Bulging Biceps surfing Gravitational Waves (BICEP2 results thread)

[imatfaal]

There is an announcement happening right now regarding the latest set of results from BICEP2. It has already be hyped and those in the blogosphere are hoping for an earth-shattering announcement regarding gravitational waves.

 

Here is Sean Carroll's take

 

Major announcement coming! That much is clear, from this press release: on Monday at noon Eastern time, astronomers will “announce a major discovery.” No evidence from that page what the discovery actually is. But if you’re friends with a lot of cosmologists on Facebook/Twitter (or if you just read the Guardian), you’ve heard the rumor: the BICEP2 experiment has purportedly detected signs of gravitational waves in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation. If it’s true (and the result holds up), it will be an enormously important clue about what happened at the very earliest moments of the Big Bang

 

 

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/03/16/gravitational-waves-in-the-cosmic-microwave-background/

 

Will keep the thread updated.

Here is the original press release

 

http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=42751

 

"Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence for this 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."

 

 

As you can see it is as understated as most press releases now days

And here now is today's press release (I have pasted a fair chunk as the source site keeps crashing and is interminably slow)

 

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-05

 

Since 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 co-leader Jamie Bock (Caltech/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. This is the first direct image of gravitational waves across the primordial sky," said co-leader Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC).

 

The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about one to five degrees (two to ten times the width of the full Moon). To do this, they traveled to the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air.

 

"The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground," said Kovac. "It's one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang."

 

They 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

 

[Moontanman]

NASA scientists announce today the conformation of gravity waves in the infant universe. This finding adds more credence of the idea of cosmic inflation in the infant universe. Expansion on the order of trillions of times in a very short period of time is a necessary component of the Big Bang Theory. The detection of gravity waves is a milestone in the quest to understand how our universe originated...

 

 

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-082

 

 

March 17, 2014

Astronomers are announcing today that they have acquired the first direct evidence that gravitational waves rippled through our infant universe during an explosive period of growth called inflation. This is the strongest confirmation yet of cosmic inflation theories, which say the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times, in less than the blink of an eye.

The findings were made with the help of NASA-developed detector technology on the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation.

 

[imatfaal]

Moon - I merged the two topics, hope you don't mind but it's confusing to have two news threads on same announcement

Sean Carroll (amongst many others) has published his first blog on the results rather than the hype. This post is way way over my head - hopefully he will get out the mouli-mix and produce a baby-food version soon.

 

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/03/16/bicep2-updates/

[davidivad]

we finally did it.

any other means would have been absurdly unrealistic.

another home run for quantum field theory.

[Moontanman]

Instruments at BICEP2 in Antarctica have detected gravity waves from the infant universe. These gravity waves support the big bang theory by showing direct evidence of inflation in the early universe. In the very early universe inflation occurred and the universe expanded trillions of times in a fraction of a second. Until now no direct evidence of this expansion had been seen.

 

These findings were made by NASA developed technology in cooperation with the National Science foundation.

 

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-082

 

March 17, 2014

Astronomers are announcing today that they have acquired the first direct evidence that gravitational waves rippled through our infant universe during an explosive period of growth called inflation. This is the strongest confirmation yet of cosmic inflation theories, which say the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times, in less than the blink of an eye.

 

[Addictive Science]

This is crazy, I Was Just reading about this today in Max Tegmark's New Book: ‘Our Mathematical Universe’ and was thinking all day about how we could detect these Inflation ripples. I imagined if they did exist they would appear like Tree Rings, except theses would be Inflation Tree Ring. I don't know yet if they appear this way, but I'm glad I don't have to wait around for the answer. I thought this was going to be like the Higgs Boson all over again.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140317125850.htm

[StringJunky]

The evidence for Einstein's GR just keeps piling up:

A curved signature in the cosmic microwave background light provides proof of inflation and spacetime ripples

 

Proof of gravitational waves created by cosmic inflation is shown here in this image of the cosmic microwave background radiation collected by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole. The proof comes in the form of a signature called B-mode polarization, a curling of the orientation, or polarization, of the light, denoted by the black lines on the image. The color indicates small temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background that correspond to density fluctuations in the early universe.

 

BICEP2 Collaboration

Physicists have found a long-predicted twist in light from the big bang that represents the first image of ripples in the universe called gravitational waves, researchers announced today. The finding is direct proof of the theory of inflation, the idea that the universe expanded extremely quickly in the first fraction of a nanosecond after it was born. What’s more, the signal is coming through much more strongly than expected, ruling out a large class of inflation models and potentially pointing the way toward new theories of physics, experts say.

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gravity-waves-cmb-b-mode-polarization/

Edited March 18, 2014 by StringJunky

[swansont]

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Moderator Note

FYI I have merged (and will continue to merge) multiple threads on this topic

[StringJunky]

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Moderator Note

FYI I have merged multiple threads on this topic

I didn't realise Imatfaal had already posted about it and missed it...I was away yesterday. Sorry about that.

Edited March 18, 2014 by StringJunky

[imatfaal]

A few more blog links to keep your diet information heavy

 

Phil Bull at Lumps n Bumps from a cosmology point of view and taking a look at some of the issues with the data

Phew! An exciting day indeed, so I’ll jot down a few notes to recap what happened.

The BICEP2/Keck experiments detected B-modes at large angular scales in the polarisation of the CMB. They released two papers and some data online just as the announcement was made, which you can find here. Not all of the data mind, but it’s plenty to go on for now.

 

Sean Carrolls blog way up above explains the B-modes (a bit anyway)

 

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A particle physicists jumps into the fray at Resonaances

If this holds, it's huge, comparable in magnitude to the discovery of the Higgs boson. Probably even more exciting because of the surprise element.

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Possibly the brainiest facebook discussion extant

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/574544055974988/

 

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Matt Strassler - one of my favourite physics bloggers - pokes at the ideas from a particle physicist's perspective but explains much of the cosmological significance. And provides links to two of his excellent primers

 

Be More Cautious than the Media

As always, I have to caution you that although I’m fairly impressed, and reasonably optimistic about this measurement, it is a measurement by only one experiment. Until this measurement/discovery is confirmed by another experiment, you should consider it provisional. Although this is too large a signal to be likely to be due to a pure statistical fluke, it could still be due to a mistake or problem, or due to something other than gravitational waves from inflation

 

 

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And Ethan Seigal has produced a great introduction that travels from the idea of inflation to what BICEP2 thinks it is seeing

 

“Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.” -Alan Guth

 

[Alan McDougall]

http://www.space.com/25078-universe-inflation-gravitational-waves-discovery.html?cmpid=556786

 

Astronomers have found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, the theorized dramatic expansion of the universe that put the "bang" in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, new research suggests.

If it holds up, the landmark discovery — which also confirms the existence of hypothesized ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves — would give researchers a much better understanding of the Big Bang and its immediate aftermath.

[hypervalent_iodine]

Not really related to the theory behind it all (I am sure I couldn't contribute anything meaningful to such a discussion), but related to the topic and kind of neat to watch one of the people who started it all find out about the evidence that supports his entire life's work:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZlfIVEy_YOA

[ydoaPs]

Hijacks and off-topic posts have been split off and moved.

 

Can Gravity Waves Produce Anti-Gravity?

 

Were Gravitational Waves Actually Detected?

 

Champagne Bubble Cosmology

[imatfaal]

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/03/19/a-great-time-for-reason-and-science/

 

Nice follow up blog and video from Sean Carroll (I thought USA wasn't supposed to have good TV - cos that excerpt was very good indeed)

[Schneibster]

I think the most amazing thing about it is that after you understand what they're talking about, you can actually see it in the CMBR large scale sky maps.

 

There's some other detail buried in those maps, too, as I recall; one big "cold spot," and another large scale asymmetry that I can't quite recall. All in all a highly satisfying scientific find.

 

As for Linde celebrating, well he should; I hope Guth and Vilentkin had some champers too. Guth's was, after all, the original paper.

[imatfaal]

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Moderator Note

 

Hijack complaining about having a hijack split off has been merged with the original hijack.