About yesterday's major science announcement
From Cornell University's Liam McAllister writing at
The Reference Frame:
BICEP2: Primordial Gravitational Waves!
The BICEP2 team has just announced a remarkable discovery (FAQ): they argue that they have detected, at very high significance, the imprint of primordial gravitational waves on the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Moreover, the signal they see is very strong. If they are right, this is The Big One.
How should we interpret this result, and what are its implications?
If the BICEP measurement really is a detection of primordial gravitational waves, and if we interpret this finding in the context of the overwhelmingly favored theory for producing primordial gravitational waves � namely, inflation � then the implications of this finding are staggering. I find it hard to imagine a more powerful, more transformative experimental result anywhere in fundamental physics, short of a discovery of extra dimensions or of a violation of quantum mechanics.
Liam closes with this:
The BICEP result, if correct, is a spectacular and historic discovery. In terms of impact on fundamental physics, particularly as a tool for testing ideas about quantum gravity, the detection of primordial gravitational waves is completely unprecedented. Inflation evidently occurred just two orders of magnitude below the Planck scale, and we have now seen the quantum fluctuations of the graviton. For those who want to understand how the universe began, and also for those who want to understand quantum gravity, it just doesn't get any better than this.
Stanford University Physics Professor
Andrei Linde had postulated this.
In the following video, Stanford Assistant Physics Professor and BICEP2 researcher
Chao-Lin Kuo visits Dr. Linde's home with the good news:
Physics professor Andrei Linde who theorized the concept of "cosmic inflation"
is told that his theory has been proven, after 30 years!
Very cool!
Posted by DaveH at March 18, 2014 11:17 AM