Big Bang Gravitational Waves: True or Not? [Video]
The finding prompted mass news coverage, and physicists in labs everywhere popped champagne corks. But soon significant doubts emerged.
The suspense is killing me. In March physicists announced one of the most stunning discoveries in decades—the detection of gravitational waves produced just after the big bang. The finding prompted mass news coverage, and physicists in labs everywhere popped champagne corks. But soon significant doubts emerged. After much debate it became clear, even to the team at the BICEP2 experiment behind the original announcement, that the claims were premature. The experiment may have found primordial gravitational waves. But there is also a decent chance that the measurements were confounded by nearby dust in our galaxy.
Now, all we can do is wait for the dust to clear. Other experiments are hunting for gravitational waves and may find them soon, confirming BICEP2's discovery. The most anticipated results are those from the Planck satellite, which may be able to observe the same signal BICEP2 did, if it exists. Planck will also reveal more about the Milky Way's dust effects, which could either cast further doubt on the BICEP2 results or validate them, depending on how prevalent dust turns out to be in the area of the sky that BICEP2 observed. The Planck team members are planning to share their latest data this fall, probably in November.
Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University in Tempe delves deep into the gravitational waves story in the October Scientific American. Krauss explains what the discovery means if it is true, including implications for the possibility of multiverses and even a way to unify the contradictory theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Read the article here (subscription required).
And for a better understanding of the nature of gravitational waves, check out the video below:
This article was originally published with the title "A Beacon from the Big Bang."
Comments
- sluggulchgold September 16, 2014, 5:04 PM
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Was there an electric can opener nearby the detector?
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- belanen September 16, 2014, 6:10 PM
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I believe the Big Bang and its close linked early events including gravitational waves are not differentially interactive with our neighborhood which is an expanding edge of the visible universe. Consider that much of what is out there is still undetectable to our most sophisticated modern instruments, satellite platforms and observations. That includes other universes that may be expanding in different vectors from us. This problem is like the old days of learned scientific conclusions that we are the center of the universe or that the earth is flat because that is all we can clearly see. You have to have a near correct idea of what is out there before you can know what to look for.
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- renato botelho September 16, 2014, 8:42 PM
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We know that equations have ranges of aplicability. As Newtonians equations were supersedeed by relative equations the ones that are used to justify the big bang are probably not applicable to zero time. I believe the universe is infinite and mass and energy are in perpetual movement, contracting, blowing and expanding. Just to contract again and start a new cycle. That would happen simultaneously in many parts of the global universe. Something similar, but not the same, to the brownian movement. The mass of the unobservable universe would help the expansion by gravity.
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- Siofgon September 18, 2014, 9:14 AM
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Wishful thinking wrapped around the America's Funniest Video winner: no one knows what causes gravitational waves (if any), yet certain people pretend that the waves would prove inflation.
"Inflationary paradigm is so flexible that it is immune to experimental and observational tests" - P. Steinhardt, http://www.newsweek.com/blockbuster-big-bang-theory-under-scrutiny-due-dust-254598
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- Siofgon September 18, 2014, 9:40 AM
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...and of course, Steinhardt's exquisite mind has thus opened a can of worms: ANY attempt at proving inflation must be a fake from the outset i.e. designed to be deceptive!
Long live Paul Steinhardt the true hero of science who dared saying out loud that the emperor is naked.
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