I'm pretty sure I have confused something, but I am sure that it is not CBR and waveform collapse. What I am confused about is that some level of background radiation would seem to exist no matter what, as light does not simply emit from a source and travel in a straight line to its destination. As such, with multiple sources, one would expect to see light from pretty much every direction at some given frequency rather than expecting any gaps. This makes it difficult for me to understand the significance of CBR. From what I have read its initial discovery was considered somewhat surprising, but quantum physics was well beyond the double-slit experiment and as such this discovery would not seem to me to be a surprising one at all, nor how it would suggest anything at all about the origin of the universe.
Again, the CMBR
initially had nothing to do with quantum mechanics. It is about Relativity, not QM. Be patient and read my entire post before you respond, please.
Now, as it happens, we
don't see the same level of light from all directions, do we? There are bright points and dark areas: stars and galaxies and black space in between. So, at any given wavelength, the intensity of light varies from point to point in the sky. We do get gaps at nearly all wavelengths from microwave to x-rays.
BUT, this is not true for a particular frequency of
microwave radiation: 3 degrees Kelvin. Those are very long wavelengths of light. That radiation is nearly the same no matter where in the sky you look. And it's discovery was surprising. The guys who discovered it were not looking for it, but instead were testing a microwave telescope. They had never heard of Big Bang. However, Big Bang predicts that such radiation should exist. When the universe was very small, it cooled enough for matter to condense. Matter and antimatter were formed in almost equal amounts, but they destroyed each other (there was 1 part per billion excess of matter, which gives us all the matter in the universe today). When matter and antimatter annihilate one another, the result is photons. It is those photons that comprise the CMBR.
Now, the universe is heterogenous: we do have galaxies and other clumps of matter in it. However, if the universe were completely homogenous at the time of the matter/antimatter annihilation, we would not have clumps of matter today. What people began looking for was very tiny differences in the intensity of the CMBR. These correspond to quantum fluctuations of slightly higher density back when the CMBR was formed. Since gravity is only an attraction force, even very small initial differences in density would, in time, give rise to galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
Here's a paper discussing the interaction between quantum dynamics and the CBR, if not the precise confusion.
http://www.df.ufscar.br/~quantum/publications/PRA12108.pdf
The paper is very confusing and beyond the math that I usually do. It is a highly esoteric paper arguing an alternative to a then published theory about decoherence . For some reason they think that the early universe at the time the CMBR formed was in a state of coherence. I have not encountered that anywhere. They then try to tie that to the CMBR by saying: "
an increase of total mean energy of the Universe claimed to be the origin of the cosmic background radiation (CBR)." From what I have read, as I stated above, the CBR resulted from the annihilation of matter/antimatter pairs and there is no increase in the total mean energy of the universe as a result.
The authors later state "
we assume ad hoc that the evolution of the system of particles, under the influence of the CBR," As I said, everything I have read says that the CMBR resulted from matter/antimatter annihilation, not that CMBR influenced the system. So their ad hoc hypothesis, which is essential to their calculations, is basically at odds with the rest of the cosomological community. Which may explain why this paper has not been accepted by the community.
Basically I am trying to figure out how we distinguish between an expected background radiation due to CBR and an expected background radiation due to waveform probabilities and collapse at our particular observation point.]
A waveform collapse will not, by itself, generate any radiation. So any "waveform probabilities and collapse" will not, by itself, give the CBR. The CBR is the expected background radiation. Expected from the Big Bang.
As the paper states: "in the present work we assume the point of view of standard cosmology: the present CBR is a clue that the universe began its expansion from a Big Bang (10)." The paper does not give an alternative explanation for the cause of the CBR (waveform collapse), but instead uses the CBR as a means of looking at a supposed waveform collapse shortly after the Big Bang.
Very basic stuff. Sorry, but thanks a ton for clearing that up for me. I sure appreciate it. You gave me a lot of information I did not really know enough to even ask, but it was very interesting.
