“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.
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:37 pm
Educate yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
Energy(quantum fields) is massless…. Nothing new… Massless energy has been on my mind for the last 15 years….
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:35 pm
Janice Moore says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:31 pm
Chem Man: “… you are saying that the matter itself isn’t moving but the space it sits in is pulling it along with it… .”
Perhaps the word ‘pulling’ is not the ‘right’ one as there are no forces involved. Maybe ‘going along with the ride’ would be better, but for the understanding of the issue being pedantic about it does not bring more enlightenment.
Dr. Svalgaard, Janice, and Chem Man,
Perhaps this is a ‘reference frame’ issue? Each ‘person’, from their reference frame, sees space expanding around and away from them, giving the ‘appearance’ that they are at rest at the center of the universe and all else is accelerating away.
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 3:47 pm
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’.
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This would be true if our space-time would be a continuum.
We do not know whether this is the case.
More probable, the space-time is granular with “pixels” at the Planck scale.
James Smyth says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:54 pm
a rigorous treatment leading from quantum theory to countability. I really am curious.
E.g. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.3363v1.pdf and references therein.
“Recently a great interest has been devoted to the study of the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) [1–14]. The main consequence of the GUP is the existence of a minimal length scale of the order of the Planck length, which can be deduced in string theory and other theories of quantum gravity [15–22].”
Or this more accessible one: http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/BackTo286.html
So that’s how science works! it’s all settled.
Then do what you want! go for it.
Sooo, how fast is “the enormous speed of the expansion” anyway, it would have to be very fast. Has it been measured?
I would only need one such object for this to work.
What I am looking for is, how do I tell the difference between “a Doppler shift” and “a frequency change due to the stretching”? Can I tell, if I detect them, which one is which? If I can, the problem goes away, as does the need for this “experiment”, if I cannot, that is what it is for, to ask how one would tell, by spotting an object from which one could tell.
I read about tired light, not really what I was suggesting, however…Let me get this straight. There is a period of inflation. It ends, and out pops energy, matter, etc, all operating under natural laws exactly the same as we now know, the same everywhere, and all this stuff being essentially unmoving in relation to all the other stuff, just popped out and stayed in place since then. Meanwhile, the space itself that it popped out into is stretching, moving stuff apart. This would explain two differnt observations that now say space is flat.
What I was suggesting was that the very old light was created in a time when the natural laws were slightly different, however, the inflationary idea suggests that once the inflation stopped, the laws have been exactly the same everywhere since that point in time.
So with gravatational lensing, we have been able to verify that very distant, say even edge of the universe(ish) distant, that have high redshifts, are really “moving” away as fast as the redshift suggests? Yes, I know they are not moving, lets say, the distance between us is increasing. That would allow us to calibrate amount of redshift to actual increase of distance or “speed”. I wonder, then, if the hypothesised amount of redshift of the object matched its lensing measured speed?
fobdangerclose said:
March 17, 2014 at 12:38 pm
If you were moving away from Al Gores bs at the speed of light, would that help at all?
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You would have to pass through a warm hole.
Brant Ra says:
March 17, 2014 at 10:03 pm
Massless energy has been on my mind for the last 15 years….
Luckily, it will then not weigh heavily on you, although such a weighty concept could have massive implications, weighing you down to where you can’t get the energy needed to escape back up.
Legatus says:
March 17, 2014 at 10:28 pm
I would only need one such object for this to work.
I think you will never find one because space is expanding in far in excess of the speed of light for far away galaxies r, and if you think you have one, how do you ensure it is the object you are looking for and the data is not contaminated by some other effect or circumstance?
Einstein predicted gravity waves but Einstein didn’t say a word about Big Bang, dark matter, or dark energy. Gravity waves can and do exist without any of these modern creationist fairy tales.
I have never seen any proof of gravity waves confirming the Creation of everything out of nothing (which, in a nutshell, is the BB theory).
Leif Svalgaard says:
“Well, there are climate-change deniers, big-bang deniers, evolution deniers, moon-landing deniers, all sorts of ignorance-based deniers.”
Everybody can see his true colors by now? In his half-mind climate change and big bang skeptics equal evolution and moon-landing deniers. Don’t gratify this 5th column veteran with your answers.
REPLY: His “true colors” are simply placing data based truth before opinionated “truth”. Quite frankly I’ll take his method over your complaining any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Feel free to be as upset as you wish – Anthony
Alexander Feht says:
March 17, 2014 at 10:38 pm
I have never seen any proof of gravity waves confirming the Creation of everything out of nothing
That you ‘have never seen’ or don’t know or don’t understand something, does not mean that what you have not seen or don’t understand does not exist.
BTW, “something from nothing” about the big bang.
Simply put, if we try to detect anything from, say, 15 billion years ago, we cannot. We may say that there was something there then, or that there was nothing, but we have absolutly no data to work on. In fact, I havent really seen anthing that can be verified about what happend before that big bang, just unsubstantiated theories.
We now have ideas about what happend a very very small amount of time right after that big bang, as seen by gravity waves, but do we have even the slightest actual data of what happened even one second before that?
Trying to say what came before what we actually have data on really is ‘something from nothing”.
Legatus says:
March 17, 2014 at 10:56 pm
Simply put, if we try to detect anything from, say, 15 billion years ago, we cannot.
Simply put, because there wasn’t anything then. Even the notion of 15 billion years ago is dubious if time began 13.75 billion years ago.
If this discovery is reproducible (which it is not yet, on par with the single dubious sighting of a glitch that produced the Higgs’ boson brouhaha), and will become a scientific fact, the only thing it confirms is the general relativity theory. It has nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with the big bang or any other creationist fantasies (or with the mathematical neurosis called “the string theory”).
P.S. Re Dr. Svalgaard: whatever the man of his manners says doesn’t matter within any reasonable discussion of civilized people. World is full of bullies flaunting their diplomas and insulting everybody around. It is high time to stop listening to their conformist noises.
I love it when a bully troll says “Educate yourself” — and gives you a link to the New York Times article, of all things! Pathetic.
Alexander Feht says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:02 pm
the only thing it confirms is the general relativity theory
In General Relativity, the Universe is unstable. It must either expand or contract. As it is observed to expand, it must have been smaller [and thus hotter] at any time in the past, and smaller [and hotter] yet at at point before that, and still smaller [and hotter] at a time before that, etc. The Big Bang is just the name we give to the early stages of that process. At some point in time the temperature must have been 8.6 billion Kelvin. At that temperature Deuterium [‘heavy hydrogen’] begins to form from a proton and a neutron. From this, one can calculate the amount of Helium formed in the early life of the Universe. The result is 24% as is actually observed. See http://www.leif.org/research/Helium.pdf
Dear Paul Westhaver,
And how KIND of YOU!
Thank you!
#(:))
Janice
P.S. Sometimes, one responds to a pig for the sake of the other, more honest, humble, truth-seeking, animals on the farm. And, I can’t help hoping that all of those pigs are “still pervious, through a chink or two,” and will one day have a change of heart and that they may, then, stoop down to pick up one of the remaining pearls still lying at their feet, and be so enthralled with its Beauty that they can’t help but believe in Truth.
**********************************************
Dear P@trick (well, it’s your day!),
Thank you, dear sir. I hope that it was a good day for you and for Merci, Jack Russell, Cassie, and Einstein. Wishing you an even better day tomorrow!
You WUWT pal,
Janice
*****************************************************
And, Mod. (smile) — Thank you, so much, dear 8>)
#(:))
“In General Relativity, the Universe is unstable.” We see a lot of this pseudo-argument, don’t we?
Einstein disagreed; it can be flat. Modern observations don’t prove the existence of “inflation.”
The so-called “inflation” of the Universe is a primitive interpretation of the space-time curvature as a curvature of space without any change in time, whereas it has been experimentally shown that time changes depending on the observer’s distance from the mass.
And THANK YOU, DR. SVALGAARD, for running the gauntlet of this thread to bring so much LIGHT to us all. Every one of your posts above was helpful to me. Pay no attention to those drooling hyenas, O Lion. Perfect character actors for St. Patrick’s day: their eyes are green with…….. envy. Ha! They whine at your low growls above… they should hear you ROAR!
They do not realize the extent to which you have velveted your sharp wit and mighty arguments.
And, no doubt, you would say that it would not be fair to their small stature to do otherwise.
Good show!
Janice
Alexander Feht says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:26 pm
“In General Relativity, the Universe is unstable.” We see a lot of this pseudo-argument, don’t we? Einstein disagreed; it can be flat. Modern observations don’t prove the existence of “inflation.”
A link [that should be at your level – or perhaps a bit above] has more on this: http://www.space.com/9593-einstein-biggest-blunder-turns.html
A more elaborate [but still accessible] exposition is here: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept04/Hubble/Hubble1.html
As you study the materiel carefully, you might come upon this:
“The kinds of universes that would be compatible with the relativity principle and the assumption of homogeneity have been determined by intricate mathematical reasoning. A body of necessary characteristics has been derived, one of which is of exceptional interest for our immediate problem, Such a universe, if it contains matter, will be unstable. At best it could be in unstable equilibrium, like a ball balanced on a point. The slightest disturbance would upset the balance – and internal disturbances evidently must occur. The universe would then revert to its natural state of either contraction or expansion. Theory does not indicate either the direction or the rate of the change to be expected. The universe might be expanding or contracting and at a rate that is rapid or imperceptible. At this point the cosmologist seizes upon the observed red-shifts, interprets them as velocity-shifts, and presents them as visible evidence that the actual universe is now expanding, and expanding rapidly. It is for these reasons that relativistic cosmology is described as the theory of homogeneous, expanding universes which obey the relativistic laws of gravitation.”
Have you ever seen anything more nauseating then the previous comment by Janice Moore? Just how obsequious one can be?
Besides, Dr. Svalgaard, in one sentence, equals climate change skeptics with moon-landing d-ers, using “d” word 4 times in a row, and his comment gets an automatic green light, while my comment containing only a quote from his insulting rant, ends up in the moderator’s “forever bin.” Nice policy!
REPLY: Really? Forever Bin? It’s right there. Moderation hold based on the automated flagging filter and “forever bin” are two entirely different things. But, since you think that they are one and the same, I’m happy to oblige. – Anthony
Just because it resonates with me (originally a Buddhist saying)…
“There is THAT which was never created, nor was it born, nor did it evolve, if it were not so, there would be no refuge ever from being created, or being born, or evolving. THAT is the end of all suffering. THAT is G-D** ”
** Substitute whatever name suits….Nirvana, Allah, Brahman, the Great Way (Tao), God, Cosmos, etc….
“The universe might be expanding or contracting and at a rate that is rapid or imperceptible. At this point the cosmologist seizes upon the observed red-shifts, interprets them as velocity-shifts”…
Stop right there. Imperceptible? Really? And why “the cosmologist” wouldn’t seize on many observed contradictions to his simplistic velocity-shift interpretation?
My late father, one of the leading topologists in Russia, and a specialist in the elementary particle physics, used to remark about the Big Bang theory: “We don’t know what we don’t know. But an aggressive consensus among the proponents of any particular theory is always suspect. In the case of the Big Bang theory they are not simply aggressive, they become outright hysterical when they face any kind of criticism. One wonders, why.”
Alexander Feht says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:26 pm
Modern observations don’t prove the existence of “inflation.”
Modern inflation theory predicts structure in the CMB near multipole 85 [that means a structure that will fit 85 times around the sky]. The article we are discussing reports that just that predicted structure has now been observed. This is strong support for inflation. Forget the word ‘proof’. That has no place in science [except in mathematics]. One should use words like ‘supports’, ‘confirms’, ‘strengthens’. And the new observations strongly ‘supports’ the theory by observing what the theory predicted ahead of time. That is the way good science works.