“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.
“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.”
Where were Popper and Feynman to tell them that the whole theory must be falsified.
No fair making changes and improving theory. its either false or true.
hehe
Inflation seems to be nearing confirmed, but don’t mistake that for confirmation of the Big Bang. There are many ways to get gravity waves – big bang is just the simplest one we have thought of. For example, it could be that regions of the universe undergo inflation. If the inflated region we are in is large enough, we will never see outside of it and thus conclude inflation is everywhere.
I am waiting for the mechanism behind inflation before I start counting my chickens – or gravitons in this case.
People shouldn’t get too hung up on the “expanding into what” questions. No one has a simple answer for that. The lower dimensional analogies (ie. surface of a sphere) require a third, higher dimension to embed the surface, just as a Klein bottle requires a fourth to allow the edges of the Mobius strip to join.
And Dr Svalgaard’s hotel room example is interesting, but I’m having a hard time thinking of an equivalent analogy that deals with uncountably infinite sets (probably a geometrical example akin to the surface is the best).
There are also a number of simplifying assumptions that have to be made before you get to a reasonable definition of a (not “the”) underlying metric involved in solutions to Einstein’s equations: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Exact_solutions_of_Einstein's_equations.
There’s a decent, very simplified description and example here talking about metric expansion and measuring distances here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space#Measuring_distances_in_expanding_space. Again, a very simplified picture.
I think the common depictions of the Big Bang (a terrible phrase) have a lot to do with the confusion about what was going on. Black screen, giant explosion, stuff flying out in all directions – childishly simplistic and the product of animators and designers rather than physicists. First off, you could not have “seen” it from the outside, because there was no outside – the birth of the universe was also the creation of space and time, so not only was there no place outside from which to observe it, there was no time “before” the event. In fact it’s impossible to depict as it wasn’t ‘like’ anything and all analogies will be flawed.
No need to invoke gods or supernatural forces either – in fact, by doing so you put an end to all further enquiries by putting it in a box labelled “god did it” and closing the lid. Worse, it just creates another layer of insoluble problems – what is god? Where did it come from? Why? And so on, ad infinitum. No. Much better to leave all that stuff in the Bronze Age, where it came from and move forward with observation and enquiry. To be sure, science doesn’t have all the answers, but then it doesn’t claim to. We’re really still at the start of the process, not the end, but consider how far we’ve come in just a few hundred years, armed with nothing more than our brains and some things made from glass and metal. The best is yet to come!
@Adrian Clarkson Mann – I disagree about God putting a lid on discovery. Let each believe what they will. And yes, I fully acknowledge that my knowledge is limited, but each time scientists push back the barriers (in time) of understanding of the universe, it just raises more questions. That will never end, as it is a constant cycle. So I do not see a belief in a supreme being being a hindrance. Even scientists who do believe still search for understanding.
This may be the most significant confirmation of theory since the 1919 expedition confirmed Einstein’s prediction.
All that we can see is our universe and there is no evidence of anisotropy, and thus of your regions. The multiverse is Popper unfalsifiable.
Robert of Texas says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:41 pm
Inflation seems to be nearing confirmed, but don’t mistake that for confirmation of the Big Bang.
Big Bang does not need inflation for confirmation. There are many other [and better] confirmations of the BB.
James Smyth says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:42 pm
And Dr Svalgaard’s hotel room example is interesting, but I’m having a hard time thinking of an equivalent analogy that deals with uncountably infinite sets
For the simplest such sets [a line segment], there are infinitely ‘many’ points between any two points, no matter how close. With infinities there are always ‘room enough’.
lsvalgaard says:
I assume that the following is that to which you were referring or at least a description of it.
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Guth/Guth3.html
And I also assume that the small patch that he indicates begins the inflation process is 10 to the -24th not 10 to the +24th cm. A very interesting paper that I had not seen. Are the “details” being still pursued?
I will check out your most recent link reference. As far as space and time, Hořava believes that unzipping space-time may solve some of the problems, answer some of the unanswered questions in today’s physics. And João Magueijo seems to think a variable speed of light has some answers. I am sure you are aware of both but I mention them as they are both outside the box and have, as yet, not been burned at the stake.
In any event, thank you for your responses.
Jim G says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:49 pm
I am sure you are aware of both but I mention them as they are both outside the box and have, as yet, not been burned at the stake.
What is important is that cosmology today is a highly precise observational science. Our progress is driven by observations and hard data. To me it is amazing how even some of the bizarre predictions of some theories are increasingly being confirmed, while other theories are being ruled out. Hard data is driving the whole field.
Janice Moore says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:12 am
No version of the Big Bang Theory in any way corresponds to the various creation myths in the Bible. Your tendentious editing & mistranslation of the account of one of them cannot gloss over this inconvenient truth.
“In the beginning, … God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light. … And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse … And it was so.’” Genesis 1:1-8.
The Hebrew word you have falsely translated as “expanse” is “raqiyeh”, which is onomatopoeic & means something solid pounded out of metal, as a copper bowl (thus making a racket). The Alexandrian Jewish scholars in the centuries before Jesus who translated the Old Testament as then known into Greek (the Septuagint or Apostles’ Bible) rendered “raqiyeh” as “stereoma”, ie something beaten or hammered into a hard form, which Jerome later translated into Latin as “firmamentum”.
Thus in Genesis & elsewhere in the Bible, earth is flat with the vault of heaven over it, like a domed stadium. The waters above the dome include the storehouses of rain, snow & other precipitation, which fall to earth through windows, the control levers of which God Himself operates. The waters below the flat earth, supported upon its immoveable pillars, can gush forth to fill the oceans, or overflow them onto the land, as in Noah’s flood, in which “the fountains of the great deep” are mentioned even before the “windows of heaven”.
Note also please that the author of Genesis 1 fails to make the connection between the sun & light, since God creates light before the sun, nor realizes that the moon shines by reflected sunlight. He also imagines that plants appeared before the sun which makes photosynthesis possible. Of course in other biblical creation stories, like the Adam & Eve myth, the order differs.
Genesis 1 (King James Version):
“1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.”
Whatever its scientific merits, the multiverse hypothesis appeals to atheists because it gets around the various Anthropic Principles which some cosmologists & other physicists find convincing.
Robert of Texas says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:41 pm
The cosmic background radiation confirms the Big Bang Theory. Speed of inflation is a detail. Important for understanding the process of expansion, but not needed to confirm the Big Bang. Think of Einstein’s improving on Newtonian gravitation theory.
Doug Huffman says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:46 pm
A multiverse is theoretically falsifiable. M Theory makes predictions for which some observers claim to have found evidence.
SFAIK, the underlying universal essence that comprises cosmic matter and energy can’t be made to absolutely unexist by any known scientific process, theoretical or in practice, how then can it have come into existence in the first instance? But material forms are a different matter, all Cosmic material forms are finite, everything that has a beginning has an ending, but the underlying essence from which the forms are comprised is without beginning or end.
Perhaps some people are conflating cosmic universal form with its underlying essence, Personally I find it as unimaginable that there was a beginning to absolute cosmic essence as it is for any and all cosmic forms to not have had a beginning.
Ben D says:
March 17, 2014 at 4:38 pm
IMO that mass & energy should exist within it is a property of multidimensional space-time.
lsvalgaard:
James Smyth says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:42 pm
And Dr Svalgaard’s hotel room example is interesting, but I’m having a hard time thinking of an equivalent analogy that deals with uncountably infinite sets
For the simplest such sets [a line segment], there are infinitely ‘many’ points between any two points, no matter how close. With infinities there are always ‘room enough’.
Right, at which point your particular analogy reaches it’s usefulness, being prefaced as it is on numbering (ie. counting) rooms. Which is why I deferred to more geometrical example to handle aleph one.
“In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of today’s best telescopes.”
Amazing. Let’s see . . . So all the matter and energy is expanding outwards, all particles shooting away from each other at what — by definition — is a speed much greater than the relative escape velocity. Yet — somehow — a whole bunch of particles happened to stick right next to each other the whole time, defying this tremendous explosion of energy and ironically refusing to be subject to the higher-than-escape-velocity trajectories of normal physics, until they eventually . . . wait for it . . . slowed down in empty space, got attracted to each other (notwithstanding the prior velocity), and then coalesced into things like stars and planets and galaxies.
Amazing.
The universe suddenly existed out of a set of physical principles that no longer apply. Sometimes it takes less faith to believe in God.
James Smyth says:
March 17, 2014 at 4:45 pm
Right, at which point your particular analogy reaches it’s usefulness, being prefaced as it is on numbering (ie. counting) rooms. Which is why I deferred to more geometrical example to handle aleph one.
Analogies almost break down at some point, but then again, there are [quantum] theories that posit that space is quantized, so countable…
Robert of Texas says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:41 pm
In science, there is no final confirmation. To say that a theory is confirmed is to say that we have found something that was predicted from the theory. Always, there remains the possibility that our next prediction will prove false and the theory will require modification. Disconfirmation, falsification, is absolute and demands a change.
All this was brought to public attention in 1748 when David Hume published his “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.” Hume had shown, in arguments as powerful as any ever produced by philosopher or logician, that all inferences from experience are probable only.
A far more modern version of the same thesis came from the late W.V. Quine who argued that the sum total of all possible evidence must “underdetermine,” his word, physical theory. Hence, there can be at least two physical theories that are logically incompatible yet imply all and only the same observation statements.
All good scientists know these truths, though they might articulate them differently. The idea that science can be settled is an embarrassment to all good scientists.
Eric Anderson says:
March 17, 2014 at 4:51 pm
Amazing.
And very likely true…
There is no getting around that we live in a temporary earth universe and universe where things grow and decay with time. There has to be an eternity where things always exist and a God able to create a temporary earth and universe. Otherwise one always goes back to Ok who created God, or what was there before the “big bang”. There is an eternity and a God who created the earth and universe, and “big bang” if you like that term, There is no need to go back beyond God and eternity as it is always there and always has been, time is eternal, not like time on earth, this is always there and has to be to make any sense of anything. You need to grasp what eternity is, always there and never ending and forget the temporary earth and universe time. Then it all makes sense.
We are just in a temporary existence here in a temporary body to learn and prepare our souls to go back to where we came from eternity. Find God and you will find life and meaning to all existence. Without Him nothing makes any real sense at all. The bible tells the whole story in a way we human minds can grasp. The reality is way beyond our comprehension down here in this temporary home. Seek to learn and prepare for your eternal; home while in this temporary testing ground. God is eternal love, find this, and you don’t need to search for any “big bang”!
From the papers authors
“It’s going to be controversial,” he told Space.com. “We can expect that people will try to shoot at it from every direction, and we invite that — that’s the scientific process, and it’ll be fun and interesting.”
http://www.space.com/25078-universe-inflation-gravitational-waves-discovery.html
How refreshing. These guys are obviously NOT climate scientists. 😉
milodonharlani says:
IMO that mass & energy should exist within it is a property of multidimensional space-time.
—————————
Apparent multidimensional space-time is a description of reality as perceived by a consciousness functioning in space-time (as we mortal do), nevertheless the Cosmos is a unity. All perceived aspects of Cosmos are merely differentiations abstracted from the non-dual absolute nature.
Pardon me for being stupid but to me “Yes, that is how it works. Hubble’s law makes eminent sense as the light waves are stretched out by the expansion of space and thus look redder in proportion with the distance traveled.” simply means that space is expanding into space or explain where space stops and a new and so far undefined new space starts that space can expand into.
John Peter says:
March 17, 2014 at 5:08 pm
simply means that space is expanding into space
No, there is no ‘into’. All of infinite space expands. This simply means that the distance between ANY two objects [no matter where] increases with time.
Science has a need to explain everything. We all get that. But sometimes they just get ahead of themselves in explaining too much, too soon, with insufficient information. The Big Bang will never be proven, nor can it be. It’s a completely unsatisfying concept to me. It resolves nothing. I’d sooner accept creationism.