,380 --> 00:31:26,260 units kilometers per second per megaparsec. 524 00:31:28,810 --> 00:31:31,240 Meanwhile things were still controversial. 525 00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:34,090 I should have added that when people said it was 50 to 100 526 00:31:34,090 --> 00:31:37,920 when I was a graduate student, it wasn't that people really 527 00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:39,910 understood the error bars to be that large. 528 00:31:39,910 --> 00:31:42,510 The real situation is that there were a group of astronomers 529 00:31:42,510 --> 00:31:43,992 that claimed adamantly it was 50, 530 00:31:43,992 --> 00:31:45,950 and there were other groups of astronomers that 531 00:31:45,950 --> 00:31:47,980 claimed adamantly that it was 100. 532 00:31:47,980 --> 00:31:50,530 Anyway On person is shouting in your ear saying it's 100, 533 00:31:50,530 --> 00:31:52,113 another person is shouting in your ear 534 00:31:52,113 --> 00:31:55,740 saying it's 50 the conclusion is that it's 50 to 100, 535 00:31:55,740 --> 00:31:59,120 and that's the situation when I was a graduate student. 536 00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:05,730 So this was a somewhat high value relative to the argument. 537 00:32:05,730 --> 00:32:08,240 The people who are arguing on the low side 538 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,360 were still in business at this time and still in fact also 539 00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:14,190 using Hubble telescope data. 540 00:32:14,190 --> 00:32:17,700 So Tammann and Sandage, the same year 541 00:32:17,700 --> 00:32:22,090 using the same instrument-- let me put the year here, 542 00:32:22,090 --> 00:32:27,450 and it's 2001-- Tammann and Sandage were estimating 543 00:32:27,450 --> 00:32:31,240 60 plus or minus they said less than 10%. 544 00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:36,380 so these didn't quite mesh. 545 00:32:55,660 --> 00:33:09,312 Coming to more modern times, in 2003, WMAP, 546 00:33:09,312 --> 00:33:21,130 the satellite called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy 547 00:33:21,130 --> 00:33:26,890 Probe, a satellite dedicate to measuring 548 00:33:26,890 --> 00:33:30,140 these minute variations of the cosmic microwave background 549 00:33:30,140 --> 00:33:32,755 at the level of 1 part in 100,000, 550 00:33:32,755 --> 00:33:34,290 it turns out that those measurements 551 00:33:34,290 --> 00:33:36,700 are estimated at the Hubble expansion rate 552 00:33:36,700 --> 00:33:39,950 by fitting the data to a theoretical model. 553 00:33:39,950 --> 00:33:51,440 And their initial number was 72 plus or minus 5. 554 00:33:54,490 --> 00:33:57,590 And that was based on one year of data. 555 00:33:57,590 --> 00:34:20,650 And in 2011, the same WMAP satellite team 556 00:34:20,650 --> 00:34:23,440 was based on seven years of data, 557 00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:28,270 came up with a number of 70.2 plus or minus 558 00:34:28,270 --> 00:34:32,429 1.4, so to very precise. 559 00:34:32,429 --> 00:34:35,380 And the most recent number comes from a similar satellite 560 00:34:35,380 --> 00:34:38,659 to WMAP but more recent and more powerful 561 00:34:38,659 --> 00:34:44,000 satellite called Planck, which just 562 00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:45,765 released its data last March. 563 00:34:49,100 --> 00:34:54,319 And it came up with a somewhat surprisingly low number 67.3 564 00:34:54,319 --> 00:35:01,201 plus or minus 1.2. 565 00:35:01,201 --> 00:35:01,700 Yes. 566 00:35:01,700 --> 00:35:04,520 AUDIENCE: The other measurements there 567 00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:07,971 are kind of inconsistent with one another 568 00:35:07,971 --> 00:35:11,422 and then with one measurement sort of 20th century 569 00:35:11,422 --> 00:35:13,065 make this big jump down suggesting 570 00:35:13,065 --> 00:35:15,314 those early guys were making the same kind of mistake. 571 00:35:15,314 --> 00:35:15,860 What was it? 572 00:35:15,860 --> 00:35:17,080 PROFESSOR: Good question. 573 00:35:17,080 --> 00:35:20,380 The early guys were making a big mistake 574 00:35:20,380 --> 00:35:22,710 in estimating the distance scale, 575 00:35:22,710 --> 00:35:25,590 and I'm not sure I understand the details of that, 576 00:35:25,590 --> 00:35:29,130 but I think it had something to do with misidentifying Cepheid 577 00:35:29,130 --> 00:35:32,540 variables, equating two different types that should not 578 00:35:32,540 --> 00:35:34,265 have been compared with each other. 579 00:35:34,265 --> 00:35:36,507 But I'm not altogether sure of the details, 580 00:35:36,507 --> 00:35:38,840 but it was definitely the distance scale they had wrong. 581 00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:42,100 The velocities are pretty easy to measure accurately, 582 00:35:42,100 --> 00:35:43,234 and they were very wrong. 583 00:35:43,234 --> 00:35:43,734 Yes. 584 00:35:43,734 --> 00:35:46,700 AUDIENCE: There's two types of Cepheids, 585 00:35:46,700 --> 00:35:49,360 one has a certain period of velocity relation 586 00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:52,264 that would give it, and it's like a completely different 587 00:35:52,264 --> 00:35:54,406 type of star, and so we got mixed up, 588 00:35:54,406 --> 00:35:57,678 and we got completely different absolute magnitudes, which 589 00:35:57,678 --> 00:36:00,642 will give you two completely different distance estimates. 590 00:36:00,642 --> 00:36:03,359 So I don't know how far, but measuring 591 00:36:03,359 --> 00:36:06,552 Cepheids and Andromeda was way off the distance scale 592 00:36:06,552 --> 00:36:08,052 because we thought they were Type 1, 593 00:36:08,052 --> 00:36:09,534 but they were actually Type 2. 594 00:36:09,534 --> 00:36:11,492 AUDIENCE: I think the difference between Type 1 595 00:36:11,492 --> 00:36:13,849 and Type 2 are a factor of 4, so that would make sense. 596 00:36:13,849 --> 00:36:14,474 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 597 00:36:14,474 --> 00:36:16,944 It's like two completely different linear relations. 598 00:36:20,402 --> 00:36:21,880 PROFESSOR: An intensity goes like 1 599 00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,270 over the distance squared, so I think that, I mean, 600 00:36:24,270 --> 00:36:29,115 a factor of 4 in intensity I think would mean a factor of 16 601 00:36:29,115 --> 00:36:32,090 in distance estimates. 602 00:36:32,090 --> 00:36:32,590 Yes. 603 00:36:32,590 --> 00:36:34,760 AUDIENCE: I'm following so much that these 604 00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:36,820 are like, they both have error bars, 605 00:36:36,820 --> 00:36:38,937 but they're not within error of each other. 606 00:36:38,937 --> 00:36:39,645 PROFESSOR: Right. 607 00:36:39,645 --> 00:36:42,830 AUDIENCE: Well, this is like current data. 608 00:36:42,830 --> 00:36:44,900 PROFESSOR: So what's going on? 609 00:36:44,900 --> 00:36:45,880 Nobody knows for sure. 610 00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:46,905 One thing I should mention though 611 00:36:46,905 --> 00:36:48,863 is that these are what are called 1 sigma error 612 00:36:48,863 --> 00:36:51,520 bars, which means that you don't expect 613 00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:53,100 them to necessarily agree. 614 00:36:53,100 --> 00:36:56,240 You expect the right answer to be within one sigma error bar 615 00:36:56,240 --> 00:36:58,330 2/3 of the, time but 1/3 of the time 616 00:36:58,330 --> 00:36:59,900 it should be outside the error bar. 617 00:36:59,900 --> 00:37:01,731 The questions is, the error bar is on both. 618 00:37:01,731 --> 00:37:03,230 But the comparison of this, and this 619 00:37:03,230 --> 00:37:05,170 is usually viewed as something like 2 620 00:37:05,170 --> 00:37:08,984 and 1/2 sigma effect, which naively, I think, 621 00:37:08,984 --> 00:37:10,400 means the probability of something 622 00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:12,108 on the order of 1% or something like that 623 00:37:12,108 --> 00:37:14,650 of getting errors that large at random. 624 00:37:14,650 --> 00:37:18,590 And it's debated whether or not it's significant or not. 625 00:37:18,590 --> 00:37:22,840 It's the abstract of the Planck paper use 626 00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:26,680 words something like there's a tension between their value 627 00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:27,915 and other recent values. 628 00:37:31,355 --> 00:37:32,980 When somebody does see things like that 629 00:37:32,980 --> 00:37:36,410 happen more frequently than the probabilities indicate, 630 00:37:36,410 --> 00:37:38,290 which I think it proves a theorem 631 00:37:38,290 --> 00:37:42,250 that experimenters always underestimate their error bars. 632 00:37:42,250 --> 00:37:46,390 But there's no absolute proof of that theorem. 633 00:37:46,390 --> 00:37:48,580 So these thing were early debatable. 634 00:37:48,580 --> 00:37:51,022 People don't know-- there are many things that turn up 635 00:37:51,022 --> 00:37:52,605 in experimental physics and especially 636 00:37:52,605 --> 00:37:57,150 in cosmology that turn up regularly where people have 637 00:37:57,150 --> 00:37:59,565 different opinions about whether or not it's pointing 638 00:37:59,565 --> 00:38:01,420 to something very important or something 639 00:38:01,420 --> 00:38:02,530 that's going to go away. 640 00:38:02,530 --> 00:38:05,060 So very often they go away, that's a fact. 641 00:38:05,060 --> 00:38:06,889 But you never know in any one case, 642 00:38:06,889 --> 00:38:08,430 whether it's something important that 643 00:38:08,430 --> 00:38:12,340 will become more definite as for the measurements are made 644 00:38:12,340 --> 00:38:14,980 or whether it's just a spurious effect that 645 00:38:14,980 --> 00:38:16,951 will disappear in a few years. 646 00:38:16,951 --> 00:38:17,450 Yes. 647 00:38:17,450 --> 00:38:20,887 AUDIENCE: So I imagine in the 1940s 648 00:38:20,887 --> 00:38:23,577 when people started saying yes, that Hubble, 649 00:38:23,577 --> 00:38:25,993 for whom the constant is named, was off by a factor of 10. 650 00:38:25,993 --> 00:38:27,076 That's very controversial. 651 00:38:27,076 --> 00:38:29,234 Was there any kind of sloping trend 652 00:38:29,234 --> 00:38:31,689 where people may have changed their data to make it seem, 653 00:38:31,689 --> 00:38:35,126 oh, we're not that far off the Hubble standards. 654 00:38:35,126 --> 00:38:37,090 Has this happened a couple of times before? 655 00:38:37,090 --> 00:38:40,820 PROFESSOR: Question is did people perhaps try to fudge 656 00:38:40,820 --> 00:38:43,800 their data during a period in the middle to make it look more 657 00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:45,020 like Hubble's. 658 00:38:45,020 --> 00:38:50,720 I think, I don't know, and there were, 659 00:38:50,720 --> 00:38:53,737 as I said, pretty much through the middle of the 20th century 660 00:38:53,737 --> 00:38:55,820 two groups, one of which was getting a high value, 661 00:38:55,820 --> 00:38:57,790 and one of which was getting a low value. 662 00:38:57,790 --> 00:39:00,820 The high value is where, in fact, disciples of Hubble, 663 00:39:00,820 --> 00:39:02,890 rather directly-- wait a minute. 664 00:39:02,890 --> 00:39:05,600 That's not right. 665 00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,344 The most direct disciple of Hubble was Allan Sandage, 666 00:39:08,344 --> 00:39:10,260 and he was, in fact, abdicating the low value. 667 00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:15,600 So the sociological trends are not that clear. 668 00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:19,050 What is clear is that they were way off. 669 00:39:19,050 --> 00:39:22,620 I was going to add concerning the way offness, 670 00:39:22,620 --> 00:39:28,060 that it really does have or did have a very significant effect 671 00:39:28,060 --> 00:39:33,470 on the history of cosmology because when one looks at a Big 672 00:39:33,470 --> 00:39:37,180 Bang model and tries to use that model to estimate when it all 673 00:39:37,180 --> 00:39:40,030 started, what you're doing is you're trying to extrapolate 674 00:39:40,030 --> 00:39:42,530 backwards, ask when was everything on top 675 00:39:42,530 --> 00:39:46,892 of each other given that things are moving at the speed now. 676 00:39:46,892 --> 00:39:48,725 There is more that goes into the calculation 677 00:39:48,725 --> 00:39:52,570 then just H. It depends on your model, the matter, and things 678 00:39:52,570 --> 00:39:53,680 like that. 679 00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:56,400 But nonetheless H is obviously a crucial ingredient there. 680 00:39:56,400 --> 00:39:58,837 The faster things are moving now outward 681 00:39:58,837 --> 00:40:00,920 when you extrapolate backwards, the faster they're 682 00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,140 moving inward and the younger the universe is. 683 00:40:04,140 --> 00:40:08,100 And to a very good degree of reliability, 684 00:40:08,100 --> 00:40:15,510 any age estimate-- and we'll make age calculations later-- 685 00:40:15,510 --> 00:40:17,900 but any age estimate is proportional to 1 686 00:40:17,900 --> 00:40:24,230 over the Hubble parameter, 1 over the Hubble expansion rate. 687 00:40:24,230 --> 00:40:27,460 So if you're off by now we would say a factor of 7 688 00:40:27,460 --> 00:40:34,090 between Hubble's value and the current value, 70 versus 500, 689 00:40:34,090 --> 00:40:35,560 if you're off by a factor of 7, you 690 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,450 get ages for the universe, which are factors of 7 691 00:40:38,450 --> 00:40:42,130 smaller than what you should be getting. 692 00:40:42,130 --> 00:40:44,890 And this was noticed early on. 693 00:40:44,890 --> 00:40:47,940 People were calculating ages of the universe and Big Bang 694 00:40:47,940 --> 00:40:50,430 models and getting numbers like 2 billion years 695 00:40:50,430 --> 00:40:54,800 instead of 14 billion years, a factor of 7. 696 00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:58,990 And even back in the '20s and '30s, 697 00:40:58,990 --> 00:41:00,810 there was significant geological evidence 698 00:41:00,810 --> 00:41:03,019 that the Earth was much older than 2 billion years, 699 00:41:03,019 --> 00:41:05,560 and people understood something about the evolution of stars, 700 00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:07,893 and it would seem pretty clear that the stars were older 701 00:41:07,893 --> 00:41:10,700 than 2 billion years, so you couldn't tolerate 702 00:41:10,700 --> 00:41:13,100 a universe that was only 2 billion years old. 703 00:41:13,100 --> 00:41:18,060 And it led to very significant problems 704 00:41:18,060 --> 00:41:20,990 with the development of the Big Bang theory, 705 00:41:20,990 --> 00:41:26,010 and in particular, it certainly gave extra credence 706 00:41:26,010 --> 00:41:28,160 to what was called the steady state theory, which 707 00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:30,451 you may have heard of, which held that the universe was 708 00:41:30,451 --> 00:41:32,780 infinitely old and as it expanded, 709 00:41:32,780 --> 00:41:35,190 more matter was created in the steady state theory 710 00:41:35,190 --> 00:41:37,670 to fill in the gaps so the density of matter 711 00:41:37,670 --> 00:41:39,630 would be constant. 712 00:41:39,630 --> 00:41:44,130 And Lemaitre himself in his 1927 paper, 713 00:41:44,130 --> 00:41:46,910 built a very complicated, from my standards, 714 00:41:46,910 --> 00:41:51,680 theory in order to get the age to be compatible. 715 00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:53,300 Instead of having a Big Bang model, 716 00:41:53,300 --> 00:41:55,890 his 1927 model was not a Big Bang model. 717 00:41:55,890 --> 00:42:00,640 His 1927 model started out in a static equilibrium 718 00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:02,970 where he had a positive cosmological constant which 719 00:42:02,970 --> 00:42:04,690 produces a repulsive gravity, like what 720 00:42:04,690 --> 00:42:08,500 we talked about in my opening lecture, 721 00:42:08,500 --> 00:42:11,230 balancing against the normal attractive gravity 722 00:42:11,230 --> 00:42:13,830 of ordinary matter, producing what was almost 723 00:42:13,830 --> 00:42:15,490 a static universe of exactly the type 724 00:42:15,490 --> 00:42:18,440 that Einstein had been advocating. 725 00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:23,610 But Lemaitre's universe started out with just a slightly less 726 00:42:23,610 --> 00:42:27,210 mass density than Einstein would have had, 727 00:42:27,210 --> 00:42:30,040 so it gradually started to get bigger and bigger. 728 00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:32,130 The force of ordinary gravity wasn't quite enough 729 00:42:32,130 --> 00:42:34,130 to hold it together, but when it did 730 00:42:34,130 --> 00:42:36,360 that, it starts to get bigger and bigger very slowly 731 00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:37,822 initially and then picks up speed 732 00:42:37,822 --> 00:42:39,280 and allows you to have universities 733 00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,140 that are much older than what you would get 734 00:42:41,140 --> 00:42:42,640 in a straightforward Big Bang model. 735 00:42:49,290 --> 00:42:50,370 Let's go on. 736 00:42:50,370 --> 00:42:54,270 What I want to talk about next is what this Hubble expansion 737 00:42:54,270 --> 00:42:56,810 is telling us about the universe, 738 00:42:56,810 --> 00:42:59,692 and I want to go through this a little bit 739 00:42:59,692 --> 00:43:01,775 carefully because it's a very important point even 740 00:43:01,775 --> 00:43:04,402 though it's possible you've already figured it out 741 00:43:04,402 --> 00:43:05,110 from the reading. 742 00:43:05,110 --> 00:43:08,360 I don't know for sure. 743 00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:10,837 Naively, Hubble's law makes it sound 744 00:43:10,837 --> 00:43:13,170 like we're saying that we are the center of the universe 745 00:43:13,170 --> 00:43:14,730 after all. 746 00:43:14,730 --> 00:43:16,830 Copernicus was really wrong. 747 00:43:16,830 --> 00:43:21,300 Everything is moving away from us, so we must be the center. 748 00:43:21,300 --> 00:43:23,311 But that's actually not the case. 749 00:43:23,311 --> 00:43:25,560 It turns out that when you look at things a little bit 750 00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:28,420 carefully, and that's what we'll do in this diagram, 751 00:43:28,420 --> 00:43:31,280 if Hubble's law looks like it holds to one observer, it 752 00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,307 in fact, also looks like it holds to any other observer 753 00:43:34,307 --> 00:43:36,140 as long as you recognize that there's no way 754 00:43:36,140 --> 00:43:38,540 to measure absolute velocity. 755 00:43:38,540 --> 00:43:40,480 So we think that we're at rest, but that's 756 00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:43,340 really just our definition of the rest frame. 757 00:43:43,340 --> 00:43:45,690 If we lived on some other galaxy, 758 00:43:45,690 --> 00:43:49,200 we would equally well attribute the state 759 00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:51,840 of being at rest to that other galaxy. 760 00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:55,800 And that's what's being shown in this picture, which I Xeroxed 761 00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:58,670 from Steve Weinberg's book so this might seem familiar to you 762 00:43:58,670 --> 00:44:01,370 if you've read that chapter yet. 763 00:44:01,370 --> 00:44:03,960 It shows just expansion in one direction, 764 00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:07,450 but that's enough to illustrate the point. 765 00:44:07,450 --> 00:44:10,380 And the top diagram we imagine that we 766 00:44:10,380 --> 00:44:14,140 are living on the galaxy labeled A. 767 00:44:14,140 --> 00:44:15,670 The other galaxies are moving away 768 00:44:15,670 --> 00:44:18,525 from us with velocities proportional to the distance, 769 00:44:18,525 --> 00:44:23,350 and we've spaced these galaxies from the diagram evenly, 770 00:44:23,350 --> 00:44:25,429 so the other galaxies are moving away at v, 771 00:44:25,429 --> 00:44:27,220 and then the next one is moving away at 2v. 772 00:44:27,220 --> 00:44:30,494 And if we continue, it would be 3v, 4v, et cetera, 773 00:44:30,494 --> 00:44:31,660 all the way out to infinity. 774 00:44:34,650 --> 00:44:38,735 And what we want to do in going from A to B 775 00:44:38,735 --> 00:44:42,690 is to ask suppose we were living in exactly this universe 776 00:44:42,690 --> 00:44:45,770 as described on line A. But suppose we were living 777 00:44:45,770 --> 00:44:49,010 in galaxy B and considered galaxy B to be at rest. 778 00:44:49,010 --> 00:44:53,710 So we'd describe everything from the rest frame of galaxy B. 779 00:44:53,710 --> 00:44:55,440 Then galaxy B would have no velocity, 780 00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:59,120 because that would defined the rest frame. 781 00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:00,900 When you change frames, this was all 782 00:45:00,900 --> 00:45:06,160 done in the context of Galilean transformations. 783 00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:09,941 We'll build more relativistic models later. 784 00:45:09,941 --> 00:45:11,940 Then the context of the Galilean transformation, 785 00:45:11,940 --> 00:45:14,490 if you go from one frame to a frame moving 786 00:45:14,490 --> 00:45:16,780 at a constant velocity, the only thing you have 787 00:45:16,780 --> 00:45:20,020 to do to transform velocity is you add to each velocity 788 00:45:20,020 --> 00:45:22,110 a fixed velocity, that velocity difference 789 00:45:22,110 --> 00:45:24,060 between the two frames. 790 00:45:24,060 --> 00:45:28,150 So to go from the top to the bottom picture, what 791 00:45:28,150 --> 00:45:31,990 we do in all cases is just add a velocity, v, to the left 792 00:45:31,990 --> 00:45:34,810 to each velocity, and that takes the velocity of v 793 00:45:34,810 --> 00:45:36,820 here when we move it with v to the right. 794 00:45:36,820 --> 00:45:38,825 When we add a v to the left, we get 0. 795 00:45:38,825 --> 00:45:40,407 It does the right thing there, which 796 00:45:40,407 --> 00:45:42,270 is what defines the transformation we're 797 00:45:42,270 --> 00:45:43,050 trying to make. 798 00:45:43,050 --> 00:45:44,883 We're trying to make the transformation that 799 00:45:44,883 --> 00:45:47,540 brings B to rest. 800 00:45:47,540 --> 00:45:51,000 And that means that when we add v 801 00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:53,390 to the left to the velocity of z, 802 00:45:53,390 --> 00:45:56,540 where we already had a v to the left, we get 2v to the left. 803 00:45:56,540 --> 00:46:00,230 When we add v to the left to y, which had 2v to the left, 804 00:46:00,230 --> 00:46:02,480 we get 3v to the left. 805 00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:04,310 Going the other direction, when we add v 806 00:46:04,310 --> 00:46:08,240 to the left to c, which had a velocity 2v to the right, 807 00:46:08,240 --> 00:46:10,910 we're left with the velocity of 1v to the right, 808 00:46:10,910 --> 00:46:14,394 and that gives us what we have on the second row. 809 00:46:14,394 --> 00:46:15,810 And if we look from the second row 810 00:46:15,810 --> 00:46:19,144 from the point of view of v, the galaxy 811 00:46:19,144 --> 00:46:21,435 is one way or each moving away from us with a velocity, 812 00:46:21,435 --> 00:46:23,811 v. The velocity is two way and moving away 813 00:46:23,811 --> 00:46:25,810 from us with velocities 2v, et cetera. 814 00:46:25,810 --> 00:46:28,240 That's exactly the same. 815 00:46:28,240 --> 00:46:30,810 So even though the Hubble expansion pattern 816 00:46:30,810 --> 00:46:34,180 is phrased in a way that makes it look like you're talking 817 00:46:34,180 --> 00:46:37,360 about yourself as the center of the universe, in fact, 818 00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:41,180 it does describe a completely homogeneous picture. 819 00:46:41,180 --> 00:46:42,610 And it's a picture that, in fact, 820 00:46:42,610 --> 00:46:44,940 has a very simple description. 821 00:46:44,940 --> 00:46:47,670 It's a picture of just uniform expansion, 822 00:46:47,670 --> 00:46:51,760 and I think I have my favorite, at least the best picture I've 823 00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:56,320 every drawn of uniform expansion on the next slide here. 824 00:46:56,320 --> 00:47:00,020 The idea is that if you look at some region of the universe, 825 00:47:00,020 --> 00:47:02,170 the claim-- and the claim is just 826 00:47:02,170 --> 00:47:04,800 called homogeneous expansion-- is 827 00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:09,330 that each picture at successive times would look identical, 828 00:47:09,330 --> 00:47:13,390 but it would look like a photographic blowup. 829 00:47:13,390 --> 00:47:15,450 Each picture would just be a bigger image 830 00:47:15,450 --> 00:47:19,210 of the same picture with one important exception, 831 00:47:19,210 --> 00:47:21,200 and I did try to draw this correctly, 832 00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:23,439 the positions of the galaxies-- this little 833 00:47:23,439 --> 00:47:24,980 lob there is supposed to be a galaxy, 834 00:47:24,980 --> 00:47:29,160 by the way, in case you can't tell my great artistry. 835 00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:33,365 The positions of each galaxy is just expand uniformly, 836 00:47:33,365 --> 00:47:36,680 the pattern of positions, but each individual galaxy 837 00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:37,560 does not expand. 838 00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:40,300 The individual of the galaxies maintain their size 839 00:47:40,300 --> 00:47:43,687 as the universe undergoes this public expansion. 840 00:47:43,687 --> 00:47:45,770 Now if we're talking about the very early universe 841 00:47:45,770 --> 00:47:48,311 before there were any galaxies, you would just have basically 842 00:47:48,311 --> 00:47:51,440 a uniform distribution of matter of gas, 843 00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:53,565 and that would just uniformly expand every molecule 844 00:47:53,565 --> 00:47:58,530 and move away from every other molecule on average. 845 00:47:58,530 --> 00:48:02,560 So this is the picture of Hubble expansion. 846 00:48:11,720 --> 00:48:15,550 And now what I'd like to do is provide a description 847 00:48:15,550 --> 00:48:17,550 of how we're going to treat this mathematically. 848 00:48:38,670 --> 00:48:40,515 If we have this uniformly-- I'm sorry. 849 00:48:40,515 --> 00:48:41,015 Yes. 850 00:48:41,015 --> 00:48:42,638 AUDIENCE: I'm still getting confused 851 00:48:42,638 --> 00:48:46,041 whether like the expansion is the galaxies expanding 852 00:48:46,041 --> 00:48:50,934 into the universe or if the universe itself is expanding. 853 00:48:50,934 --> 00:48:51,600 PROFESSOR: Yeah. 854 00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:53,800 The question in case you didn't hear it was there's 855 00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:56,220 some confusion here about whether we should think 856 00:48:56,220 --> 00:48:58,600 of the galaxies as moving through space 857 00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:01,930 or whether we should think of space itself as expanding. 858 00:49:01,930 --> 00:49:04,280 And the answer really is that both points of view 859 00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:06,260 should be right. 860 00:49:06,260 --> 00:49:10,490 If space were like water, then you 861 00:49:10,490 --> 00:49:12,030 could imagine putting little dust 862 00:49:12,030 --> 00:49:15,110 in the water, little grains of salt or something 863 00:49:15,110 --> 00:49:20,020 you can see and see if they are carried by the water or apart. 864 00:49:20,020 --> 00:49:22,640 But there's no way to mark space. 865 00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:25,530 It's intrinsic to the principle of relativity 866 00:49:25,530 --> 00:49:28,020 that you can't tell if you're moving relative to space 867 00:49:28,020 --> 00:49:29,090 or not. 868 00:49:29,090 --> 00:49:31,435 There's no meaning to moving relative to space. 869 00:49:31,435 --> 00:49:33,810 And there's no meaning for you to move relative to space. 870 00:49:33,810 --> 00:49:36,440 There is also no meaning for space to move relative to you. 871 00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:38,770 they do the same thing. 872 00:49:38,770 --> 00:49:42,390 So you can't really tell, and both points of view 873 00:49:42,390 --> 00:49:44,250 should be correct. 874 00:49:44,250 --> 00:49:46,860 There are cases where you can tell, however, 875 00:49:46,860 --> 00:49:49,480 which is not locally but if, for example, you 876 00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,820 had a closed universe, which we'll talk about later how that 877 00:49:52,820 --> 00:49:54,616 works exactly, then you could ask 878 00:49:54,616 --> 00:49:57,100 does the volume of a closed universe get bigger with time 879 00:49:57,100 --> 00:49:58,700 as this Hubble expansion takes place. 880 00:49:58,700 --> 00:50:00,020 And the answer there is yes. 881 00:50:00,020 --> 00:50:01,513 AUDIENCE: That would mean actually, 882 00:50:01,513 --> 00:50:02,596 the universe is expanding. 883 00:50:02,596 --> 00:50:04,640 PROFESSOR: The actual universe is expanding. 884 00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:07,880 So we will normally think of it, globally at least, 885 00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:10,310 as the actual universe expanding. 886 00:50:10,310 --> 00:50:12,470 That is how we will think about it. 887 00:50:12,470 --> 00:50:16,210 But locally, there's not really any distinction between that 888 00:50:16,210 --> 00:50:20,830 and saying that these galaxies are just moving through space. 889 00:50:20,830 --> 00:50:21,330 Yes. 890 00:50:21,330 --> 00:50:24,753 AUDIENCE: So given that the galaxies are actually 891 00:50:24,753 --> 00:50:27,687 two points, why can it be claimed 892 00:50:27,687 --> 00:50:30,621 that the galaxies themselves are not expanding? 893 00:50:30,621 --> 00:50:31,470 PROFESSOR: OK. 894 00:50:31,470 --> 00:50:33,886 How do we understand the fact that the galaxies themselves 895 00:50:33,886 --> 00:50:35,990 are not expanding is what you're asking. 896 00:50:35,990 --> 00:50:41,230 And I'll give you a nutshell answer, 897 00:50:41,230 --> 00:50:44,930 and we might be talking about it more later. 898 00:50:44,930 --> 00:50:49,180 One should imagine that this starts out shortly 899 00:50:49,180 --> 00:50:52,840 after the Big Bang as an almost perfectly uniform gas, which 900 00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,760 is just uniformly expanding, everything moving away 901 00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:57,860 from everything else. 902 00:50:57,860 --> 00:51:00,250 But the gas is not completely uniform. 903 00:51:00,250 --> 00:51:05,207 It has tiny ripples in the matter density, which 904 00:51:05,207 --> 00:51:07,540 are the same ripples that we see in the cosmic microwave 905 00:51:07,540 --> 00:51:10,486 background radiation today or at least the cosmic ripples 906 00:51:10,486 --> 00:51:12,860 that we see in the cosmic background radiation are caused 907 00:51:12,860 --> 00:51:17,300 by the ripples in the mass density of the early universe. 908 00:51:17,300 --> 00:51:20,730 These ripples eventually form galaxies 909 00:51:20,730 --> 00:51:23,530 because they're gravitationally unstable. 910 00:51:23,530 --> 00:51:26,290 Wherever there's a slight excess of mass, 911 00:51:26,290 --> 00:51:29,050 that will create a slightly stronger gravitational field 912 00:51:29,050 --> 00:51:31,360 in that region pulling in more mass creating 913 00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:34,160 a still stronger gravitational field pulling in more mass, 914 00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:37,300 and eventually instead of having this nice uniform distribution 915 00:51:37,300 --> 00:51:39,910 with just ripples at 1 part in 100,000, 916 00:51:39,910 --> 00:51:45,680 you eventually have huge clumps of matter which are galaxies. 917 00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,280 And as you go from this transition of things 918 00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:53,500 being almost completely uniform and uniformly expanding 919 00:51:53,500 --> 00:51:55,390 to these lumps that form galaxies, 920 00:51:55,390 --> 00:51:58,010 the ones that are being formed by extra gravity pulling 921 00:51:58,010 --> 00:51:59,130 in the matter. 922 00:51:59,130 --> 00:52:01,800 And what happens is that extra gravity 923 00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:06,120 that forms the galaxy overcomes the Hubble expansion. 924 00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:07,920 The matter that makes up the galaxy 925 00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:11,410 had been expanding in the early days, 926 00:52:11,410 --> 00:52:13,430 but the gravitational pull of the matter that 927 00:52:13,430 --> 00:52:16,370 forms the galaxy pulls it back in. 928 00:52:16,370 --> 00:52:19,067 So the galaxy actually reaches a maximum size and then, in fact, 929 00:52:19,067 --> 00:52:20,650 starts to get smaller and then reaches 930 00:52:20,650 --> 00:52:24,400 equilibrium, an equilibrium where 931 00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:28,450 the rotational motion keeps a finite size. 932 00:52:28,450 --> 00:52:28,950 Yes. 933 00:52:28,950 --> 00:52:31,280 AUDIENCE: So the diagrams that you're 934 00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:34,319 applying up here that all the distance relations have been 935 00:52:34,319 --> 00:52:35,735 galaxies that are being preserved. 936 00:52:35,735 --> 00:52:37,924 Is that a potential or is it exactly [INAUDIBLE]? 937 00:52:37,924 --> 00:52:38,840 PROFESSOR: Well, yeah. 938 00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:40,673 It's supposed to be just a photographic blow 939 00:52:40,673 --> 00:52:42,760 up as far as where the relocations of dots are. 940 00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:42,850 Yeah. 941 00:52:42,850 --> 00:52:44,340 I mean is that what you're asking? 942 00:52:44,340 --> 00:52:46,064 AUDIENCE: Well, like will there be 943 00:52:46,064 --> 00:52:48,564 equal distance between galaxies as a sub [INAUDIBLE] member? 944 00:52:48,564 --> 00:52:49,660 PROFESSOR: Yeah. 945 00:52:49,660 --> 00:52:51,860 I think the picture shows that, doesn't it? 946 00:52:51,860 --> 00:52:53,700 AUDIENCE: Well, the notches basically 947 00:52:53,700 --> 00:52:54,160 are spaces between [INAUDIBLE]. 948 00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:55,530 PROFESSOR: Oh, that's right. 949 00:52:55,530 --> 00:52:56,895 That's right. 950 00:52:56,895 --> 00:52:59,041 I haven't talked about the notches yet. 951 00:52:59,041 --> 00:53:01,540 The diagrams are supposed to show actual physical distances. 952 00:53:01,540 --> 00:53:04,160 So the physical distance between this galaxy and this galaxy 953 00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:07,377 is a little bit there and much more there. 954 00:53:07,377 --> 00:53:09,710 So that's how you're supposed to interpret that picture. 955 00:53:09,710 --> 00:53:12,860 But what I was about to get to and you've got there 956 00:53:12,860 --> 00:53:15,580 so I'll continue, is that the best 957 00:53:15,580 --> 00:53:19,170 way to describe this uniformly-expanding system 958 00:53:19,170 --> 00:53:22,630 is to introduce a coordinate system that expands with it, 959 00:53:22,630 --> 00:53:24,470 and that's what these notches are. 960 00:53:24,470 --> 00:53:29,320 The notches are artificial things that we create, 961 00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:33,230 and we could think of them as just being labels on a map. 962 00:53:33,230 --> 00:53:36,375 Once we know that the expansion is uniform this way, 963 00:53:36,375 --> 00:53:38,000 we could take any one of these pictures 964 00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:42,950 and think of it as a map of our region of the universe. 965 00:53:42,950 --> 00:53:50,450 And we can then get to any other picture on the slide 966 00:53:50,450 --> 00:53:55,300 simply by converting units on a map to physical distances 967 00:53:55,300 --> 00:53:58,700 with a different scale factor. 968 00:53:58,700 --> 00:54:02,590 So if Massachusetts was forever getting bigger and bigger 969 00:54:02,590 --> 00:54:04,420 and we had a map of Massachusetts, 970 00:54:04,420 --> 00:54:06,730 we would not have to throw away that map every day 971 00:54:06,730 --> 00:54:08,690 and buy a new map. 972 00:54:08,690 --> 00:54:11,680 We could handle the expansion of Massachusetts keeping 973 00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:14,810 the same map just crossing out the place in the corner 974 00:54:14,810 --> 00:54:17,500 of the map where it says 1 inch equals 7 miles, 975 00:54:17,500 --> 00:54:19,520 and the next day 1 inch equals 8 miles, 976 00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:24,210 and 1 inch equals 9 miles, and 1 inch equals 10 and 1/2 miles. 977 00:54:24,210 --> 00:54:27,540 So by changing the scale factor on the map and the use 978 00:54:27,540 --> 00:54:31,240 of the word scale factor here is exactly the same meaning as it 979 00:54:31,240 --> 00:54:34,530 would have for a map, you can allow 980 00:54:34,530 --> 00:54:37,830 yourself to describe an expanding system 981 00:54:37,830 --> 00:54:40,300 without ever throwing away the original map. 982 00:54:40,300 --> 00:54:43,110 And that's the kind of coordinate system 983 00:54:43,110 --> 00:54:44,910 that we will be using, and these are 984 00:54:44,910 --> 00:54:46,125 called comoving coordinates. 985 00:54:58,050 --> 00:55:05,824 And the idea here is that galaxies 986 00:55:05,824 --> 00:55:09,920 are at-- I'm sticking in the word 987 00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:13,381 approximately here because none of this is exact, 988 00:55:13,381 --> 00:55:18,036 but we'll be thinking in a toy model as it was exact. 989 00:55:18,036 --> 00:55:28,215 So galaxies are at approximately constant values 990 00:55:28,215 --> 00:55:42,986 of the coordinates, and the scale factor, which 991 00:55:42,986 --> 00:56:06,550 means the physical distance per coordinate distance increases 992 00:56:06,550 --> 00:56:07,060 with time. 993 00:56:17,774 --> 00:56:21,100 So that describes this all-important comoving 994 00:56:21,100 --> 00:56:23,840 coordinate system that we'll be using 995 00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:26,740 for the rest of the course to describe the expanding 996 00:56:26,740 --> 00:56:28,050 universe. 997 00:56:28,050 --> 00:56:28,550 Yes. 998 00:56:28,550 --> 00:56:31,912 AUDIENCE: Do we have to do anything funny to the Lorentz 999 00:56:31,912 --> 00:56:35,848 transform to come to the fact that coordinates are now 1000 00:56:35,848 --> 00:56:38,800 not moving at the same velocity relative to each other? 1001 00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:41,090 PROFESSOR: It depends on what questions you ask. 1002 00:56:41,090 --> 00:56:43,540 There are questions where you do have to think carefully, 1003 00:56:43,540 --> 00:56:46,660 and we'll have one of those shortly as probably 1004 00:56:46,660 --> 00:56:47,744 an extra credit problem. 1005 00:56:47,744 --> 00:56:50,160 But for most things, it actually makes things very simple, 1006 00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:52,400 and you can ignore most of the complications 1007 00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:53,830 of special relativity. 1008 00:56:53,830 --> 00:56:57,310 And we'll try to think as we go along where we need to worry 1009 00:56:57,310 --> 00:57:00,100 about special relativity and where we don't, and usually we 1010 00:57:00,100 --> 00:57:00,600 don't. 1011 00:57:25,990 --> 00:57:40,920 So the key relationship is that the physical distance 1012 00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:45,120 between any two points on the map, by physical distance, 1013 00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:47,570 I mean what it is in the real world, 1014 00:57:47,570 --> 00:57:49,450 miles if we're talking about Massachusetts, 1015 00:57:49,450 --> 00:57:53,630 and this is miles between the real physical points, 1016 00:57:53,630 --> 00:57:56,830 is equal to a time-dependent scale 1017 00:57:56,830 --> 00:58:01,500 factor times the coordinate distance. 1018 00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:29,210 Now, here I'm going to use conventions 1019 00:58:29,210 --> 00:58:32,220 for defining things that are slightly different from what 1020 00:58:32,220 --> 00:58:34,210 are often used. 1021 00:58:34,210 --> 00:58:38,330 A common procedure where I think it's done in most of the books, 1022 00:58:38,330 --> 00:58:40,940 is to think of both the coordinate distance 1023 00:58:40,940 --> 00:58:43,620 and the physical distances being measured in normal distance 1024 00:58:43,620 --> 00:58:48,130 units, meters, and then the scale factor is dimensionless, 1025 00:58:48,130 --> 00:58:49,680 and it just tells you how much you 1026 00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:53,940 have to blow up the map to be able to make 1027 00:58:53,940 --> 00:58:56,750 it the physical map. 1028 00:58:56,750 --> 00:58:59,230 I find it significantly easier to know 1029 00:58:59,230 --> 00:59:01,280 what you're doing as things go along 1030 00:59:01,280 --> 00:59:05,430 to label the map in units that are not centimeters, but are 1031 00:59:05,430 --> 00:59:08,780 what shown on the picture as notches. 1032 00:59:08,780 --> 00:59:10,640 One advantage of that logically is it 1033 00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:12,852 means that if you have different copies of the map 1034 00:59:12,852 --> 00:59:14,310 that you've made on a Xerox machine 1035 00:59:14,310 --> 00:59:17,290 with different scalings, you have a big copy of the map 1036 00:59:17,290 --> 00:59:19,040 and a little copy of the map, that they're 1037 00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:20,580 marked off with notches. 1038 00:59:20,580 --> 00:59:23,720 The notches grow with the physical size of the page, 1039 00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:25,650 the scale factor is the same no matter 1040 00:59:25,650 --> 00:59:28,570 which copy of the map you're using. 1041 00:59:28,570 --> 00:59:30,600 But most importantly, it allows you to, I think, 1042 00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:32,820 do dimensional tests. 1043 00:59:32,820 --> 00:59:34,620 The size of the map is clearly something 1044 00:59:34,620 --> 00:59:38,250 that's unrelated to the actual length of a meter, 1045 00:59:38,250 --> 00:59:41,580 it's just how many units you put on your map. 1046 00:59:41,580 --> 00:59:45,050 So there's a clear and logical separation 1047 00:59:45,050 --> 00:59:48,180 between what is meant by a certain number of units 1048 00:59:48,180 --> 00:59:53,540 and distance here and a real meter by any standards. 1049 00:59:53,540 --> 00:59:56,860 So you can keep that straight by just imagining 1050 00:59:56,860 --> 00:59:59,870 that your map is calibrated in some new arbitrary unit which 1051 00:59:59,870 --> 01:00:03,250 is just special to the map, and I'm going to call that a notch. 1052 01:00:13,430 --> 01:00:14,960 So notches are just arbitrary units 1053 01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:18,145 that you use to mark off your map. 1054 01:00:18,145 --> 01:00:20,020 And then the physical distance is, of course, 1055 01:00:20,020 --> 01:00:26,640 measured in meters or any other standard unit of distance. 1056 01:00:29,620 --> 01:00:33,380 And then the scale factor is measured 1057 01:00:33,380 --> 01:00:39,400 in units of meters per notch instead of being dimensionless. 1058 01:00:44,190 --> 01:00:49,682 And the basic advantage of this is that when you're all done, 1059 01:00:49,682 --> 01:00:51,390 nothing had better have any notches in it 1060 01:00:51,390 --> 01:00:53,840 as you're calculating something physical, that is physical 1061 01:00:53,840 --> 01:00:56,630 why you should not depend on the size of your map. 1062 01:00:56,630 --> 01:00:58,570 So you have a nice dimensional check 1063 01:00:58,570 --> 01:01:00,220 to make sure that the notches drop out 1064 01:01:00,220 --> 01:01:02,810 of any physical calculation that you try to do. 1065 01:01:07,790 --> 01:01:09,920 What I want to do next is to show you 1066 01:01:09,920 --> 01:01:14,910 that this relationship leads me to Hubble's law 1067 01:01:14,910 --> 01:01:19,960 and furthermore will allow us to figure out what this Hubble 1068 01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:23,396 expansion rate is in terms of what the scale factor is doing. 1069 01:01:36,230 --> 01:01:39,610 So it's an easy enough calculation 1070 01:01:39,610 --> 01:01:41,720 if we're looking at some object out there 1071 01:01:41,720 --> 01:01:46,030 and it's physical distance l sub p is given by that formula, 1072 01:01:46,030 --> 01:01:48,200 and we want to know what its velocity is. 1073 01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:49,900 It's velocity is by definition, just 1074 01:01:49,900 --> 01:01:52,560 a time derivative of that quantity. 1075 01:01:52,560 --> 01:01:58,780 So the velocity of some object, some distance out in space, 1076 01:01:58,780 --> 01:02:08,263 is just equal to d dt of l sub p of t, 1077 01:02:08,263 --> 01:02:17,226 and that will be da dt times l sub c, 1078 01:02:17,226 --> 01:02:19,290 because l sub c is constant. 1079 01:02:19,290 --> 01:02:21,590 On average, all our galaxies are at rest 1080 01:02:21,590 --> 01:02:24,290 in this coordinate system, in this expanding coordinate 1081 01:02:24,290 --> 01:02:26,640 system. 1082 01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:29,550 Now this could be written in a way that ends up 1083 01:02:29,550 --> 01:02:34,276 being more useful by dividing and multiplying by a. 1084 01:02:34,276 --> 01:02:37,060 So I could write it as 1 over a times 1085 01:02:37,060 --> 01:02:41,800 da dt times a of t times lc. 1086 01:02:44,660 --> 01:02:48,840 And the advantage of multiplying and dividing by a this way 1087 01:02:48,840 --> 01:02:52,510 is that this quantity is again just l 1088 01:02:52,510 --> 01:02:57,450 sub p, the physical distance. 1089 01:02:57,450 --> 01:03:01,710 So now we say that the velocity of any distant object 1090 01:03:01,710 --> 01:03:06,070 is equal to 1 over a da dt times the distance to that object. 1091 01:03:06,070 --> 01:03:09,040 And that is Hubble's law, and it tells us 1092 01:03:09,040 --> 01:03:12,320 that the Hubble expansion rate, which is itself 1093 01:03:12,320 --> 01:03:14,670 going to be a function of time, is 1094 01:03:14,670 --> 01:03:19,010 equal to 1 over a times da dt. 1095 01:03:26,810 --> 01:03:29,060 And this allows us to illustrate the unit check 1096 01:03:29,060 --> 01:03:32,750 that I talked about for the first time. 1097 01:03:32,750 --> 01:03:37,005 Notice that a is measured in meters per notch, 1098 01:03:37,005 --> 01:03:39,380 so the meters per notch here cancels the meters per notch 1099 01:03:39,380 --> 01:03:41,005 here, and you just get inverse time, 1100 01:03:41,005 --> 01:03:42,380 and the really important thing is 1101 01:03:42,380 --> 01:03:44,560 that the notches have gone away. 1102 01:03:44,560 --> 01:03:46,805 And again, notches have to go away 1103 01:03:46,805 --> 01:03:48,684 in any calculation of any physical, 1104 01:03:48,684 --> 01:03:49,850 and that makes a nice check. 1105 01:04:03,140 --> 01:04:05,084 And once you know how a of t is behaving, 1106 01:04:05,084 --> 01:04:07,650 you know exactly how the Hubble expansion rate behaves. 1107 01:04:07,650 --> 01:04:12,040 It's determined by a of t. 1108 01:04:12,040 --> 01:04:15,580 You might mention one notational item. 1109 01:04:15,580 --> 01:04:19,640 Nowadays almost everybody calls this scale factor little a. 1110 01:04:19,640 --> 01:04:22,380 In the early days, it was very first 1111 01:04:22,380 --> 01:04:24,885 introduced by Alexander Friedmann who first invented 1112 01:04:24,885 --> 01:04:26,785 the equation describing expanding universe 1113 01:04:26,785 --> 01:04:28,430 in the early 1920s. 1114 01:04:28,430 --> 01:04:31,440 He used the letter R, capital R. Lemaitre also 1115 01:04:31,440 --> 01:04:34,570 used the letter capital R, and I guess Einstein probably 1116 01:04:34,570 --> 01:04:37,940 used the capital R. I'm not sure. 1117 01:04:37,940 --> 01:04:40,050 And going into more modern times, 1118 01:04:40,050 --> 01:04:43,060 Steve Weinberg wrote a book on gravitation and cosmology 1119 01:04:43,060 --> 01:04:44,780 which still used the letter capital R, 1120 01:04:44,780 --> 01:04:48,040 but that was sort of the last major work that 1121 01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:50,760 used the capital R for the scale factor. 1122 01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:52,890 The disadvantage of it is at the same time 1123 01:04:52,890 --> 01:04:55,930 this capital R means something else in general relativity. 1124 01:04:55,930 --> 01:04:57,530 It's the standard symbol for what's 1125 01:04:57,530 --> 01:05:00,270 called the scalar curvature in general relativity. 1126 01:05:00,270 --> 01:05:04,320 So to avoid confusion between those two quantities, nowadays 1127 01:05:04,320 --> 01:05:06,720 almost everybody calls the scale factor little a. 1128 01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:11,450 If you look at old A286 notes, I used 1129 01:05:11,450 --> 01:05:14,350 to follow Steve Weinberg's textbook on gravitation 1130 01:05:14,350 --> 01:05:16,390 and cosmology and call it capital R, 1131 01:05:16,390 --> 01:05:18,760 but now it's hopefully all switched to little a. 1132 01:05:21,590 --> 01:05:22,090 OK. 1133 01:05:22,090 --> 01:05:24,370 Next item. 1134 01:05:24,370 --> 01:05:26,070 If we're going to understand what 1135 01:05:26,070 --> 01:05:28,240 it would look like to live in a universe like this, 1136 01:05:28,240 --> 01:05:29,906 we're going to need to know how to trace 1137 01:05:29,906 --> 01:05:33,010 light rays through our expanding universe. 1138 01:05:33,010 --> 01:05:34,720 And that turned out to be easy. 1139 01:06:06,290 --> 01:06:14,530 If I let x be equal to a coordinate, that 1140 01:06:14,530 --> 01:06:24,600 means it's measured in notches, and if I imagine 1141 01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:28,100 I have a light ray moving in the x direction, 1142 01:06:28,100 --> 01:06:31,880 I can describe how that light ray is going to move. 1143 01:06:31,880 --> 01:06:34,025 If I can write down a formula for the dx dt. 1144 01:06:34,025 --> 01:06:35,775 Tells me how fast in the coordinate system 1145 01:06:35,775 --> 01:06:36,705 the light ray travels. 1146 01:06:47,541 --> 01:06:49,540 Well the basic principle that we're going to use 1147 01:06:49,540 --> 01:06:51,530 here is that light, in fact, always 1148 01:06:51,530 --> 01:06:55,670 travels at the speed of light at some fixed value c, 1149 01:06:55,670 --> 01:06:58,760 but c is the physical velocity of light, the velocity measured 1150 01:06:58,760 --> 01:07:00,890 in meters per second. 1151 01:07:00,890 --> 01:07:05,080 But dx dt is the velocity measured in notches per second 1152 01:07:05,080 --> 01:07:07,180 because our coordinate system is marked off 1153 01:07:07,180 --> 01:07:08,660 not in meters, but in notches. 1154 01:07:08,660 --> 01:07:10,070 And that really is very important 1155 01:07:10,070 --> 01:07:12,486 because meters are going to be constantly changing lengths 1156 01:07:12,486 --> 01:07:14,474 relative to our notches, and we want 1157 01:07:14,474 --> 01:07:15,890 to keep track of things in notches 1158 01:07:15,890 --> 01:07:19,690 so we have a nice picture within our coordinate description 1159 01:07:19,690 --> 01:07:23,310 of the universe that we can think about. 1160 01:07:23,310 --> 01:07:25,370 So we're going to want to know what dx dt is, 1161 01:07:25,370 --> 01:07:27,430 but it's just a unit conversion problem. 1162 01:07:27,430 --> 01:07:30,620 dx dt is the speed of light in notches per second. 1163 01:07:30,620 --> 01:07:34,740 We know the speed of light in meters per second, c. 1164 01:07:34,740 --> 01:07:38,110 So to convert is just a matter of multiplying by the scale 1165 01:07:38,110 --> 01:07:41,145 factor to convert the units of meters to notches. 1166 01:07:41,145 --> 01:07:45,010 And here again it helps to have this meters versus notches 1167 01:07:45,010 --> 01:07:47,430 because it guarantees that you can't get it wrong 1168 01:07:47,430 --> 01:07:50,260 if you just check your units. 1169 01:07:50,260 --> 01:07:52,090 So this is not really a question mark. 1170 01:07:52,090 --> 01:07:56,880 It is just c divided by a of t, the scale factor. 1171 01:08:00,030 --> 01:08:04,750 And we can make sure we got it right by checking our units. 1172 01:08:04,750 --> 01:08:08,230 I'm going to use brackets to indicate units of. 1173 01:08:12,343 --> 01:08:14,217 So we're going to work out what the units are 1174 01:08:14,217 --> 01:08:16,976 of c over a of t, trivial problem, of course, 1175 01:08:16,976 --> 01:08:19,010 but we'll make sure we got the right answer. 1176 01:08:19,010 --> 01:08:24,800 The units of c are, of course, meters per second. 1177 01:08:24,800 --> 01:08:27,325 a of t we said is meters per notch. 1178 01:08:33,689 --> 01:08:38,310 So the meters cancel, and we get notches per second. 1179 01:08:40,608 --> 01:08:42,649 Now, I told you that you should never get notches 1180 01:08:42,649 --> 01:08:45,190 in the physical answer because this is not a physical answer. 1181 01:08:45,190 --> 01:08:46,970 This is a coordinate velocity of light, 1182 01:08:46,970 --> 01:08:48,689 so it does depend on our coordinates 1183 01:08:48,689 --> 01:08:50,130 depending on what coordinates we've chosen. 1184 01:08:50,130 --> 01:08:52,090 So it should certainly be notches per second 1185 01:08:52,090 --> 01:08:54,790 because x is measured in notches and t is measured in seconds. 1186 01:08:54,790 --> 01:08:56,582 So we put in the a of t in the right place. 1187 01:08:56,582 --> 01:08:57,956 It does belong in the denominator 1188 01:08:57,956 --> 01:08:59,040 and not the numerator. 1189 01:08:59,040 --> 01:08:59,540 Yes. 1190 01:08:59,540 --> 01:09:03,040 AUDIENCE: Why aren't we worrying about the fact 1191 01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:07,540 that as the universe expands, there's 1192 01:09:07,540 --> 01:09:11,040 also a velocity component with a light rate from its position 1193 01:09:11,040 --> 01:09:14,040 moving according the Hubble expansion? 1194 01:09:14,040 --> 01:09:15,229 PROFESSOR: Right. 1195 01:09:15,229 --> 01:09:17,140 The reason we don't worry about that 1196 01:09:17,140 --> 01:09:20,850 is that special relativity tells us 1197 01:09:20,850 --> 01:09:24,229 that all inertial observers are equivalent 1198 01:09:24,229 --> 01:09:27,700 and that the speed of light does not depend on the cannon 1199 01:09:27,700 --> 01:09:30,240 that the light beam was shot out of. 1200 01:09:30,240 --> 01:09:36,600 So if I'm at rest in this expanding coordinate system, 1201 01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:38,224 I'm not really an inertial observer 1202 01:09:38,224 --> 01:09:40,140 because there is gravity in this whole system, 1203 01:09:40,140 --> 01:09:43,030 but we're going to ignore that. 1204 01:09:43,030 --> 01:09:44,529 If we're really being rigorous here, 1205 01:09:44,529 --> 01:09:46,700 we have to do the full general relatively thing. 1206 01:09:46,700 --> 01:09:49,910 But I think the intuitive explanation is pretty obviously 1207 01:09:49,910 --> 01:09:50,410 valid. 1208 01:09:50,410 --> 01:09:52,620 It is, in fact, rigorously valid. 1209 01:09:52,620 --> 01:09:56,440 If I'm standing still in this expanding coordinate system, 1210 01:09:56,440 --> 01:09:58,820 I am an inertial observer. 1211 01:09:58,820 --> 01:10:00,883 And if a light beam comes by me, I 1212 01:10:00,883 --> 01:10:03,216 should measure it's B and C, no matter where it started, 1213 01:10:03,216 --> 01:10:05,940 no matter what's happened in the past. 1214 01:10:05,940 --> 01:10:08,170 So the conversion between my units of distance 1215 01:10:08,170 --> 01:10:12,070 and physical units of distance, my coordinate distances 1216 01:10:12,070 --> 01:10:16,750 and physical distances, is just a of t. 1217 01:10:16,750 --> 01:10:19,410 So that's the only factor that appears 1218 01:10:19,410 --> 01:10:21,040 and this is completely rigorous. 1219 01:10:21,040 --> 01:10:23,570 One can drive this in a more general context 1220 01:10:23,570 --> 01:10:25,530 in general relativity. 1221 01:10:25,530 --> 01:10:28,519 Here we're starting out with a premise 1222 01:10:28,519 --> 01:10:30,060 that the light pulse travels at speed 1223 01:10:30,060 --> 01:10:33,720 say if one had the full theory of general relativity 1224 01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:35,200 coupled to Maxwell's equations we 1225 01:10:35,200 --> 01:10:37,220 could really derive the fact of exactly how rays 1226 01:10:37,220 --> 01:10:39,895 travel and would give us this. 1227 01:10:44,950 --> 01:10:47,435 So we have a very simple equation 1228 01:10:47,435 --> 01:10:49,180 for how light rays travel. 1229 01:10:54,580 --> 01:10:57,080 Now I want to spend a little bit of time, and this, I guess, 1230 01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:01,830 will be the last topic I'll talk about today discussing 1231 01:11:01,830 --> 01:11:06,010 the synchronization of clocks in this world system, 1232 01:11:06,010 --> 01:11:10,900 in this cosmological coordinate system. 1233 01:11:10,900 --> 01:11:14,400 In special relativity, you know that it's 1234 01:11:14,400 --> 01:11:18,130 hard to talk about synchronizing clocks at large distances. 1235 01:11:21,100 --> 01:11:24,727 The synchronization of clocks depends 1236 01:11:24,727 --> 01:11:26,060 on the velocity of the observer. 1237 01:11:26,060 --> 01:11:27,820 That was one of the principles we learned 1238 01:11:27,820 --> 01:11:29,610 about when I wrote down those three 1239 01:11:29,610 --> 01:11:33,180 kinematic properties of special relativity. 1240 01:11:33,180 --> 01:11:36,620 So in general, in the context of special relativity, 1241 01:11:36,620 --> 01:11:40,156 there is no universal way of synchronize the clocks. 1242 01:11:40,156 --> 01:11:42,530 You could synchronize clocks with respect to one observer 1243 01:11:42,530 --> 01:11:45,310 but then they would not be synchronized with respect 1244 01:11:45,310 --> 01:11:49,690 to another observer moving with respect to that observer. 1245 01:11:49,690 --> 01:11:52,435 In this case, we have perhaps even a further complication 1246 01:11:52,435 --> 01:11:54,770 although in the end everything is simple, 1247 01:11:54,770 --> 01:11:57,840 but we have the further complication that the different 1248 01:11:57,840 --> 01:12:00,770 clocks that we're talking about, which are clocks carried 1249 01:12:00,770 --> 01:12:03,520 by these observers that are stationary in our comoving 1250 01:12:03,520 --> 01:12:07,120 coordinate system-- clocks carried essentially by galaxies 1251 01:12:07,120 --> 01:12:10,050 that are uniformly expanding-- all these clocks 1252 01:12:10,050 --> 01:12:12,860 are moving relative to each other. 1253 01:12:12,860 --> 01:12:15,460 because the Hubble expansion tells us that. 1254 01:12:15,460 --> 01:12:18,900 So the notion of trying to synchronize clocks 1255 01:12:18,900 --> 01:12:20,080 seems a bit formidable. 1256 01:12:22,940 --> 01:12:25,920 Turns out however that we can synchronize clocks 1257 01:12:25,920 --> 01:12:29,880 and one can develop a notion of what we call cosmic time, which 1258 01:12:29,880 --> 01:12:32,180 is the time that would be right on all these clocks 1259 01:12:32,180 --> 01:12:34,054 where all these clocks, I mean all the clocks 1260 01:12:34,054 --> 01:12:37,630 that are stationary with respect to the local matter, 1261 01:12:37,630 --> 01:12:40,270 in other words stationary with respect to this comoving 1262 01:12:40,270 --> 01:12:44,040 but expanding coordinate system. 1263 01:12:44,040 --> 01:12:47,280 So why can't we synchronize clocks? 1264 01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:51,560 What we're using as our core assumption, which 1265 01:12:51,560 --> 01:12:53,860 is what makes everything simple, is 1266 01:12:53,860 --> 01:12:57,830 that the model universe that we're building this homogeneous 1267 01:12:57,830 --> 01:13:01,940 and that means that what I would see if I was living 1268 01:13:01,940 --> 01:13:06,400 in this universe would not depend on where I was. 1269 01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:11,510 So if I were living on galaxy number one 1270 01:13:11,510 --> 01:13:15,820 and took out my stopwatch and timed 1271 01:13:15,820 --> 01:13:22,020 how long it took before say the Hubble parameter changed 1272 01:13:22,020 --> 01:13:26,390 from Hubble's value to the current value 1273 01:13:26,390 --> 01:13:30,650 say, as an example, any two numbers, 1274 01:13:30,650 --> 01:13:33,904 if I were living any place else and timed the same thing, 1275 01:13:33,904 --> 01:13:35,820 how long it took for the Hubble expansion rate 1276 01:13:35,820 --> 01:13:39,490 to change from A to B, I would have to get exactly 1277 01:13:39,490 --> 01:13:41,675 the same time interval, otherwise, it 1278 01:13:41,675 --> 01:13:43,190 would not be homogeneous. 1279 01:13:43,190 --> 01:13:47,370 Homogeneous means everybody sees exactly the same thing. 1280 01:13:47,370 --> 01:13:49,050 So we all have, no matter where we 1281 01:13:49,050 --> 01:13:53,010 live in this universe, a common history, 1282 01:13:53,010 --> 01:13:56,510 and that means that the only thing we don't know 1283 01:13:56,510 --> 01:14:01,140 is how to synchronize our clocks what time on my watch 1284 01:14:01,140 --> 01:14:03,827 might correspond to what time on your watch. 1285 01:14:03,827 --> 01:14:05,660 But if we imagine that we could send signals 1286 01:14:05,660 --> 01:14:07,470 or that we're some global observer watching 1287 01:14:07,470 --> 01:14:11,790 the whole thing, then we could just tell each other let's 1288 01:14:11,790 --> 01:14:14,935 all set our clocks to noon when the Hubble expansion 1289 01:14:14,935 --> 01:14:18,570 rate is 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec. 1290 01:14:18,570 --> 01:14:21,420 And then we would have a well-defined synchronization. 1291 01:14:21,420 --> 01:14:25,510 And once we synchronized our watch that way, 1292 01:14:25,510 --> 01:14:28,890 if we each looked at how the Hubble expansion rate changed 1293 01:14:28,890 --> 01:14:32,350 with time, we would get exactly the same function of time 1294 01:14:32,350 --> 01:14:34,525 by this principle of homogeneity. 1295 01:14:34,525 --> 01:14:36,320 None of us could see anything different 1296 01:14:36,320 --> 01:14:38,070 as long as we're measuring time intervals, 1297 01:14:38,070 --> 01:14:40,215 and we've fixed it so now we're measuring nothing 1298 01:14:40,215 --> 01:14:43,430 but time intervals because we've arranged to all 1299 01:14:43,430 --> 01:14:46,790 set our clocks to the same time at some particular value 1300 01:14:46,790 --> 01:14:49,420 to the Hubble parameter. 1301 01:14:49,420 --> 01:14:52,920 So to synchronize, we can ask what are the options. 1302 01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:54,330 I mentioned the Hubble parameter. 1303 01:14:54,330 --> 01:14:55,870 That's certainly one parameter that 1304 01:14:55,870 --> 01:14:59,040 can be used in principle to synchronize clocks 1305 01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:02,770 throughout our model universe. 1306 01:15:02,770 --> 01:15:04,810 You might wonder if we can use the scale factor 1307 01:15:04,810 --> 01:15:08,712 itself to synchronize times. 1308 01:15:08,712 --> 01:15:10,170 And the answer there I would say is 1309 01:15:10,170 --> 01:15:14,440 no because of this ambiguity of the notch. 1310 01:15:17,110 --> 01:15:20,230 I have no way of comparing my notch to your notch. 1311 01:15:20,230 --> 01:15:21,780 We can compare physical distances 1312 01:15:21,780 --> 01:15:25,070 because they're related to physical properties 1313 01:15:25,070 --> 01:15:27,680 as the size of a hydrogen atom is a certain physical size, 1314 01:15:27,680 --> 01:15:29,340 no matter where it is in this universe. 1315 01:15:29,340 --> 01:15:32,450 So we could use hydrogen atoms to measure meters, 1316 01:15:32,450 --> 01:15:35,670 and we would all be talking about the same meters. 1317 01:15:35,670 --> 01:15:37,792 And we could use those meters to define seconds 1318 01:15:37,792 --> 01:15:40,000 by how long it takes light to travel through a meter, 1319 01:15:40,000 --> 01:15:41,530 and so on. 1320 01:15:41,530 --> 01:15:43,290 So meters and seconds, we can all 1321 01:15:43,290 --> 01:15:46,216 agree on because they're related to physical phenomena 1322 01:15:46,216 --> 01:15:47,590 that we can all see and that will 1323 01:15:47,590 --> 01:15:51,740 be the same everywhere in our homogeneous model universe. 1324 01:15:51,740 --> 01:15:56,180 But notches, not so, everybody gets to make up his own notch. 1325 01:15:56,180 --> 01:15:59,470 It's just the size of the map he happens to draw. 1326 01:15:59,470 --> 01:16:02,691 So we cannot compare scale factors and say, 1327 01:16:02,691 --> 01:16:04,690 we'll set our clocks to a certain time when both 1328 01:16:04,690 --> 01:16:06,745 of our scale factors have a certain value. 1329 01:16:06,745 --> 01:16:08,370 We would get different synchronizations 1330 01:16:08,370 --> 01:16:10,200 depending on what choices we've made 1331 01:16:10,200 --> 01:16:12,960 about having to find a notch. 1332 01:16:12,960 --> 01:16:15,440 So the scale factor does not work as a synchronization 1333 01:16:15,440 --> 01:16:19,630 mechanism, Hubble expansion rates does. 1334 01:16:19,630 --> 01:16:23,840 Also we haven't really talked about an ideal cosmic microwave 1335 01:16:23,840 --> 01:16:26,090 background, but we certainly talked about it, 1336 01:16:26,090 --> 01:16:28,381 the cosmic microwave background has a temperature which 1337 01:16:28,381 --> 01:16:30,010 is falling as the universe expands, 1338 01:16:30,010 --> 01:16:34,270 so that could be used to synchronize clocks as well. 1339 01:16:34,270 --> 01:16:36,680 Might mention in the last 30 seconds 1340 01:16:36,680 --> 01:16:41,012 one interesting phenomenon. 1341 01:16:41,012 --> 01:16:43,157 For our universe, the Hubble expansion rate 1342 01:16:43,157 --> 01:16:44,740 is changing with time, the temperature 1343 01:16:44,740 --> 01:16:45,830 is changing with time. 1344 01:16:45,830 --> 01:16:49,269 There's no problem talking about this synchronization. 1345 01:16:49,269 --> 01:16:51,060 But if you're talking about different kinds 1346 01:16:51,060 --> 01:16:53,360 of mathematical models of the universes, 1347 01:16:53,360 --> 01:16:55,650 you can imagine a universe where the Hubble expansion 1348 01:16:55,650 --> 01:16:58,480 rate is just constant, and in fact 1349 01:16:58,480 --> 01:17:00,670 that is a space that was studied very 1350 01:17:00,670 --> 01:17:02,610 early in the history of general relativity. 1351 01:17:02,610 --> 01:17:03,842 It's called de Sitter space. 1352 01:17:03,842 --> 01:17:06,050 And it's approximately what happens during inflation, 1353 01:17:06,050 --> 01:17:08,400 so we'll even be talking about de Sitter space 1354 01:17:08,400 --> 01:17:10,330 later in the course. 1355 01:17:10,330 --> 01:17:12,765 In de Sitter space, the Hubble constant 1356 01:17:12,765 --> 01:17:14,899 is absolutely constant, so at least one 1357 01:17:14,899 --> 01:17:17,190 of the mechanisms I mentioned to synchronize the clocks 1358 01:17:17,190 --> 01:17:18,615 goes away. 1359 01:17:18,615 --> 01:17:21,240 There's also, in fact, no cosmic microwave background radiation 1360 01:17:21,240 --> 01:17:24,230 in pure de Sitter space, so that goes away. 1361 01:17:24,230 --> 01:17:26,660 You could ask, is there anything else, 1362 01:17:26,660 --> 01:17:29,330 it turns out there is not, so you really 1363 01:17:29,330 --> 01:17:32,730 can construct a well-defined model of the universe, 1364 01:17:32,730 --> 01:17:35,120 the so-called de Sitter space, where there really 1365 01:17:35,120 --> 01:17:36,879 is no way of synthesizing clocks. 1366 01:17:36,879 --> 01:17:39,420 And you could really show that you could make transformations 1367 01:17:39,420 --> 01:17:41,735 so that if you synchronize the clocks one way, 1368 01:17:41,735 --> 01:17:44,760 you could make a symmetry transformation if we take 1369 01:17:44,760 --> 01:17:46,534 all those clocks out of synchronization 1370 01:17:46,534 --> 01:17:48,200 and otherwise the space would be just as 1371 01:17:48,200 --> 01:17:49,845 good as what you started with. 1372 01:17:49,845 --> 01:17:51,220 So the synchronization is subtle, 1373 01:17:51,220 --> 01:17:53,261 and it depends on having something which actually 1374 01:17:53,261 --> 01:17:55,050 changes with time, but that will be 1375 01:17:55,050 --> 01:17:57,830 the case where our real universe and for the model 1376 01:17:57,830 --> 01:17:59,750 universes that we'll be talking about. 1377 01:17:59,750 --> 01:18:01,310 So I'll stop there. 1378 01:18:01,310 --> 01:18:03,840 See you folks on Thursday.