pedrosocial pedrosocial@datamost.com

>> Michele Montagna:

“[...] Astrofísico: "El Big Bang no es el comienzo del universo" Interesante teoria, que opinan uds. [...]”

Since I am not a fluent Spanish writer or speaker, I will have to reply in English. I hope this is acceptable. I would welcome someone fluent in both to translate, if that is necessary.

The article you shared is actually a secondary writer's interpretation of an original article by the science writer, Ethan Siegel, writing for "Forbes". That original article is here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/09/21/the-big-bang-wasnt-the-beginning-after-all/#3acc9b5d55df . It's always best to go back to the more primary of the sources, if possible, to avoid a person filtering the message through their own pre-existing notions.

In that original article, Siegel points out a public misconception about the Big Bang, but it's important to note while this is a public misconception is it not a scientific one. The physics/astrophysics community has accepted, since the data became very solid in the period from about 2000-2008, that the "bang" part of "big bang" doesn't actually refer to the start of the universe, but rather to its extremely rapid expansion (a period known as "inflation") that occurred a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction of a second after zero-time.

So it's true that the physics community used to assume this:

time = 0 seconds is when the "bang" occurs.

But now, thanks to a lot of evidence from the light left over from the big bang itself (the cosmic microwave background), we know this is more correct:

time = 0 seconds is when the universe began, but the "bang" part occurred about 10^{-33}s --- 10^{-32}s after time 0.

So there is still a bang, just not at time zero. The universe as we know it now is still the result of the bang. But the bang is not quite the beginning. So that's very interesting, but I hardly share the RT article writer's implication that this somehow overthrows an idea. It's doesn't. The big bang theory is still, by far, the best explanation for everything we know now from measurements of the universe. It just turns out the origin of the bang is displaced from zero, and there is something else that happened just before that we need to understand. Siegel makes it clear in his article he's just talking about displacing the origin of the bang from zero to a time just after zero. The RT writer picks through Siegel's writing for the most exciting quotes, but misses the message.

So, yes, it's exciting that that "bang" part of "big bang" came a little after the origin of the cosmos, and there is a TON we need to understand about all that, but nothing is being overthrown. Knowledge of the beginning of time is being very much refined. And there is a lot of opportunity for physicists young and old to make big strides in all of this. Lots of knowledge (and, likely, prizes) remains to be gained about the beginning of time!

We're resuming our monthly community meeting!

We'll meet today Friday 2017/09/15 at 20:00 UTC on the #pump.io channel on the Freenode IRC network, which is also mirrored to the pump.io@conference.movim.eu jabber/XMPP MUC room.

You're all welcome to join us!

Agenda (editable) is here https://github.com/pump-io/pump.io/wiki/Meeting-2017-09-15

It's that time of the... trimester? again!

Last week I tagged the development version of Dianara, my Pump.io client as beta, preparing for the release of v1.4.0.

I have a few details to polish, but some wider testing would be helpful. If you can build from source, now's a good time to do so and test it. If you already run an often-updated version from git, feedback would be good.

The main changes since v1.3.7 include:

• Movable side panel and movable toolbar, after unlocking (left side of screenshot).
• Attachment icons will match the mimetype of the attachment, using your system's iconset (upper-right).
• Optional "activity icons" in the minor feeds (lower-right).
• Notifications will also make the window "demand attention", which usually results in some sort of taskbar/dock entry flashing in some way, in most desktops. Enabled by default, but can be disabled.
• Better zoom control in the image viewer.

(Full/current CHANGELOG file)

As announced, v1.3.7 was the last version to support Qt 4.x. Qt 5 is required for 1.4.0. The bad news is that, at this time, users of distributions such as Debian 9 can't build with the version of QOAuth present in their repositories, based on Qt 4. Current Debian Testing/Sid is fine though.

Test away, and let me know if you find any issues that are not listed in the BUGS file, or in the issue tracker.

Also, if you maintain any translations, now is a good time to update them =)

Cheers! o/