Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: bbc

Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.

Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being.

It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes.

The work will be scrutinised carefully, but already there is talk of a Nobel.

"This is spectacular," commented Prof Marc Kamionkowski, from Johns Hopkins University.

"I've seen the research; the arguments are persuasive, and the scientists involved are among the most careful and conservative people I know," he told BBC News.

The breakthrough was announced by an American team working on a project known as BICEP2.


Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26605974

[cosmicone]

1. Rubbish

we know god created the heavens and the earth in 6 days....

[AtheistCrusader]

2. DAMNIT.

I was hoping they'd come up with why the rate of expansion is accelerating.

Oh well. Someday.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. They did

but the National Security State had to classify it top secret because it would reveal to the evil aliens what we know.

[2banon]

10. ROFL! Well Done!

I love your sardonic humor..

[tblue37]

37. Are those aliens "undocumented"? nt

[randome]

4. Because God won't leave the cheese whiz alone.

The Mrs. keeps telling him but you know God, he never listens.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]

[longship]

6. Gotta love the Cheese Whiz expansion theory.

And god only knows what's actually in Cheese Whiz. So he's got that going for him.

[Javaman]

29. It's made from Unicorn tears. nt

[2banon]

12. Me too. n/t

[Fantastic Anarchist]

24. I thought dark energy was the theorized reason for this.

Though, I could be wrong.

[AtheistCrusader]

25. It is, but we don't know why.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

27. True ...

Though, they're working on it.

[WilliamPitt]

5. Wrong.

[calimary]

19. OMG!!!!!!!!

ROFL!!!!!!!!!

[cpwm17]

7. It is amazing what the collective intelligence of man can come up with

as long as you can weed out the collective stupidity. Requiring an advanced degree in physics or other hard science does much of the weeding. The scientific method does the rest

[Vashta Nerada]

8. I wonder what the Jesus people think of this?

Of course, they'll still attribute the Big Bang to god.



Yay science! Yay mind of man and woman!

Phil Plait sums this up best here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/03/17/evidence_of_inflation_astronomers_detect_gravitational_waves_from_the_early.html

But what does this meant to you? Well, that’s up to you, of course. Most of us can live our daily lives without worrying overly much about gravitational waves, subatomic particles, or what the Universe was like in the tiniest sliver of the first moment of its existence.

But think about that: We can understand what the Universe was like in the tiniest sliver of the first moment of its existence! These aren’t wild guesses, or just-so stories, or fanciful myths. This work is the result of an intense amount of research, the application of math, science, physics, and technology over hundreds of years, the painstaking acquisition of knowledge that must withstand the fires of scientific scrutiny and skepticism to survive. And so far, they have.

[bananas]

36. The Big Bang was discovered by a Catholic priest

Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, (French: [ʒɔʁʒə ləmɛtʁ] ( listen); 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Université catholique de Louvain.[1] He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.[2][3] He was also the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article.[4][5][6][7] Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

[mountain grammy]

9. Well, we have another 2 billion years or so to figure it out

and time never stops.

[albino65]

14. Or maybe a decade or two

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Don't forget the Norse horn of armageddon has been blown too.

Shit is about to get real.

[albino65]

17. That reminds me

I have two episodes of "The Vikings" to watch.

[mountain grammy]

28. Yeah, I read that too.. not very encouraging.

[JimDandy]

11. Bookmarked to read later... Thanks

[packman]

13. AMAZING pix of the Signal from the Big Bang

Last edited Mon Mar 17, 2014, 01:34 PM - Edit history (1)

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

And for the layman, another explanation of the findings:



http://www.nature.com/news/all-you-need-to-know-about-gravitational-waves-1.14886

[randome]

18. Quantum indecisiveness.

There's no such thing as 'nothing' ergo, burrrrrp! A universe is born!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]

[calimary]

20. Welcome to DU, bongiver!

Glad you're here. On first glance, I thought - hmmm… some bible-thumper's explanation about why trickle-down really DOES, TOO, make sense!!!

[DisgustipatedinCA]

23. This is in reply to the locked post.

Since I cannot reply to locked posts, I hope you don't mind the commentary here.

The post shouldn't have been locked. It was an idiotic assertion, in my opinion, but still shouldn't have been locked. This poster didn't personally attack anyone, or otherwise say anything worthy of a lock.

My purpose is not to defend this person who got a post locked, but to bring up a concern. If someone posts something hateful, the post should be removed. If someone posts something stupid and easily refutable by science, we should engage in refutation, not in thread-locking. It should be child's play to swat down a post like the one above without having to resort to using the jury as a litmus test for what constitutes acceptable thought. thank you.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

26. I totally agree.

Nothing in that post warranted it to be hidden.

[cpwm17]

21. No, the "Big Bang" is the best explanation for how our Universe got here:

-Our Universe is expanding.

-Scientists predicted that there must be radiation left over from the Big Bang if it had occurred. Scientist then found the Cosmic Background Radiation, just as predicted.

-The percentage helium (compared to hydrogen) that should have been created in the first moments of the Big Bang equals the amount that is actually found in the original matter that still exists in our Universe.

Science makes predictions. So far the Big Bang has stood the test of time.

Science doesn't claim to know what happened before the Big Bang. Some things are just not knowable. It is a cop out to say that it explains nothing if it doesn't explain everything. That really doesn't make any sense.

[Duppers]

22. Thank You!

Great response!

[tclambert]

30. We must figure out how to turn cosmic inflation into a bomb!

What if the Russians get it first? We must not allow a cosmic inflation gap! What if they dropped one on Iowa and inflated it to the size of the whole solar system in a few trillionths of a second? There's no coming back from that.

[johnp3907]

32. Hilarious!

I laft!

[WinstonSmith4740]

33. Visions of General Buck Turgidson...

We must not allow a cosmic inflation gap!

...dancing in my head!

[tclambert]

35. That's exactly what I was picturing, too.

The end of this clip has "We must not allo- o-ow a Mineshaft Gap!"

[hunter]

39. What if our universe *IS* the bomb?

Imagine two dark matter universes at war, and our universe is a bomb explosion ripping through other.

[idendoit]

31. Static universe models fit observational data....

better than expanding universe models.: metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp . They've 30 evidence based problems with the theory. I especially like: The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.

[daleo]

34. I blame cosmic inflation on Obamacare

Signed, a conservative pundit.

[suffragette]

38. Made me immediately think of the sign made by Qfwfq in Calvino 's Cosmicomics

And love the description of it here as a "distinctive twist in the oldest light"