“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar…”
From the Stanford Report, March 17, 2014 (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard) video follows
New evidence from space supports Stanford physicist’s theory of how universe began
The detection of gravitational waves by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe came to be. The discovery, made in part by Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, supports the theoretical work of Stanford’s Andrei Linde.
Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of today’s best telescopes. All this, of course, has just been theory.
Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as “cosmic inflation.” Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the “first tremors of the Big Bang.” Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
“This is really exciting. We have made the first direct image of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time across the primordial sky, and verified a theory about the creation of the whole universe,” said Chao-Lin Kuo, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a co-leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.
These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.
Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.
“Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called ‘B-modes,’ which represents a twisting or ‘curl’ pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light,” said BICEP2 co-leader Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a “handedness,” much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.
“The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness,” Kuo said.
The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.
“The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground,” said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. “It’s one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang.”
The researchers were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analyzed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.
“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar,” said co-leader Clem Pryke, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota.
Physicist Alan Guth formally proposed inflationary theory in 1980, when he was a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, as a modification of conventional Big Bang theory. Instead of the universe beginning as a rapidly expanding fireball, Guth theorized that the universe inflated extremely rapidly from a tiny piece of space and became exponentially larger in a fraction of a second. This idea immediately attracted lots of attention because it could provide a unique solution to many difficult problems of the standard Big Bang theory.
However, as Guth, who is now a professor of physics at MIT, immediately realized, certain predictions in his scenario contradicted observational data. In the early 1980s, Russian physicist Andrei Linde modified the model into a concept called “new inflation” and again to “eternal chaotic inflation,” both of which generated predictions that closely matched actual observations of the sky.
Linde, now a professor of physics at Stanford, could not hide his excitement about the news. “These results are a smoking gun for inflation, because alternative theories do not predict such a signal,” he said. “This is something I have been hoping to see for 30 years.”
BICEP2’s measurements of inflationary gravitational waves are an impressive combination of theoretical reasoning and cutting-edge technology. Stanford’s contribution to the discovery extends beyond Kuo, who designed the polarization detectors. Kent Irwin, a professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC, also conducted pioneering work on superconducting sensors and readout systems used in the experiment. The research also involved several researchers, including Kuo, affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), which is supported by Stanford, SLAC and the Kavli Foundation.
BICEP2 is the second stage of a coordinated program, the BICEP and Keck Array experiments, which has a co-principal investigator structure. The four PIs are Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL,) John Kovac (Harvard), Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC) and Clem Pryke (UMN). All have worked together on the present result, along with talented teams of students and scientists. Other major collaborating institutions for BICEP2 include the University of California, San Diego; University of British Columbia; National Institute of Standards and Technology; University of Toronto; Cardiff University; and Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique.
BICEP2 is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF also runs the South Pole Station where BICEP2 and the other telescopes used in this work are located. The Keck Foundation also contributed major funding for the construction of the team’s telescopes. NASA, JPL and the Moore Foundation generously supported the development of the ultra-sensitive detector arrays that made these measurements possible.
Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website: http://bicepkeck.org
Video by Kurt HickmanAssistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, right, delivers news of the discovery to Professor Andrei Linde.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 8:22 am
would lead one to necessarily be a strong believer in coincidence or believe in a Designer for everything to be as perfect as it is for this universe and we who inhabit it to exist today.
This leads to the issue of SETI. If the Universe were ‘designed’ or ‘tuned’ or whatever to fit life as we know it, then that would also be true for the untold trillions of other planets in the observable Universe, so the Universe should be teeming with life, and one must ask with Fermi: “where is everybody?”.
lsvalgaard says
“This leads to the issue of SETI.”
The variables necessary for life to exist here on Earth are so numerous that development of intelligent life may be rare even within the habitable zones of stars. In an infinite universe or even semi-infinite, your point is still well taken. However, considering the speed of light as a barrier of sorts, they may well be out there but the time required for discovery of others may be very long for both us and them. And we have just learned how to read, so to speak. One thing for sure is that our little piece of rock is well “designed or tuned” for life and the degree of faith required to believe in coincidence as the cause for all of this exceeds that required for faith in a Designer, at least for me. Another way of considering this is to buy what all of the religions seem to believe and that is that we are “special”. Or one could buy the Star Treck Prime Directive when considering why no one has contacted us. A truely advanced society might not consider us worthy of contact or tastey enough to visit, depending upon in what direction they developed.
It will always come down to faith in the end and a willingness to ignore our vanity and believe in the possibility of a higher power and that perhaps some of those ridiculed for their beliefs actually are inspired and know more than we do. And this is from one who does not buy many of the rules and controls that religions attempt to impose just as I do not buy all of the accepted scientific theories. One of the Nostic Gospels, that of St Thomas, says we will find God within us. Not something that Emperor Constantine wanted to hear when the present New Testament was being adopted in about 450 AD, as it did not require much of a Church, structure or control.
Sorry, that’s “Gnostic”.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 10:54 am
to buy what all of the religions seem to believe and that is that we are “special”.
Or perhaps there is a different god for every planet with life.
TheLastDemocrat says:
March 19, 2014 at 6:22 am
Zaphon became the Hebrew word for “north” because the mountain Zaphon was in the north. Zaphon, the abode of Baal, contrasts with Zion, the home of Yahweh. Baal Zaphon was worshiped even in Egypt, where a shrine to him was located along the route of the Hebrew slaves out of captivity, indeed where they crossed the “Red Sea”. (Vowels are conjectural in Hebrew where not indicated by diacritical marks, since the language is written in consonants.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal-zephon
If you really suppose that the Bible is the Word of God, then you ought to try to understand its real meaning, instead of making stuff up about it.
As with much of Job, the passage in question was obscure before the 1929 discovery of the Ugaritic texts & later the Akkadian texts from Ras Shamra. Transliterated from Hebrew, Job 26:7 reads: “no†eh tzäfôn al-Tohû Toleh eretz al-B’liy-mäh”. You might recognize “tohu” from Genesis 1. Scholars today would translate this verse as something like, “He stretches out Zaphon above the wasteland; while He suspends the land upon nothing.” (“Eretz” in Hebrew contains all the meanings of “earth” in English, including “land”, “soil”, etc, hence is used in modern Hebrew to refer to the land of Israel.)
IOW, as with much of Job, the passage is about the power of God, who created Zaphon, the mighty, sacred mountain in the north, which looms over the desert. It says nothing at all about astronomy, astrophysics or modern cosmology.
By studying recent real scholarship, instead of the mendacities of the professional liars of Answers in Genesis, you could learn a lot about the Bible.
It is a shameful, outrageous libel to claim I disparage true Christians or Jews, because I call BS on lying creationists who worship their own false interpretation of a compilation of books written, copied, selected & translated by men (& maybe one woman), instead of worshiping God, Whom the authors tried to imagine.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 8:22 am
You mean “raise the question”, not “beg the question”. Begging the question is the name of a logical fallacy which means assuming what you intend to prove. Unfortunately, this misuse is spreading. Please excuse my pedantry, but the misuse still annoys me.
The Anthropic Principle–attractive to some since the particular parameters of our universe are indeed statistically improbable if this be the only one–is truly challenged by the multiverse hypothesis. But the God hypothesis doesn’t explain anything or make testable predictions, so isn’t scientific. Believing in it remains a matter of faith, as it should be. Were it possible to “prove” or confirm the existence of God, then faith would have no value. The Christian God therefore must always remain mysterious for justification by faith alone to “work”.
Not sure what you mean by “something from nothing theories”. The Big Bang Theory, well supported by observations, doesn’t posit something from nothing, since under it the universe expands from a hot, massive singularity. Science may one day be able to peer back beyond the beginning, as it were, or find evidence for other universes outside ours, which some scientists already claim to have done.
In the present state of science, you’re free to believe that God created the mass & energy observed in this & any other universes, but there is no compelling scientific reasons for making that assumption. Science cannot yet deal with the question of why anything should exist, & may never be able to do so. At present scientists have to be content with studying how nature works without knowing why. As I wrote before, it could just be that mass & energy are properties of spacetime.
milodonharlani says:
“Not sure what you mean by “something from nothing theories”. The Big Bang Theory, well supported by observations, doesn’t posit something from nothing, since under it the universe expands from a hot, massive singularity. Science may one day be able to peer back beyond the beginning, as it were, or find evidence for other universes outside ours, which some scientists already claim to have done.”
Agree with most of what you say. But where did the singularity come from? Something from nothing. Big Bang is a theory but not necessarily supported as the beginning of the entire universe, since the universe may well be infinite and the Big Bang a local event. One theory is that a bump contact with another multiverse caused what we see as the “Big Bang”.
lsvalgaard says:
March 19, 2014 at 11:04 am
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 10:54 am
to buy what all of the religions seem to believe and that is that we are “special”.
“Or perhaps there is a different god for every planet with life.”
Or perhaps time constraints on how long it takes to develop intelligent life and how long it lasts before self or natural destruction limit the potential for contact with other intelligent species. I have also seen theories regarding the unlikely possibilities of mutation and natural selection, given the time that life has been around, actually coming up with intelligent life without intervention of some sort. Mutation and natural selection work well within species but are questionable in going from single cell critters to intelligent, self aware life, if there is, indeed, truely such in existence today.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 11:50 am
But where did the singularity come from? Something from nothing.
We have to be careful with the concept of ‘nothing’. The ‘vacuum’ has properties [as opposed to ‘nothing’ which is the state of ‘no properties’] as is therefore not ‘nothing’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum :
“QED [Quantum ElectroDynamics – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics ] vacuum has interesting and complex properties. In QED vacuum, the electric and magnetic fields have zero average values, but their variances are not zero.[18] As a result, QED vacuum contains vacuum fluctuations (virtual particles that hop into and out of existence), and a finite energy called vacuum energy. Vacuum fluctuations are an essential and ubiquitous part of quantum field theory. Some experimentally verified effects of vacuum fluctuations include spontaneous emission and the Lamb shift.[19] Coulomb’s law and the electric potential in vacuum near an electric charge are modified.[20]
Theoretically, in QCD vacuum multiple vacuum states can coexist.[21] The starting and ending of cosmological inflation is thought to have arisen from transitions between different vacuum states.”
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Or perhaps time constraints on how long it takes to develop intelligent life and how long it lasts before self or natural destruction limit the potential for contact with other intelligent species.
If the Universe were designed for life, it would be a poor designer that lets her creation self destruct.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 11:50 am
Our universe is not infinite, but a collection of multiverses might be.
I assume by “bump contact” you refer to Brane Theory.
Presuming a Creator contributes nothing to scientific understanding, & is itself a “something from nothing” hypothesis. But, as I noted, the God hypothesis isn’t scientific, since it can’t be tested, although some have tried to do so. It is now & IMO should remain in the realm of faith, or at most metaphysics, rather than physics. The potentially theistic Anthropic Principle (actually various principles, including the jocularly named CRAP) is however IMO potentially testable, hence scientific. It can in effect be falsified by discovery of multiverses.
milodonharlani says:
“The Anthropic Principle–attractive to some since the particular parameters of our universe are indeed statistically improbable if this be the only one–is truly challenged by the multiverse hypothesis. But the God hypothesis doesn’t explain anything or make testable predictions, so isn’t scientific. Believing in it remains a matter of faith, as it should be.”
And I will be waiting, probably a long time, for the scientific proof of the multiverse hypothesis. Given my age, the God hypothesis will, no doubt, be proven to me, one way or the other much sooner.
lsvalgaard says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:05 pm
The concept of species extinction in the late 18th & early 19th centuries met opposition because the Great Chain of Being created by God could not contain imperfect forms, & extinction implied imperfection. It took Thomas Jefferson for instance about 20 years to come to terms with the reality of extinction, after it was first demonstrated by Cuvier. That’s why he asked Lewis & Clark to be on the lookout for mastodons or mammoths in the West.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:11 pm
Even if you don’t meet your Maker, the God hypothesis would not necessarily be falsified. There could be a Creator, but He might not grant all or any humans eternal life.
This cosmologist thinks she has already detected evidence of another universe next to ours, & some of her colleagues agree with her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mersini-Houghton
lsvalgaard says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:05 pm
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Or perhaps time constraints on how long it takes to develop intelligent life and how long it lasts before self or natural destruction limit the potential for contact with other intelligent species.
“If the Universe were designed for life, it would be a poor designer that lets her creation self destruct.”
The universe, or at least our little corner of it, was designed for life. The scientific proof of its existence is all around you. As to the Designer’s interference in its affairs, I’ll go along with Einstein on that one.
milodonharlani says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:06 pm
the God hypothesis isn’t scientific, since it can’t be tested
It is interesting how this viewpoint has changed over the centuries. It is not too long ago that most scientists [or natural philosophers] would consider our very existence as direct proof of that hypothesis, so that it indeed passed the test with flying colors. c.f. psalms 19:1 or Ephesians 2:10
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:16 pm
As to the Designer’s interference in its affairs, I’ll go along with Einstein on that one.
I was not referring to interference, but to the shabby design.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:16 pm
That the parameters of this universe make subatomic particles, elements, compounds, life, planets, stars & galaxies possible is not necessarily evidence of design, however the statistical odds may be stacked against a universe with those particular rules. But with a possibly infinite number of universes, that argument, the Anthropic Principle, goes away.
As you note, it is no evidence of a personal God Who intervenes in life on earth, counting hairs on heads & the fall of sparrows & grading souls on their performance here.
milodonharlani says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:14 pm
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:11 pm
Even if you don’t meet your Maker, the God hypothesis would not necessarily be falsified. There could be a Creator, but He might not grant all or any humans eternal life.
This cosmologist thinks she has already detected evidence of another universe next to ours, & some of her colleagues agree with her:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mersini-Houghton
I don’t worry about not waking up in the afterlife, it is only if I do that concerns me.
An interesting multiverse piece, but one researcher’s “evidence” is another’s conjecture given all the potential (known or unknown) variables which could cause the effects being studied. It’s kind of like the proof for dark matter. Gravitational effects do not prove its existence, they only imply that dark matter could be the cause of the effects seen. And as I have argued with Lief, bring me a spoonfull. Too much we don’t know about gravity. And then there is MOND (also with its defficiencies, I know).
flying colors. c.f. psalms 19:1 or Ephesians 2:10
lsvalgaard says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:16 pm
As to the Designer’s interference in its affairs, I’ll go along with Einstein on that one.
I was not referring to interference, but to the shabby design.
Self destruction would not have anything to do with the design only the actions or inactions of those self destructing.
lsvalgaard says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:18 pm
Also in the second creation story in Genesis 2 (at odds with that in Genesis 1), in which God fashions the first man out of dirt, then breathes life into him (Genesis 2:7). But special creation isn’t scientific, as not falsifiable, since, among other reasons, the Creator might have worked in so many mysterious ways His wonders to make. The previous myth (Six Days) in Genesis 1 fudges this by saying that the earth brought forth plants (Day Three; Genesis 1:11) & the waters various swimming & flying creatures (Day Five; Genesis 1:20), with the sun & moon on intervening Day Four, then the earth again bring forth land animals & humans on Day Six (Genesis 1:24-31). The order of creation in the second story (Adam & Eve) is irreconcilably different.
There was not a convincing scientific alternative to special creation of species, including humans, by a supernatural Creator until the 19th century, although many before that time had glimpsed reality, however dimly.
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Self destruction would not have anything to do with the design only the actions or inactions of those self destructing.
Designing something that self destructs is shabby design in my book.
As regards looking back before the BB at its precursors, is not all information homogenized in the hot minimum entropy soup that is our current conception of the BB singularity – the ultimate singularity?
lsvalgaard says:
March 19, 2014 at 12:02 pm
Jim G says:
March 19, 2014 at 11:50 am
But where did the singularity come from? Something from nothing.
“We have to be careful with the concept of ‘nothing’. The ‘vacuum’ has properties [as opposed to ‘nothing’ which is the state of ‘no properties’] as is therefore not ‘nothing’”
I used “nothing” to be outside of space/time since there would have been neither prior to the big bang from which space, time, energy and matter sprang.
Thanks, Dr. S for the note on the Special Colloquium. I’ll look for you in the audience.