Our finely-tuned Universe part II – Examples of fine tuning

In a previous post I talked about the four forces which govern the way the Universe works. I’m now going to give some examples of fine tuning. How different our Universe would be if these four forces had very different relative strengths. But before I do this, it is worth giving a quick summary from… Continue reading Our finely-tuned Universe part II – Examples of fine tuning

Measuring Distances in Cosmology

I have recently written an article for my local amateur astronomical society about distance measurements in cosmology. There is a lot of confusion about what we mean by "distance" on the vast such scales and the article was written to help clear up of these misunderstandings. It is an expanded version of a shorter blog… Continue reading Measuring Distances in Cosmology

Cosmic Horizons

Update 5 September 2022. A video covering much of the material in this post is available at: https://youtu.be/hw07Yh7b63M ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Original post below Although the Universe may be infinite in extent, in the generally accepted Big Bang cosmology we can only see a small fraction of it. This is known as the observable universe. Field of… Continue reading Cosmic Horizons

Distances in Cosmology

This post has now been superseded by a more detailed post Measuring Distances in Cosmology ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I recently read an article on the popular astronomy website site Universe Today. It stated that ‘…the CMB [cosmic microwave background radiation]  is visible at a distance of 13.8 billion light years in all directions from Earth, leading scientists… Continue reading Distances in Cosmology

Dark energy an unexpected finding

I offered recently to write an article for my local astronomy society on the discovery of dark energy.  It is  an expanded version of the blog post I wrote  on the topic last year and, at over 3000 words, it is longer  than my usual posts. I thought it would be of interest to many… Continue reading Dark energy an unexpected finding