New Evidence For Big Bang Theory

[Gmash]

Fascinating stuff.

(CNN) -- There's no way for us to know
exactly what happened some 13.8 billion
years ago, when our universe burst onto the
scene. But scientists announced Monday a
breakthrough in understanding how our world
as we know it came to be.
If the discovery holds up to scrutiny, it's
evidence of how the universe rapidly
expanded less than a trillionth of a second
after the Big Bang.
"It teaches us something crucial about how
our universe began," said Sean Carroll, a
physicist at California Institute of
Technology, who was not involved in the
study. "It's an amazing achievement that we
humans, doing science systematically for just
a few hundred years, can extend our
understanding that far."
What's more, researchers discovered direct
evidence for the first time of what Albert
Einstein predicted in his general theory of
relativity: Gravitational waves.
These are essentially ripples in space-time,
which have been thought of as the "first
tremors of the Big Bang," according to the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics.
A telescope at the South Pole called BICEP2
-- Background Imaging of Cosmic
Extragalactic Polarization 2 -- was critical to
the discovery. The telescope allowed
scientists to analyze the polarization of light
left over from the early universe, leading to
Monday's landmark announcement.

full article:

Big Bang breakthrough announced; gravitational waves detected - CNN.com

 

[smguffer]

cool to think about i suppose.. but scientists don't even know much about our own planet truth be told. i guess i don't take their theories about much of anything else very seriously =/.

<-- negative nacy. sorry haha

 

[shalmu]

Does anyone still have doubt in BigBang theory, do we really need more evidence for that? Microvawe bg was enough for me.
There is much more interesting question: what was before the Big Bang?

 

[Hadron]

If confirmed it's evidence for inflation, rather than the Big Bang per se (though inflationary models are a particular, and the most popular, form of Big Bang theory).

It's also indirect evidence for gravitational waves (arguably not the first), which have so far not been directly observed.

 

[SiempreTuna]

I heard a statement from Steven Hawkin yesterday and I thought he claimed gravitational waves were observed back in the 80s. What hadn't been observed were gravitational waves during his hypothesised inflationary period - the few microsecond after the big bang when the universe expanded at more than the speed of light.

Apparently, the thing about observing gravitational waves during that period is that it explains why matter in the universe is not uniformly distributed.

An alternate hypothesis is that the bing bang was actually only the latest in a series of expansions and contractions of the universe that have been going on forever. Part of this theory predicted that there could not be gravitational waves during this period of inflation.

Apparently, Hawkins had a bet with the guy who came up with the expand/contract theory and he's now expecting a payout. The other guy isn't convinced by the latest observations yet, though.


(Did that sound convincing? Coz I haven't a clue what I'm talking about )

 

[Hadron]

Gravitational waves have yet to be _directly_ observed. There is previous indirect evidence for them, e.g. the rate of decay of the orbit of a pulsar in a binary system, measurements of which fit with the energy loss due to gravitational radiation, and which will be what you are thinking of since some of those studies did use data from the 1980s. But so far none of our gravitational wave detectors have picked up a signal, though with increasing sensitivity it should happen this decade.

And yeah, if this signal is as strong as claimed then the Planck satellite data should be able to confirm in the near future. Neil Turok is waiting for that before admitting defeat .

 

[codesplice]

Here's a handy video that tells a wee bit about this discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlBNJbCzfk