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Bojowald (and other bounce QC researchers) are approaching a kind of 'moment of truth' with the April 2009 scheduled launch of Planck and Herschel satellites.
The nonsingular Quantum Cosmology models they are developing are expected to make predictions about structure formation in the early universe. The new ESA instruments will have unprecedented ability to detect and record the process of structure formation.
Some preliminary indefinite suggestions of things to look for have been made (for example Bojowald Skirzewski 0808.0701). The bounce QC people have an important opportunity to derive and state more precise predictions.
People in several different research lines talk with apparent confidence about quantum fluctuations seeding structure in an assumed homogeneous-isotropic universe. I get the impression that it isn't clearly understood how inflation is supposed to have amplified and realized these fluctuations---how the shift from quantum to classical occurred and how the observed spectrum of spatial variation was determined.
Quantum cosmology is specifically equipped to study this in detail, and you can see them approaching these issues in the 0808.0701 paper.
The opportunity would be to predict aspects of structure which can be looked for by Planck and Herschel satellites, when they go into operation starting around April.
Planck will look at CMB wavelengths 0.35 mm to 10 mm.
Herschel will look at protogalaxy wavelengths possibly from 0.05 mm to 0.7 mm (I didn't find consistent information about this yet)
Roughly speaking the CMB is at redshift z = 1000 (more exactly 1090) and the protogalaxies are more like z = 10 to z = 100 (very roughly an order of magnitude less redshift, and therefore an order of magnitude shorter wavelengths).
The hope would be, I surmise, that bounce quantum cosmology models will be better than classical models at explaining and predicting early structure formation in the cosmic microwave background and the protogalaxies.
Whether or not this will prove true, we of course do not know
The nonsingular Quantum Cosmology models they are developing are expected to make predictions about structure formation in the early universe. The new ESA instruments will have unprecedented ability to detect and record the process of structure formation.
Some preliminary indefinite suggestions of things to look for have been made (for example Bojowald Skirzewski 0808.0701). The bounce QC people have an important opportunity to derive and state more precise predictions.
People in several different research lines talk with apparent confidence about quantum fluctuations seeding structure in an assumed homogeneous-isotropic universe. I get the impression that it isn't clearly understood how inflation is supposed to have amplified and realized these fluctuations---how the shift from quantum to classical occurred and how the observed spectrum of spatial variation was determined.
Quantum cosmology is specifically equipped to study this in detail, and you can see them approaching these issues in the 0808.0701 paper.
The opportunity would be to predict aspects of structure which can be looked for by Planck and Herschel satellites, when they go into operation starting around April.
Planck will look at CMB wavelengths 0.35 mm to 10 mm.
Herschel will look at protogalaxy wavelengths possibly from 0.05 mm to 0.7 mm (I didn't find consistent information about this yet)
Roughly speaking the CMB is at redshift z = 1000 (more exactly 1090) and the protogalaxies are more like z = 10 to z = 100 (very roughly an order of magnitude less redshift, and therefore an order of magnitude shorter wavelengths).
The hope would be, I surmise, that bounce quantum cosmology models will be better than classical models at explaining and predicting early structure formation in the cosmic microwave background and the protogalaxies.
Whether or not this will prove true, we of course do not know
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