The Horizon Problem | The Universe's biggest UNSOLVED mystery

Ғылым және технология

If you’re struggling, consider therapy with BetterHelp #ad. Click betterhelp.com/drbecky for a 10% discount on your first month of therapy with a credentialed professional specific to your needs. | Ever wondered how the Universe looks roughly the same in all directions? Because, technically, it shouldn't. It doesn't make sense. So does that mean we're missing something in our physics? Something like inflation? Or is the universe cyclical, going through Big Bangs and Big Crunches? Or does the speed of light vary with time?
00:00 - Introduction
03:51 - What actually is the cosmic microwave background?
05:15 - What is the cosmic horizon?
06:21 - What is the "horizon problem"?
08:27 - Inflation - a solution to the horizon problem?
10:12 - Cyclical Universe - a solution to the horizon problem?
11:12 - Varying the speed of light - a solution to the horizon problem?
12:03 - But what about the "crisis is comoslogy"? Is it something else?
12:34 - Bloopers
Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV
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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
drbecky.uk.com
rebeccasmethurst.co.uk

Пікірлер: 2 900

  • @PurajitMalalur
    @PurajitMalalur3 ай бұрын

    That joke about repeating cycles at 10:43 got me good

  • @thetinkerist

    @thetinkerist

    3 ай бұрын

    did she change anything in the matrix?

  • @dibenp

    @dibenp

    3 ай бұрын

    I think editing Becky was having a laugh at recording Becky. ❤

  • @rickseiden1

    @rickseiden1

    3 ай бұрын

    I was about to message Editing Dr. Becky (or is it Dr. Editing Becky?) about how she missed a blooper! Thanks for letting me in on the joke @PurajitMalalur!

  • @TheAces1979

    @TheAces1979

    3 ай бұрын

    Best Dad Joke of 2024...Well played, scientist.

  • @samuela-aegisdottir

    @samuela-aegisdottir

    3 ай бұрын

    I thougt it was a mistake in editing. Now I see it was a joke. Thanks.

  • @unflexian
    @unflexian3 ай бұрын

    Becky you're a legend. First year major in physics and loving it. Can't say for sure if I would have gone for it without your KZread videos. I'm serious, thanks.

  • @DrBecky

    @DrBecky

    3 ай бұрын

    Lovely to hear it! Glad my videos could be a help to you

  • @phild8095

    @phild8095

    3 ай бұрын

    Retired chemical engineer here. GO FOR IT! don't quit, dig deep, stand proud.

  • @chrisoakey9841

    @chrisoakey9841

    3 ай бұрын

    Just remember any issues, you can just say physics did something not seen now to fix the BS that doesn't fit. Like dark matter and energy, or cyclic universe. Or inflation.😂

  • @yourinnation5541

    @yourinnation5541

    3 ай бұрын

    Good luck finding a job

  • @ozzymandius666

    @ozzymandius666

    3 ай бұрын

    @@yourinnation5541 Better than a gender studies degree.

  • @psikker
    @psikker3 ай бұрын

    My naïve assumption for the relative sameness of the observable universe has been that if the big bang happened everywhere all at once, it makes sense that it happened in the same way everywhere all at once, in which case it makes sense that everywhere looks roughly the same as everywhere else. I never considered that it was more complicated than that until this video, so thank you for quite literally expanding my horizon

  • @davidlones365

    @davidlones365

    2 ай бұрын

    You have a valid point though. You don't need to communicate any information from one side of the universe to the other if they just so happened to be the same. Not by chance, but because you're just experiencing the same conditions. The same kind of stuff experiencing the same sorts of conditions wouldn't need to communicate any information to its counterpart on the opposite side... as you would expect the same conditions to be affecting the same kinds of things existing at the same time in the same universe... in the same way. All of the matter in our universe existed at the same point and at the same energy state, then expanded outward... If I had a pot of boiling water on the stove and then took two cups of the water out of that pot and walked one cup in one direction and the other cup in the other direction, I would still expect both cups of water to be the same temperature, despite them being no longer in contact (if in a vacuum). For anything else to occur, it would violate the conservation of energy... this video presents it backwards.

  • @Alondro77

    @Alondro77

    2 ай бұрын

    It looks the same everywhere all at once, because I ate the Everything Bagel...

  • @siraaron4462

    @siraaron4462

    2 ай бұрын

    ​@@davidlones365not to mention if you originate from a singularity the speed of light it pretty irrelevant

  • @SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_Alive

    @SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_Alive

    2 ай бұрын

    or just pointlessly confusing you, since that makes sense and their bs doenst.

  • @jgilldrafting

    @jgilldrafting

    2 ай бұрын

    Yes, if everything had causal contact at the big bang why would anything disconnect?

  • @andondragomanov4921
    @andondragomanov49212 ай бұрын

    Dr. Becky... All science channels bring this up. I think the casual viewer needs an answer to the question - "why can't the temperature be the same"? There was the big bang with lowest entropy everywhere. Why can't it be the same temperature everywhere? I know it's a problem, but why? Answer that, and you'll be the first of the KZread channels actually telling us why is it a problem :)

  • @SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_Alive

    @SanityTV_Last_Sane_Man_Alive

    2 ай бұрын

    they dont know. they have fallen into the math hole where nothing is connected to reality anymore and the problem is they have been there so long they don't even realize they are no longer studying reality, but playing numbers with math. For example, if you showed an astrophysicist a ballon full of air, had them measure it, then let out a little air, and had them measure it again, they would tell you that if you let out all the air, the ballon would collapse into an infinitely small singularity cuz thats what their math shows. but we have all seen an empty ballon and its not that small... and no I'm not anti science like some, ive just been into theoretical physics for so long that I've learned its all wrong. Every few years we rewrite what we thought and its never the same as a few years before. I guarantee you it will happen with the expansion rate of the universe in the next few years, then everything you learned about it before will be thrown out and laughed at. Yet these people still dont get that they are not based in reality. they are based in imaginary numbers. and I don't mean e or pi.

  • @louisrobitaille5810

    @louisrobitaille5810

    2 ай бұрын

    Because temperature is directly related to matter and energy. When we're talking about matter distribution, we're directly talking about temperature. Temperature is a measure of the average movement of particles in a region of spacetime (I forgot the exact definition). Lots of movement = high temp, little movement = low temp. Lots of particles = higher temp, few particles = lower temp. An easy example: boiling water = water molecules flying in all direction: high temp, ice = water molecules stuck together: low temp. Septillions (10^24) of water molecules = lots: higher temperature than billions of water molecules = few (about the # of atoms/m^3 in interstellar space): few. For the temperature to be the same everywhere, the distribution of matter would have to be the *exact same* everywhere.

  • @louisrobitaille5810

    @louisrobitaille5810

    2 ай бұрын

    Also the Big Bang had the lowest entropy. Entropy is a measure of chaos and a singularity is the most ordered thing that exists (in theory since nobody has ever proven that singularities physically exist, only mathematically).

  • @sabinrawr

    @sabinrawr

    2 ай бұрын

    ​@@louisrobitaille5810Again, I don't think that answered the question. We understand temperature and matter/energy distribution. The question is (in my estimation) why should we expect different regions to have different temperatures? After all, if the Big Bang singularity was everywhere all at once, wouldn't we expect that all expansion experienced essentially identical conditions? D shouldn't the default assumption be that everything is pretty much homogenous, and if we saw any major deviations then THAT would be cause for concern?

  • @Achrononmaster

    @Achrononmaster

    2 ай бұрын

    The reason is gravity. The CMB era was 380 thousand years AFTER the Big Bang, and that's oodles of time for gravity to form clumpy regions, so the temperatures would be wildly non-uniform. The naive idea people have is wrong. The CMB did not come from the Big Bang, it came much later (380 thousand years later!!!) when the temperature was around 3300K, after the radiation opaque (plasma) era. Due to gravity there had to be very clumpy regions in this plasma, a consequence of this horizon being so "distant" from the Big Bang in time. But that clumpy model would not fit the data which is a perfect Planck black-body curve all around, with incredibly low angular deviation. I think you could say the angular deviations are "gaussian" too, so have no sign of any gravitational clumpiness. It is however correct to imagine prior to the CMB era there is a common cause linking the regions that at the CMB era were causally separated. That's the actual problem. The solution though cannot be "the big bang" because like I wrote, the gravity would clump stuff wildly, giving a highly non-gaussian angular spectrum to the CMB (probably a power distribution or something, I'm not sure).

  • @nofunallowed3382
    @nofunallowed33823 ай бұрын

    Hey Becky! A couple of weeks ago I've picked up your book at a local bookstore I often visit, and it's such a fun read! Your enthusiasm shines, and the tengants you go on are great. Keep being you, I love your videos!

  • @alastairward2774
    @alastairward27743 ай бұрын

    Me looking at the night sky; so beautiful. Astrophysicist looking at the night sky; so wrong.

  • @davidhoward4715

    @davidhoward4715

    3 ай бұрын

    Astrophysicists also find the universe beautiful. That's why they want to understand it.

  • @icosthop9998

    @icosthop9998

    3 ай бұрын

    L😂L

  • @samuela-aegisdottir

    @samuela-aegisdottir

    3 ай бұрын

    People: The night sky is dark because there is no Sun. Astronomers: There are milions of suns. Why is it dark?

  • @user-fn1cd6mo9z

    @user-fn1cd6mo9z

    3 ай бұрын

    @@samuela-aegisdottir Optometrist: The absolute light threshold of the human eye is 1 photon per 100 average rod cells. This must be why the universe appears dark instead of infinitely bright.

  • @kaitlyn__L

    @kaitlyn__L

    3 ай бұрын

    @@user-fn1cd6mo9zit would be pretty cool to see the Hubble Deep Field haze with the naked eye tbh

  • @josephsener420
    @josephsener4202 ай бұрын

    Currently reading “On the Origin of Time” and going this exact same description. You do a great job of describing it.

  • @liamsudsy7563
    @liamsudsy75632 ай бұрын

    Always love the videos! It’d be really cool if you could do a video explaining the big magnetic monopoles

  • @benjaminshropshire2900
    @benjaminshropshire29003 ай бұрын

    It'd think the question should more be; why would things be _different?_ What would create a universe where different parts have different enough initial conditions to create large scale differences? Id' expect the structure of the universe to be basically uniform anywhere above the scale where causality could reach at the point where short range forces (e.g. within what became galactic clusters) started to dominate over longer range ones. But that sort of pushes the question in the other direction: why isn't the universe *more* uniform? Is the problem more accurately stated as "Why isn't there more or less uniformity? Why *this* amount? "

  • @tonywells6990

    @tonywells6990

    3 ай бұрын

    Quantum fluctuations are random so we would expect one part of the universe to be different to another, but it does depend on how big the fluctuations were. If they were small everywhere that might explain it, but if they were large (and since they occurred in a tiny volume smaller than an atom) then you would expect huge differences in different locations.

  • @benjaminshropshire2900

    @benjaminshropshire2900

    3 ай бұрын

    @@tonywells6990 (Note, I'm not saying people are wrong, I'm say I think there must be something more interesting going on that was glossed over in the explanation.) My thought is that if those fluctuations are statically IID, then at any significant scale, you should expect them to average to the same result. It won't be exactly identical, but at anything larger than the causal scale there should be no reason to _expect_ things to be different. Even chaotic systems like turbulence only exhibit limited non uniformity and they are fully connected causally.

  • @markfergerson2145

    @markfergerson2145

    3 ай бұрын

    @@tonywells6990But the universe used to be smaller, I. e. the universe used to be so small that fluctuations *had* to cover the whole universe. Then there’s the question of which field’s fluctuations we’re talking about. The gluon field? The weak field? The electromagnetic or gravitational field? The Higgs field? When the universe was very small gluon forces could reach all the way “across” but not later when the weak field barely did. I’m thinking of an analogy with the Casimir effect- the universe was effectively a cavity in which certain wavelengths/energy values of field bosons could exist but not others because there just wasn’t room for them. Nowadays ever longer values of photons and gravitons (if they’re real) can exist because they still have infinite range but gluin, W and Z particles and Higgs bosons can’t propagate beyond their confinement ranges any more.

  • @tonywells6990

    @tonywells6990

    3 ай бұрын

    @@markfergerson2145 Yes, somehow those fluctuations would still need enough time to travel across the universe.

  • @torbjorn.b.g.larsson

    @torbjorn.b.g.larsson

    3 ай бұрын

    @@markfergerson2145 The energy density was too high for any of those fields to have massive particles, you can think of it as the Higgs field being "unbroken". So all the particles were essentially force carriers and "photons" with infinite ranges. I find it easier to think of the inflation field (whether or not you think of inflation as a field) at high potential energy that embedded the other forces, except gravity, into insignificance. When inflation ends that field phase changes and lose energy and the other fields starts to become significant, or at least that is my impression here. The quasi-stability energy range of the Higgs vacuum roughly overlap with inflation energy [LHC, Planck observations] so the unbroken, raw Higgs field can kick in. I just learned why the weak force has to break electromagnetism symmetry at a higher range and then the strong force kicking in at QCD plasma energies: if the strong force had done it they would have produced nearly massless 'neutrinos', so no chemistry et cetera. So there you have it, a series of phase transitions: inflation - Higgs field E/W - strong force QCD, And then the universe we know and love appeared. (It can be of interest to note that only inflation had a first order non-homogeneity (bubble) forming pjase transition, the two others seems to have been smooth second order ones - no potential energy release.) I answered what fluctuations there seems to have been earlier, but I repeat here: fluctuations in inflation (most likely a quantum field, so quantum fluctuations).

  • @robsquared2
    @robsquared23 ай бұрын

    it still blows my mind how much of the universe we simply can't see because we're embedded in a galaxy.

  • @gupwalla961

    @gupwalla961

    3 ай бұрын

    Sag A* is that giant who thought that the seat right in front of you at the theater looked really comfortable.

  • @billcook4768

    @billcook4768

    3 ай бұрын

    And just think how much easier astronomy would be if we could get rid of that pesky sun.

  • @petedawg

    @petedawg

    3 ай бұрын

    @@billcook4768 Or the atmosphere. Or the moon (which stabilizes the wobble of Earth).

  • @JosePineda-cy6om

    @JosePineda-cy6om

    2 ай бұрын

    Consider that a blessing. It'd xe much much harder to colonize space if ALL the ships and materials had to come from this solar system, had Sol been a wandering star thru intergalactic medium. ALL travels would take millions of years to the closest star, everything would be much riskier., with life extinguishing at Sun's red phase almost certainly. Being within a galaxy instead means we only suffer to get to nearest star, there we can gather resources and expand at exponential rate - in a few hundred thousands of years we'll get to the other side of the galaxy, once we learn to travel at just 5% light speed

  • @pflume1

    @pflume1

    2 ай бұрын

    Actually, it is amazing how much we can see because we are mostly in one of "arms" of galaxy.

  • @notgary1111
    @notgary11112 ай бұрын

    Thank you for actually explaining what that CMB photo shows! It's always presented as evidence that "everything looks the same no matter which direction you're facing", which causes me to wonder if we're looking at the same photo.

  • @malavoy1

    @malavoy1

    2 ай бұрын

    Part of that is because they show a projection onto a flat surface. Even when they show it in 3D, they show a sphere seen from the outside. The only way to properly look at the CMB would be in a planetarium so that we see it the way it was measured, i.e. from the inside.

  • @Dragrath1

    @Dragrath1

    2 ай бұрын

    Ok maybe that last bit is a bit unrealistically harsh as a kinematic dipole could make sense its just not the only way to explain the data and a mistake can lead to huge systemic bias if you are wrong. Not sure why I can't edit my posts anymore.

  • @aryangod2003

    @aryangod2003

    2 ай бұрын

    I am confused by this vidoe. At around 6:50 the video shows that there are MULTIPLE 380,000 light year horizons/ovals/patches when the Universe was 380.000 years old..so the ACTUAL FULL Universe was much larger than 380,000 light years at the age of 380,000 years? How do we know this? Then one of those patches expanded so rapidly it became the observable universe today? It's true that the observable universe at 380,000 years old was only about 380,000 light-years across. However, inflation suggests the e It's true that the OBSERVABLE e at 380,000 years old was only about 380,000 light-years across. However, inflation suggests the ENTIRE UNIVERSE was much larger, potentially infinitely larger, even at that young age was much larger, potentially infinitely larger, even at that young age.

  • @Muhahahahaz

    @Muhahahahaz

    29 күн бұрын

    @@aryangod2003the entire universe has always been larger than the observable universe, even now. We often talk about the observable universe because it’s the only stuff we can actually see, but the full universe is at least 250 times larger in diameter than that (based on universal curvature measurements) It’s currently unknown whether then universe is finite or infinite… 250 is just the minimum we can prove through empirical data

  • @TimWebb-discchord
    @TimWebb-discchord2 ай бұрын

    I'm glad to see that in all the beauty you're observing out in the cosmos, you are finding time to enjoy the beauty of Yosemite too!

  • @user-pd6iy5zm9d
    @user-pd6iy5zm9d3 ай бұрын

    I love your videos and would really like to be comfortable continuing to watch you, that said I'd really appreciate if you could do some more research on Better Help and their problematic practices. I both go to and support others going to therapy but please understand Better Help harms people.

  • @dr4d1s

    @dr4d1s

    3 ай бұрын

    It's sad but she's not going to stop advertising them. She's getting those sweet, sweet shill-checks. Dr. Becky's bank account doesn't give a shit as long as they keep coming in.

  • @chefRyan38

    @chefRyan38

    3 ай бұрын

    She knows, they pushed out a lot of long-term contracts with KZreadrs right before that info came out

  • @milferdjones2573

    @milferdjones2573

    3 ай бұрын

    That is an allegation not a proven fact. Although if you have in person reference system having a bad egg or two sneak onto your list near impossible to totally prevent. Example you go to a multi partner mental health practice one member might be bad or turned bad.. I found a mix of reviews it not an open and shut case against in this area of harming folk. Privacy practices on the other hand there is an official US government complaint on.

  • @milferdjones2573

    @milferdjones2573

    3 ай бұрын

    @@chefRyan38 Still there is a long list of folk who claim to be helped as well this is not yet a clear one way or another issue in the area of care. Other areas are more problematic.

  • @leftofright

    @leftofright

    2 ай бұрын

    BetterHelp 👀REVIEWS - from none other than Trust Pilot - Reviews 7,022 • Excellent - Id say your beef is with the company. I would also go so far as to say it is awfully unsavory you to sit here like fat cat, and take down this fine ladies efforts to monetize an incredible show 🚧 If you have any respect for Dr Becky you would remove your comment altogether ✨Is this a way to treat someone whose teaching you selflessly?

  • @mikkohernborg5291
    @mikkohernborg52913 ай бұрын

    A big part of this problem can be ameliorated by, not adding, but removing something: the assumption that the universe needed to be in causal contact to look the way it does today, and by implication, the assumption that it started existing in a state of non-uniformity. Other assumptions would have to take their place, like 'the universe began existence in a state of least entropy, corresponding to maximum energy density in a flat distribution. Manifesting initiated the flow of time, which allowed quantum effects to break force symmetry, starting the expansion of space and giving room for quantum fluctuations to seed structure and cause minor regional differentiation'. Some version of Inflation would probably still be needed, to smooth out the fluctuations, but it could probably be more strictly constrained.

  • @triplec8375

    @triplec8375

    2 ай бұрын

    I believe it was Brian Green in his "Fabric of the Cosmos" book that wondered how it is possible that the universe today could be at its current state of relatively low entropy since it implies that the early universe was at an extremely low level of entropy. He didn't venture an answer to that problem as I recall (it's probably 20 years or so ago), but I would suggest that it may have existed in something like a Bose-Einstein state which has an entropy of zero since it acts as a single entity. As you've pointed out, we probably should be looking at this problem from the standpoint that the universe was very (if not absolutely) uniform at the earliest moments. If you assume that dimensions are actual fields, then it follows that they are causal, i.e., they are an effect resulting from a cause. That gives us the possibility of the universe existing before the "flow of time" as you say, actually began. While I'm a bit confused by the wording of "Manifesting initiated the flow of time", I tend to agree that the dimension of time was the latecomer to the party and that the 3 spatial dimensions holding this low entropy state of matter could have been around for an indeterminate period. It's difficult to express the idea of matter existing in the spatial dimensions without any time dimension for reference. But suffice it to say that it would not be constrained to the infinitesimally small core of the generally accepted Big Bang. It could have existed over a huge extent of space. Then, with the emergence of the 4th, time, dimension it would appear as if everything went from a point to the then actual extent of space in no elapsed time whatsoever. This would have the same effect as inflation in eliminating the horizon problem and it also starts at zero or near zero entropy from which we can evolve to the state of the universe today. With a few extensions, this model can also answer the question of the missing antimatter and perhaps provide some additional benefits such as additional conservation laws.

  • @paul-np3hf

    @paul-np3hf

    2 ай бұрын

    So more simple explanation , - big bang but there are plenty of questions , 1 - how from energy to matter formation, 2 - how was bubble for big bang formed 3- how inflation generated and from what assuming that space is immaterial 4 if universe 13.8 bln years why galaxies are almost same age 5 no explanations about accelerating expansion after big bang

  • @Achrononmaster

    @Achrononmaster

    2 ай бұрын

    The entropy problem is ill-conceived. Entropy is a statistical concept associated with not counting all degrees of freedom. If we count all degrees of freedom the entropy is constant for all time, never changing. If we do not count the Planck degrees of freedom (which we do not) then the statistics "takes over" so to speak, and so then there is no serious problem. The apparent "arrow of time" is nothing but a coordinate in the Block Universe, and you think entropy should be increasing only because you are failing to count everything, as well as failing to account for the "dynamical laws" which need not obey exact symmetries of the universal laws (by "dynamical laws" I include BV/ICs, so not just "The Laws"). Having noted that, nevertheless the apparent rise in entropy for time-evolving observers is a wonderful thing, things would be dead boring otherwise (no "life" most likely, but then no death either, hooray). Also a terrible thing (there'll be an end to life.)

  • @GamerDave1974
    @GamerDave1974Күн бұрын

    And I love how you have fun with the uploads and add some of the bloopers and outtakes. You're a brilliant person who likes to have a great sense of humor. More people like you are needed and desired.

  • @barry8642
    @barry86424 күн бұрын

    You have the best questions and your answering is just as interesting thank You

  • @MCsCreations
    @MCsCreations3 ай бұрын

    Thanks, dr. Becky! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

  • @uglybob7505
    @uglybob75053 ай бұрын

    Great video. Thanks for sharing, Dr Becky

  • @DShaw1776
    @DShaw17762 ай бұрын

    Thank you for sharing!! You just made me feel, oh it’s not just me! 👍

  • @remistuczynski2768
    @remistuczynski27682 ай бұрын

    Brilliant as always!

  • @chaoslab
    @chaoslab3 ай бұрын

    Always enjoy your videos. Hope the back is good.

  • @erkinalp
    @erkinalp3 ай бұрын

    Thanks for this week's video.

  • @DouglasVoigt-tu3xb
    @DouglasVoigt-tu3xb2 ай бұрын

    Dr Becky why haven’t I heard about this before? I’m really blown away. Horizon problem

  • @L2p2
    @L2p22 ай бұрын

    I hope solve this problem some day . Working on it Dr Becky. But don't hold your breath.

  • @aussiebloke609
    @aussiebloke6093 ай бұрын

    10:44 One for the bloopers, Becky - either that, or you "wouldn't get excited for that" twice over? It's also a good thing when your re-delivery is so smooth you don't notice the doubling effect in post. 😁👍

  • @iambiggus

    @iambiggus

    3 ай бұрын

    Glitch in the Matrix

  • @hipser

    @hipser

    3 ай бұрын

    They changed something in the universe. Maybe it was the Hubble constant... @@iambiggus

  • @Triplestorms

    @Triplestorms

    3 ай бұрын

    I had to rewatch it just to confirm I'm not in the matrix...

  • @jd9119

    @jd9119

    3 ай бұрын

    God damn it. I thought I found it first. And then I found your post. lol

  • @DrBecky

    @DrBecky

    3 ай бұрын

    Haha I left it in as a joke because I thought it was hilarious I was talking about the cyclical nature of the universe

  • @joen0411
    @joen04113 ай бұрын

    6:57 confused about this part. You have three separate unconnected circles. But if the universe was still “small” and everything was bunched up together. Why wouldn’t the temperature have changed the same everywhere? How do we know enough time had passed to have enough random fluctuations to change the temperature in different places?

  • @kainotachi

    @kainotachi

    3 ай бұрын

    Knowing the speed of light, the age of the CMB, and the expansion rate of the universe, we can calculate how far away the places the CMB came from currently are from us, and also how far away they would have been when it was first emitted. So, we can know how far apart different points on the CMB would have been back then. Since information can travel at a maximum rate of the speed of light, if two points are far enough apart that light couldn't have traveled that distance since the universe began, they cannot have affected each other in any way: they cannot have any causal connection. While points on, say, opposite sides of the CMB would have been closer together when it was first emitted, the universe would also have been much younger, giving light much less time to travel, so the distance between things that could have any causal connection was also much smaller. I don't know if I'm managing to explain this as clearly as I hope I am, but the simple version is that yes, the universe was smaller, but also so was the maximum distance between things that could have effects on each other. So fluctuations could not have transferred across the entire thing. So if there WERE any, they would be isolated. But the fluctuations are all so small that they're basically nonexistent. Kind of like measuring the temperature of the entire ocean and finding that every point is less than a fraction of a degree different from every other point in it.

  • @leptok3736

    @leptok3736

    3 ай бұрын

    Haven't made it all the way through yet, but I still don't understand how that invalidates the underlying idea of is it possible it just looked the same everywhere already?

  • @voraciousfred

    @voraciousfred

    3 ай бұрын

    but wasn't it a singularity at the beginning so couldn't thermal equilibrium have been there from the singularity time or are we saying that heat didn't exist until the universe had expanded to a certain size and then matter formed and at that time the distances were beyond light travel (causal contact)

  • @joen0411

    @joen0411

    3 ай бұрын

    @@kainotachi I think the problem is me not asking the question clearly. I’m assuming immediately after the Big Bang the universe was uniform in temperature and density. Then at some point different parts started to have different properties, a little hotter here, a lot cooler there, more matter clumped together over there, etc. No idea if this has a name so I’ll call it X. There is also a point where the universe became transparent and light could travel, call it Y. And another point where it became too big so that light from one point could not reach another point in 13 billion years, call it Z. CMDB happened after Y. How do we know Y came after X? If it came before X, then we don’t need to worry about Z. The CMDB is the same everywhere because so was the universe. Or have I completely missed something, which is probably more likely.

  • @TheDanEdwards

    @TheDanEdwards

    3 ай бұрын

    ​@@voraciousfred"but wasn't it a singularity at the beginning " - no. There is no upper limit to the size of the universe currently, and so there is no upper limit to how large the universe was pre-CMB emission. And there is no reason to believe that a mathematical singularity can indeed exist physically. This notion that the universe started as a singularity has been passed around the internet quite a bit, but it is hardly a well supported idea in physics.

  • @GamerDave1974
    @GamerDave1974Күн бұрын

    I am having trouble believing I haven't come across your channel since you've been here since 2011. Your mind is brilliant and I love it. Space and Science have always gained my attention and thought. Keep the awesome information coming Dr. Becky and I'll keep watching.

  • @d.t.4523
    @d.t.45232 ай бұрын

    Thank you, keep working.

  • @nosuchthing8
    @nosuchthing83 ай бұрын

    Ah, clever. Talking about cycles in the universe while in a yt loop cycle at 10:43. Kudos!

  • @theoneatyourdoor87

    @theoneatyourdoor87

    3 ай бұрын

    10:44

  • @hanks.9833

    @hanks.9833

    3 ай бұрын

    Hah, I thought it was a video editor blooper!

  • @ronjones4069
    @ronjones40693 ай бұрын

    You explain things so well. 🎉

  • @radiojet1429
    @radiojet14292 ай бұрын

    Thank you. No one really understands their field or subject unless they can explain complex matters to the layman in everyday language. You have done so with aplomb. I just subscribed to your channel.

  • @markxxx21
    @markxxx212 ай бұрын

    inflation explains a lot but it was "backed into." They basically said, here's the end result we want how do we get there. And many, many models were tried until we got one that worked. Fine, but that really isn't science. You can do that with math, whereas we know the result but until a "proof" is worked out to as "why," it fails. Also the biggest mystery of inflation is why did it start and why did it end so conveniently.

  • @rockyraccoon8270
    @rockyraccoon82703 ай бұрын

    This episode is really good. Fascinating thank you

  • @DrBecky

    @DrBecky

    3 ай бұрын

    Glad you enjoyed it!

  • @johannageisel5390

    @johannageisel5390

    2 ай бұрын

    @@DrBecky I'm afraid I don't understand it. :( If everything was clumped up in one tiny spot at the beginning, it must have had the same temperature everywhere, right? And when it expanded, should the temperature not fall in the same manner everywhere because it's all governed by the same laws of nature? Why do different regions have to interact with each other to keep the same temperature? Unless they expand at different rates - then it would make sense. But do we see that? (If I put three identital glass beakers full of 100°C water in a room with the same temperature then it does not matter whether this is the same room or three different rooms with the same temperature; they will cool down with the same curve.)

  • @michaelgalea5148
    @michaelgalea51483 ай бұрын

    Thanks doctor Becky for another great video. You are the best.

  • @dochouse6911
    @dochouse69112 ай бұрын

    Love your videos! I think you missed a blooper at 10:50 I thought I was glitching 😅you start the same sentence at 10:43, miss a word or something and immediately do a retake I think the editor missed. Thank you for making me smarter with your vids!

  • @kindlin

    @kindlin

    2 ай бұрын

    I thought the same thing, but the comments section knows whats up, it was a joke from Becky, as she's talking about cycles.

  • @dochouse6911

    @dochouse6911

    2 ай бұрын

    @@kindlinso it kinda was my head glitching 😂 I just started reading the rest of the comments to see if I could find something but didn't realize I spaced out and clicked the rick & morty one at the end. Wasn't until I saw your reply that I realized I was looking under the wrong vid. Thank you for clearing that up for me though.e

  • @devinfaux6987
    @devinfaux69873 ай бұрын

    The thing I always like about the CMB is that when it was first emitted, before getting redshifted by crossing the expanding universe, it was visible light the approximate color of an orange creamsicle.

  • @Scotty-vs4lf

    @Scotty-vs4lf

    2 ай бұрын

    now im listening

  • @snorman1911

    @snorman1911

    2 ай бұрын

    Does this microwave background coincide with objects visible in the same area, or are the two reaching us at different time delays from when they were emitted?

  • @devinfaux6987

    @devinfaux6987

    2 ай бұрын

    @@snorman1911 The latter. The CMB is the oldest light in the universe, originating less than a half-million years after the Big Bang. Everything else we can see is closer and younger.

  • @JMDahl1964
    @JMDahl19643 ай бұрын

    I love her reaction to outside distractions, I can't hear any of it but it is still funny to watch

  • @BlinkinFirefly

    @BlinkinFirefly

    3 ай бұрын

    Same, I was wondering is maybe it was a pet. Does she have pets??

  • @leeborocz-johnson1649
    @leeborocz-johnson16493 ай бұрын

    Someone should do a supercut of Dr. Becky saying "nought". Her saying "nought" is like Carl Sagan saying "billions".

  • @objective_psychology

    @objective_psychology

    2 ай бұрын

    fr

  • @anthonyhoffmann

    @anthonyhoffmann

    2 ай бұрын

    "Chat about" Makes me feel like Beethoven hearing a melody in his head for the first time.

  • @coulie27

    @coulie27

    2 ай бұрын

    naughty

  • @jus_sanguinis

    @jus_sanguinis

    2 ай бұрын

    +1

  • @1pcfred

    @1pcfred

    2 ай бұрын

    Millions, billions, trillions is one of the funniest videos here.

  • @Enigmanaut
    @Enigmanaut2 ай бұрын

    Seeing you struggle to find "contraction" actually made me feel better. If someone much smarter than me can lose words, then maybe I'm not going senile.

  • @Scotty-vs4lf

    @Scotty-vs4lf

    2 ай бұрын

    if it makes u feel an better, if ur still questioning it then u should be good. if ur ever certain that your not crazy, thats probably when you should be worried

  • @user-hh8db2do1m
    @user-hh8db2do1m2 ай бұрын

    awesome videos as always, thanks

  • @phlanxsmurf
    @phlanxsmurf3 ай бұрын

    Love your videos. Thanks.

  • @masaharumorimoto4761
    @masaharumorimoto47613 ай бұрын

    You do a better job of explaining things on a cosmic scale than most! I appreciate ya :)

  • @Dvpainter

    @Dvpainter

    3 ай бұрын

    is that a taco-tortoise in your pic

  • @nzlemming
    @nzlemming2 ай бұрын

    I do like the "NB: NOT TO SCALE" notice on the CBM image

  • @GREGGRCO
    @GREGGRCOАй бұрын

    Omgosh, at the very end, I KNEW IT ! You are from the South !! Absolutely perfect Southern Accent ! Kentucky, Carolinas, Georgia, about any of them! Southern Ohio !! I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around the fact the C.B. is a sphere around us. Interesting video! Thank You !

  • @kolinpauli5862
    @kolinpauli58623 ай бұрын

    This is my first time hearing an explanation of the cosmic microwave background, I had not thought about the limited time frame for information to propagate, and the fact that it wouldn't be able to cover the distance from edge to edge. I would if the smoothness could be attributed to something mathematically modelled by a phase transition, as some phase transition models have shown the ability for many local influences to add up in a way that propagates long range or globally. Since we would really want to think of the information distance limit circles as many sets of overlapping circles that are 380,000 lightyears wide that have been expanding over time and how those interactions effect information propagation across the entire background.

  • @samuela-aegisdottir

    @samuela-aegisdottir

    3 ай бұрын

    interesting point of view

  • @trzykawki

    @trzykawki

    3 ай бұрын

    Inflation is often described as phase change event

  • @danheidel

    @danheidel

    3 ай бұрын

    You actually hit on many of the points that modern cosmology assumes to be true. The early universe went through a number of absolutely catastrophic events that operated like phase changes. The most significant would be the de-unification of the fundamental forces. These events caused the very laws of physics to change and presumably released incredible amounts of matter/energy. This is complicated by the fact that it's believed that at these events were largely triggered by decreasing concentrations of mass/energy as the universe expanded. Quantum fluctuations in the very early universe are going to be causing tiny timing variations in when these events occurred in different parts of the universe. The catastrophic mass/energy changes and literal different number of fundamental laws would then affect the timing of later events in a sort of butterfly effect that would amplify the timing disparities, causing neighboring parts of the universe to progressively get further out of sync. It's easy to imagine neighboring regions of space with mass/energy concentrations many orders of magnitude different with different numbers of physical forces ruling them even if the initial quantum fluctuations were tiny. The chaos at the borders between these regions would be unimaginable and would have scarred the present universe into a patchwork of wildly varying physical states. The goal of inflation and competing theories is to somehow explain how the universe managed to stay in lockstep long enough so that either the most significant development phases occurred across the entire universe in lockstep or that the chaos of having out-of-step universe regions are somehow spread over so much universe today that they are far beyond the edges of the observable universe. Inflation does that by fiddling with the universe expansion rate. VSL theories fiddle with c, etc. Later quantum fluctuations would have also affected the universe but these later ones would have progressively less effect on the present universe. And as you suggested, not only does it make sense that we'd see these overlapping information circles, we do see them. There's a whole portion of astrophysics where they examine the fine details of CMBR temperature variation. These are caused by quantum fluctuations or other perturbating events that happened much later than the sort of catastrophic fluctuations I mention above. These triggered gravitational waves that propagated across the pre-CMBR universe like it was a ringing bell. We can see these gravitational acoustic waves as tiny, very subtle variations in the angular granularity of the CMBR variations. In fact these sorts of fingerprints are what give us most of our knowledge of the pre-CMBR universe and are used to constrain inflation theories.

  • @ingeniouswild

    @ingeniouswild

    3 ай бұрын

    @@danheidel This was the explanation that many others in the other threads also ask - what prevents spacelike separated parts from going through the same evolution and end up in the same state. Do you have any reference to this explanation? Not doubting you but would be nice to read up a bit on it.

  • @mikotagayuna8494
    @mikotagayuna84943 ай бұрын

    I hope Dr. Becky gives her process of choosing her sponsors the same due diligence she would give to her own scientific work.

  • @joel29585

    @joel29585

    3 ай бұрын

    🙄🙄🙄

  • @CapAnson12345
    @CapAnson123452 ай бұрын

    I have faith you can solve it Dr. Becky.

  • @elirothblatt5602
    @elirothblatt56022 ай бұрын

    I read your credentials after listening. Quite shocked at your brilliant credentials! 😅Thank you for these explainer videos and for being unafraid to be regular rather than pompous. 🙂

  • @antoniogalvao2592
    @antoniogalvao25923 ай бұрын

    I’m struggling to understand why the horizon problem is a problem at all. The fact that recombination occurs at a very specific temperature means that the first light of the universe will be emitted at a very specific frequency without needing to be in causal contact with anything far away. As long as space expands and cools off approximately uniformly in all regions of the Universe, recombination will happen simultaneously everywhere at the same temperature. What am I missing that makes causal contact a necessity?

  • @kapsi

    @kapsi

    2 ай бұрын

    I think the issue is that you assume that the universe started uniform, and inflation theory shows that you don't need to assume that, but you can explain it.

  • @waltertanner7982

    @waltertanner7982

    Ай бұрын

    @@kapsicosmic inflation is just that - an ad-hoc assumption. Remembers me on Paulis neutrino, which was proven to exist decades later.

  • @Valery0p5
    @Valery0p53 ай бұрын

    10:44 did we just experience the shortest universal cycle? 😮

  • @chubert20

    @chubert20

    3 ай бұрын

    Glitch in the simulation ;)

  • @mikenowland2739

    @mikenowland2739

    3 ай бұрын

    @@chubert20yes simulation reset

  • @adi63

    @adi63

    3 ай бұрын

    😄😄😄

  • @quidam3810
    @quidam38103 ай бұрын

    Great video as always ! Thanks a lot ! I don't completely understand the issue of the horizon problem. I think of an analogy : water boil at 100°C everywhere (at constant pressure, etc.) because it is an intrinsic property of water : why couldn't that kind of reasoning explain the horizon problem? I guess I suck at thermostatistics and that's the issue, but...

  • @cadebritt8001
    @cadebritt80012 ай бұрын

    Thanks I enjoy listening to your thoughts.

  • @craigmooring2091
    @craigmooring20913 ай бұрын

    I still don't 'get' what the problem is. If the distribution of the stuff in the nascent universe was virtually uniform, then no matter how fast it expanded (whether different part were within sight of each other or not) why wouldn't we expect different parts to develop in the same way preserving that uniformity, anyway?

  • @you2ber252

    @you2ber252

    3 ай бұрын

    I am thinking exactly the same as you. Maybe I havent't understood but it looks so obvious to me, that if everything, at time "0" was in "contact" with everything, then at time "380000" years, when light began to exist, everything would have been similar to everything else, including the temperature. So why do we need to bother with inflation? But there must be something I'm missing perhaps.

  • @mikotagayuna8494

    @mikotagayuna8494

    3 ай бұрын

    The problem is that the homogeneity of causally disconnected regions of space would imply that the speed of light was not constant which seemingly violates our laws of relativity.

  • @you2ber252

    @you2ber252

    3 ай бұрын

    @@mikotagayuna8494 Why should they be causally disconnected if they were a singularity at time 0? In addition to that, while they were expanding as a plasma, before year 380000, haven't they had time to comfortably exchange information at the speed of light? EDIT: Maybe I am beginning to understand. You are referring to parts in the universe that are so far away from each other that light emitted by one had no time yet to reach the other, meaning that one is beyond the observable universe of the other. But then isn't the background cosmic radiation that we are observing, the one of the universe observable to us anyway? Becoause otherwise it wouldn't be observable to us, would it?

  • @markotrieste

    @markotrieste

    3 ай бұрын

    I also have the same question, however I suspect that the answer is that actually there is a misconception in the size of the universe at time zero. There is a lower limit to how small the universe can get, and this limit is always bigger than that of speed of light times age considered. It is supposed that before that limit, inflation happened.

  • @amihartz

    @amihartz

    3 ай бұрын

    Not sure, but my best guess is maybe cosmologists just ran a simulation and found it was "too clumpy" without inflation. It does seem rather intuitive to me that if things are evolving according to the same laws of physics everywhere, they would look roughly the same everywhere. But my best guess as to what the video means is that there would still be a lot of deviations over time leading to something that is on average still the same but with very large variations ("clumpiness") and that the variations we see are too small and aren't compatible with simulations. But I don't actually know.

  • @IliyanBobev
    @IliyanBobev3 ай бұрын

    I don't see a reason why there should be huge temperature fluctuations at the time the CMB was released. What will prompt such differences? It's not like there is some external force to stir the plasma and there are no seeds for nucleation either. Why cant the smoothness persist during normal expansion instead of inflation?

  • @kriiistofel

    @kriiistofel

    3 ай бұрын

    Because the universe can be brought back to the point, at such a small scale there are quantum fluctuations which play a major role. They should create more bumps in energy distribution than it is observed.

  • @IliyanBobev

    @IliyanBobev

    3 ай бұрын

    @@kriiistofel which paper is that in - I checked the Visual Horizons in world-models (W.Rindler) - that's just classification of the models based on horizon boundaries. I would like to look at the one showing that quantum fluctuations have a major role.

  • @bjornfeuerbacher5514

    @bjornfeuerbacher5514

    2 ай бұрын

    @@kriiistofel As far as I know, the fluctuations in the CMBR look _exactly_ like they were produced by quantum fluctuations. So no, there is no disagreement with observations here.

  • @DavidHands
    @DavidHands2 ай бұрын

    Great video topic. The CMB is always described to the public as the edge of the universe, but the observable universe is a different beast and relative. As a kid in the 80's I liked to draw cyclic big bang/big crunch posters. Then the accelerating expansion was popularized in the 90's which suggested a big rip cosmology. Penrose's cyclic big rip/big bang model seems to be the most likely of the theories out there, but these days I like to compare theories, mysteries and discoveries from a cyclic toroidal cosmology perspective where the universe is more of a rolling donut shape constantly turning itself inside out. Not a big bang as such but a big endless flow (white hole). Eventually, all matter completes an epic journey looping around and compressing into a universal black hole (the other side of the donut hole). Scientist like to say these days that the universe is flat, but there is still a substantial margin of error in their calculations. Enough to not rule out positive or negative curvature models.

  • @DavidHands

    @DavidHands

    2 ай бұрын

    PS: As a high school student in physics, I was kicked out of class for questioning the claim that the universe was infinite. Thanks education system.

  • @prestonbacchus4204
    @prestonbacchus42042 ай бұрын

    That makes sense, thank you.^

  • @XellithUS
    @XellithUS2 ай бұрын

    I hear bad things about Better Help.

  • @coreyrueckheim3881
    @coreyrueckheim38812 ай бұрын

    I'm probably going to show my ignorance with this question, but why do we even think a horizon problem exists at all? Assuming the same starting state for the entire universe, and assuming that the same processes (rules of physics) happen in every portion of the expanding universe, we should expect similar results in every portion of the universe today. A relatable analogy might be having two people with the same make and model of kettles and stovetops on opposite sides of earth, and having them start heating the water at the same time. Assuming the same starting conditions and the same rules of physics, we would expect that both people will observe the water in both kettles to look very similar as they boil at nearly identical times. We would expect this to be the result, not be surprised by it. We wouldn't feel a need to figure out how one pot knew what the other pot was doing so that it could do the same thing. Those two pots of water didn't need to communicate with each other for them to end up looking the same. They just followed the same rules of physics from the same starting conditions and undergoing the same processes. What am I missing that requires us to worry about a horizon "problem"?

  • @sebastiandierks7919

    @sebastiandierks7919

    2 ай бұрын

    It's not a dumb question and you're not missing anything. If there is no mechanism like inflation to bring the entire observable universe into causal contact, then the uniformity of the CMB means that the inital conditions of the universe were (almost) the same everywhere. Setting the initial conditions everywhere the same is a perfectly fine solution to the horizon problem and would have belonged definitely in this video in my opinion. It's just too boring for most physicists to accept it seems that there is no mechanism to explain such initial conditions. If the universe had the same energy density and elementary particle composition everywhere from the start, even while it was not in thermal equilibrium yet, it would have thermalised everywhere to the same temperature. In your analogy, the kettles on opposite sides of Earth do the same thing because they both heat water at normal ambient pressure starting at (roughly) the same temperature. But imagine it's the beginning of the universe, and there has not been any possibility for the two experimentalists to talk to each other about the kettles and the local atmospheres are completely different. The ambient pressures and temperatures may be completely different, and the particle compositions are different, i.e. one kettle is filled with oil. Then of course the kettles do completely different things. To solve the horizon "problem", you either need to put in the same initial conditions everywhere by hand into the model of the universe, or you need a mechanism like inflation to make them the same, no matter what the actual initial conditions before inflation where. Since inflation solves other so-called "problems" like the flatness problem, and would dilute away abundances of some expected particles like magnetic monopoles that are predicted for example by string theory, a lot of people like inflationary scenarios for different reasons. But again, you could also just set the curvature to zero as an initial condition, and think that string theory is wrong and magnetic monopoles do not exist in the first place. Inflation is in some way predictive as it solves several "problems" with one explanation, but how fundamental these problems are is very debatable and the theory can also be formed every way you like by picking all sorts of different inflaton potentials, so it's not really predictive in some other sense. I think a lot of physicists are not skeptical enough and consider inflation as a very likely scenario, but it's still one of the more reasonable speculations I'd say. In the end, we just don't understand the beginning of the universe very well, and one should be honest with that.

  • @Pheonix1328

    @Pheonix1328

    2 ай бұрын

    I think the problem here is (using your analogy) is that there's a bunch of people all over Earth wanting to boil kettles and are too far apart to communicate with each other, yet somehow, everyone on Earth managed to get their kettle boiling at the same time as everyone else. You would think all the times would be different, and therein lies the problem, because they aren't (as evident by the tiny differences in the CMB).

  • @AndrewKnightMIT
    @AndrewKnightMITАй бұрын

    nice explanation

  • @jeremycasper
    @jeremycasper2 ай бұрын

    Hi Dr Becky. I follow many science channels, but yours is one of my all-time favorites. I have a question. I’ve reached the end of my brain’s capacity to figure this one out, so maybe you can help. My understanding is that the Cosmic Microwave Background is the oldest light in the universe… which we have the capacity to perceive. And yet, there still exists a cosmic horizon, beyond which exists light (younger light) that’s too far away for us to detect, due to inflation. I’m having trouble reconciling these two things. We can see the oldest light in the universe and yet there are potentially younger galaxies too far away for us to see. I THINK I’ve worked it out in my brain, but a concise explanation would be amazing. I’m sure the answer is simple… My brain is just fumbling a bit with this one. Thanks!

  • @manveroo1340
    @manveroo13403 ай бұрын

    Minor correction for 5:53 The distance to the horizon is about 46 billion light years since the universe expanded in the 13.8 billion years since the light was sent in our direction.

  • @thehellyousay

    @thehellyousay

    3 ай бұрын

    she knows that. rewatch it. there's a diagram about it.

  • @glennbabic5954

    @glennbabic5954

    3 ай бұрын

    Such a bad mistake for an astrophysicist!

  • @DrBecky

    @DrBecky

    3 ай бұрын

    I decided to leave out the distinction between lookback distance and co-moving distance (i.e. corrected for expansion) in this video for brevity's sake. I have made a video on this before though if you want to know more: kzread.info/dash/bejne/aJ9-kqtwg9ywo7g.html

  • @Datamining101
    @Datamining1013 ай бұрын

    disappointing to see better help as an advertising partner

  • @smenor

    @smenor

    3 ай бұрын

    seriously

  • @kernicterus1233
    @kernicterus12332 ай бұрын

    With these paradigms of reality I find myself asking what would Sheldon Cooper think? Loved the repetition gag🤣

  • @RaoulTeeuwen
    @RaoulTeeuwen3 ай бұрын

    Thanks for keeping the 'bloopers' in :-). And: when shown the images around 0:35, it almost seems like mirror images? Like we're living in a donut universe, where we can look at that distant object from both sides while light is bended traveling towards us in the donut universe.

  • @peterblacklin9174
    @peterblacklin91743 ай бұрын

    We can observe inside a 13.8 billion light years radius sphere. The universe could be many times that, say 500 billion light years. A spec in a big pond, using a two dimensional reference. Your enthusiasm is contagious.

  • @XGD5layer

    @XGD5layer

    3 ай бұрын

    Currently it's believed to be 93 billion light years across

  • @davidh.4944

    @davidh.4944

    3 ай бұрын

    As mentioned above, with expansion taken into account, the observable horizon is actually currently about 46.5 Bly away (93Bly diameter). Given the current limits of measurement of space-time curvature, which show it to be at or nearly "flat", the non-observable universe beyond the horizon must continue on at least another 250x further than that. The channel SEA put out a great two-part video: _Journey to the Edge of the Universe_ and _Beyond the Observable Universe_ . The second in particular goes into detail about how theory expects it to look at the largest scales.

  • @recumbentrocks2929
    @recumbentrocks29293 ай бұрын

    Can't have "wishy washy" Dr Becky 😄 Great explaination.

  • @BartdeBoisblanc

    @BartdeBoisblanc

    3 ай бұрын

    How about Timey Wimey Dr. Becky. 😁

  • @adelinadonisa
    @adelinadonisa3 ай бұрын

    You just warmed my heart ❤️ keep doing what you do, perfect❤

  • @markw.8455
    @markw.84552 ай бұрын

    Great video. Not convinced that a causal relation resulted in uniformity. May have been inherent in the original 'plasma'.

  • @BusstterNutt
    @BusstterNutt3 ай бұрын

    glitch in the Matrix at 11 minutes

  • @BusstterNutt

    @BusstterNutt

    3 ай бұрын

    Or just the variation in the local speed of light

  • @HermanVonPetri
    @HermanVonPetri3 ай бұрын

    If the universe doesn't conform to our assumptions then there's something wrong with our assumptions. So... Why should we assume that there would have been large variances in temperature across the early universe in the first place? It would seem to me that even when the effects of an event are spread out that they still evolve along the same general lines as each other because they evolve from the same starting conditions, regardless of how widely separated they may become. I guess that there is some mathematical physics behind this assumption, but I've never heard that particular assumption defended in detail before. How robust is that assumption at all?

  • @mikotagayuna8494

    @mikotagayuna8494

    3 ай бұрын

    Because that implies that the speed of light may not be constant and that is central to our understanding of relativity.

  • @HermanVonPetri

    @HermanVonPetri

    3 ай бұрын

    @@mikotagayuna8494 I don't see why it would necessarily imply anything of the sort. I'm asking why isn't it conceivable that different areas of the universe are the same temperature, _not_ because they are trading photons between each other, but rather because they simply inherited the same starting conditions?

  • @KarelGut-rs8mq

    @KarelGut-rs8mq

    3 ай бұрын

    @@HermanVonPetri There is only one scenario where the starting conditions could make this happen and that is a scenario with an absolutely homogenous start and that would end up with a universe with only a homogenous gas and nothing else. Shortly, your hypothesis is contradicted by observations and our understanding of physics.

  • @HermanVonPetri

    @HermanVonPetri

    3 ай бұрын

    @@KarelGut-rs8mq But the whole problem in the first place is that observations show that the universe _was_ a highly homogeneous gas for many thousands of years after the big bang -- and yet we still exist.

  • @vilhelmboor8542

    @vilhelmboor8542

    3 ай бұрын

    So nice to see someone think and not try to use big fancy words to prove how smart they are. But I found it such a pity that you assumed their vision of expansion was correct. A McG

  • @patrickbranco4537
    @patrickbranco45372 ай бұрын

    Many thanks for your great video. Would you please consider taking a look at the Janus Model by Jean-Pierre Petit? He would suggest another explanation for this Horizon problem by making some of the fundamental constants (not only the speed of light) evolving through a symmetry breaking which would differentiate the matter era (before 380 000 years) and the radiative era (after 380 000 years). His theory would not need any ad-hoc field, any ad-hoc inflaton particle and any 10 power 26, 27 or 28 inflation rate to explain the homogeneous cosmic background. For your consideration. Many thanks

  • @seanhewitt603
    @seanhewitt6032 ай бұрын

    All the stars in the nite sky, and none of them hold a candle to you my dear Dr Becky...

  • @billcook4768
    @billcook47683 ай бұрын

    *The universe’s second biggest mystery. #1 is still “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”

  • @SnarkNSass

    @SnarkNSass

    3 ай бұрын

    Solved! Yes, yes it is.

  • @genghisgalahad8465

    @genghisgalahad8465

    3 ай бұрын

    Is tomato a fruit or vegetable? 🍅 🍅

  • @dj-kq4fz

    @dj-kq4fz

    3 ай бұрын

    No. See, no mystery. Always a fun question though! Amazing how dividing it can be as well. And I really have no opinion on it honestly.

  • @slimdognotamillionare

    @slimdognotamillionare

    3 ай бұрын

    No it's a baguette

  • @gcl2783

    @gcl2783

    3 ай бұрын

    Are socks shoes?

  • @ahotdamn
    @ahotdamn3 ай бұрын

    Sad to see you’re still promoting better help. Not a good company at all.

  • @JeanPierreWhite

    @JeanPierreWhite

    3 ай бұрын

    WHat are they guilty of?

  • @dancooperish

    @dancooperish

    3 ай бұрын

    ​@@JeanPierreWhite I'm not op, but.. Betterhelp don't always get you the help that you're depending on them for. Many people have reported being completely ignored by the therapists they're connected to. Betterhelp also automatically opt you in to having your conversations recorded (you have to choose to opt out), and they sell that information on. I look forward to a number of youtubers (including Dr Becky) eventually posting videos saying "sorry, I'd signed contract before the issues came to light, and had to keep promoting them, I won't sign another one".

  • @rubikmonat6589

    @rubikmonat6589

    2 ай бұрын

    ​@@JeanPierreWhiteThey use entirely unqualified people. It's beyond bad management, they are actively harmful.

  • @MarcoTedaldi

    @MarcoTedaldi

    2 ай бұрын

    They apparently sold patients data to advertisers and insurance companies... Without consent from those patients.

  • @MarcoTedaldi

    @MarcoTedaldi

    2 ай бұрын

    ​@@dancooperishit's been almost a year since the FTC fined them... How long do such contracts run?

  • @strangebike1
    @strangebike12 ай бұрын

    Hi Dr Becky, Could the reason for the cosmic background radiation being so even be down to the pressure that the plasma was experiencing up until a point then it allowed the association of subatomic particles? Testable with plasma physics equipment and might explain the issue simply.

  • @anewlifeupsidedown113
    @anewlifeupsidedown1132 ай бұрын

    Hi Dr. Becky, I discovered your channel today and have now watched quite a few of your videos and loved them. I am a science-curious person without any academic training. But have read a few books such as "A short history of nearly everything" and "A brief history of time" along with non fiction by science fiction authors such as Asimov in my younger years. One of your videos randomly lead me to a recent video on Quantum Mechanics and Plank vs Einstein theory. Was fascinated by the concept of Quantum Entanglement and "Spooky" Science. Would love to see a description of such for a layperson like me if you have dabbled in this idea? Perhaps it might have some bearing on this unsolved mystery. I am sure I am not the only one that is also fascinated by the recent experiments in the Canary Islands using Quasars. Video I saw was Einstein's Quantum Riddle but I don't really understand the implications for the Observable Universe.

  • @silverXnoise
    @silverXnoise3 ай бұрын

    Stopped watching at BetterHelp. That business needs to end, and I struggle to respect anyone who profits from the anguish and pain of others. You deserve better, Dr. Smethurst. Your followers also deserve better. You are selling vulnerable people who trust you to a predatory company.

  • @anoyingnomad

    @anoyingnomad

    3 ай бұрын

    This has been mentioned in the comments multiple times now and they still pop up as sponsored.

  • @daos3300

    @daos3300

    3 ай бұрын

    all advertising & sponsorship on yt is disgusting. prey on people's weaknessses, or force feed people something long enough until they give in. marketing is one of the main reasons we have insane levels of consumerism which leads directly to environmental issues. it's a backbone of capitalism. recommed you use one or more adblockers, watching yt with no ads is fantastic.

  • @IainLambert

    @IainLambert

    Ай бұрын

    @@daos3300sure, but tricking me into subscribing to a VPN that sells my private data is less serious than tricking me into paying for unlicensed therapy from people paid by the word.

  • @Johnnycrystalblue

    @Johnnycrystalblue

    Ай бұрын

    Yt is tracking blockers and restricts access to those that block ads “it’s how we make our money “

  • @lolderbone
    @lolderbone3 ай бұрын

    About the horizon distance. Wouldn´t gravity waves have an influence on the distance the light needs to travel? I assume that the light (or anything else) than has to travel up and down the ripples instead of the otherwise flat space-time which is a longer distance, like going along a sine-wave instead of the x-axis. I have no idea what the amplitude of those waves is or if that is even detectable, but might that not give a different result?

  • @SunShine-xc6dh
    @SunShine-xc6dh2 ай бұрын

    I remember this one guy suggested that in a static universe they would be a point where the sky would be uniformly bright. For years that was the excuse to defend the dynamic universe because we couldn't see that light

  • @airmakay1961
    @airmakay19612 ай бұрын

    Uncertainty just means more to discover. These are exciting times!

  • @scifisurfer8879
    @scifisurfer8879Ай бұрын

    So, @Dr. Becky, one question I have had about the CMB is, given that it was light occurring and traveling outwards, why are we even seeing it from inside the bubble? Shouldn't it *_only_* be visible to a hypothetical observer located on the other side of it? For example, if you take a flashlight and shine it away from yourself, you cannot see the light being sent outward. If there was absolutely nothing for that light to reflect off of, there should be no perception of light. Why is the CMB any different than that? Also, why does any part of the CMB (or anything else, for that matter) have to have interacted with any other particular part for both to be the same as each other? Everything came from a central source (i.e. the object that was the thing that expanded into what we call the "universe").

  • @quickfade1
    @quickfade12 ай бұрын

    Dr Becky, more and more you are convincing me of simulation theory.

  • @sylvainbougie7269
    @sylvainbougie72692 ай бұрын

    Very good explanation of Inflation, tops!

  • @gregmellott5715
    @gregmellott57152 ай бұрын

    What if the origin of the source is next to being unity? The inflation idea is basically logical due to the fact is that time is dependent on the energy intensity exists where things are interacting. So a period where local speeds were at the light's speed limit. That is to say the speed of one point compared to its immediate neighbor can only be at light speed;; yet two opposite neighbors could be twice the speed of light and that keeps increasing as one notes more neighbors to neighbors, etc.. The only thing that would disrupt this flow would be if it ran into a bit of former universe material not up to speed. Though it would likely be soon blown away after it introduced some measure of slowing in the flow. And of course, as the energy intensity reduced due to the expansion, time would tick by quicker and the apparent effect that is called inflation would fade away, as we note times passing now.

  • @SteveWindsurf
    @SteveWindsurf2 ай бұрын

    The big crunch is decreasing entropy - or maybe the sum total of everything (including entropy) is already 0, in which case the big crunch is more of a big null. Madness!

  • @subhanusaxena7199
    @subhanusaxena71992 ай бұрын

    Great video but is Guth like "Cuff" as you pronounce or "Gooth" which I have heard elsewhere???

  • @anabellafl9742
    @anabellafl97423 ай бұрын

    Ive always been fascinated by the sky, then particularly in stars, then one day at school we wrote a letter to NASA and received so many pix and info. Then, in my 38s I watched TBBT.... and here I am, at 41... watching videos to learn all I can about it 😂😂. Thanks for such cool videos!

  • @RiverReeves23
    @RiverReeves232 ай бұрын

    May I offer a hypothesis: the universe is infinite and forever, no start and no big bang. The horizon is just the limitation of our telescopes and the decay of photon energy over vast distances and most importantly, this observable horizon we see is moving through that infinite universe at different speeds at different times. Perhaps going through cycles. This would explain why we see the universe expansion speeding up. It's not, it's simply oscillating as this observable sphere completes a cycle and the arc of this cycle has slow points and quick points.

  • @MountainFisher
    @MountainFisher2 ай бұрын

    Weird? Weird is how much Rebecca looks like, sounds like and acts like my late wife who was born and raised in Manchester, England. I love her show, but seeing and hearing her kind of breaks my heart. Anita died from a broken heart from the death of her baby boy. Our son Jonathan was burned to death when he was 24 and less than a year later my Sweetheart died from the loss. I took her to Yosemite National Park in Sept. 1978 for our honeymoon. As we came out of the tunnel she saw the Valley with Half Dome in the back and she broke down and cried. She had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. She had a gentle heart.

  • @jamesengland7461

    @jamesengland7461

    2 ай бұрын

    My condolences for your loss :(

  • @MountainFisher

    @MountainFisher

    2 ай бұрын

    @@jamesengland7461 Thank you

  • @waltertanner7982

    @waltertanner7982

    Ай бұрын

    May she rest in GODs arms!

  • @FlattRas
    @FlattRas2 ай бұрын

    Love the pbs space time thumbnail.

  • @ozzy6162
    @ozzy61622 ай бұрын

    Inflation is the only decent explanation proposed so far - I very much doubt that any new proposal in the near future will be testable via observations.

  • @jimmyfahringer5588
    @jimmyfahringer55882 ай бұрын

    Hi, Dr. Becky! On the one hand, we learn that the CMB was released when the universe reached a certain temperature. On the other hand, we question how the whole CMB is all the same temperature. Given the first fact, why is the second fact surprising? I guess there could be some variation in the collision speed it takes to ionize a neutral atom, for example from quantum mechanics or the effectively randomized characteristics of each impact. But what if you average that out over about the same number of atoms as the Laniakea supercluster? (I think that's the approximate mass that was in each pixel in the CMB, but it's extremely large regardless.) Would we really expect to see anything but the tiniest variation? What am I missing?

  • @Achrononmaster
    @Achrononmaster2 ай бұрын

    CPT symmetry is a good explanation too, might be better than CCC? (q.v. Turok & Boyle).

  • @Achrononmaster

    @Achrononmaster

    2 ай бұрын

    For me, the CPT Symmetric Universe proposal is the current "best" explanation. It's just that it is not widely known. "Best" does not always mean "most popular" or "most recognized".

  • @volvodashcam
    @volvodashcam2 ай бұрын

    It's such a great change to see someone really intelligent sharing their knowledge on KZread. This is why plattforms like this is worth it. You and some other really great and smart KZreadrs are the real benifit with social media. Thank you!

  • @dr.lairdwhitehillsfunwitha67
    @dr.lairdwhitehillsfunwitha672 ай бұрын

    Thanks!

  • @PeterFraser-hp3rs
    @PeterFraser-hp3rs2 ай бұрын

    7:13 Is there a quantum entanglement-like thingy going on? (Maybe the slight differences in temperature in the CM background is due to the delta in matter and antimatter at the commencement of the big bang.)

  • @Cygnus__X1
    @Cygnus__X12 ай бұрын

    you didn't mention roger penrose's CCC, cycles of the universe without any big crunch. explains the smoothness, geometry, and there's testable evidence of hawking points which seem to show up in the cmb.

  • @DavidLindes
    @DavidLindes2 ай бұрын

    As a Californian by birth, nice shirt. ;) Also, nice video. I’m curious: at a hunch level, do you suspect inflation is (at least partially) wrong? What do you guess that future research might turn up?

  • @CustardCream22
    @CustardCream222 ай бұрын

    I was hoping you’d mention the big cold patch in the CMB. I wonder if that had any impact on part of the universe at all.

  • @jonloomis5210
    @jonloomis52102 ай бұрын

    Instead of proposing that the speed of light changes, does the application of time dilation cause the same problems? For instance, in the young universe, depending on regional density time may have been slower relative to what we experience now. What effect would this have on our observations? Does the speed of light remain constant based upon the dilated time in which light would appear to move slower, or remain constant based on our perception of time that would actually make it appear to move faster (if a second is 10% longer relative to us, does c appear 10% faster or 10% slower for that region)?

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