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Super-Sensors To Sense Big Bang Output
New super-sensitive microwave detectors from the National Institute of Standards and Technology may soon tackle the question of what happened immediately following the big bang. "The new experiment will begin approximately a year from now on the Chilean desert and will consist of placing a large array of powerful NIST sensors on a telescope mounted in a converted shipping container. The detectors will look for subtle fingerprints in the CMB [cosmic microwave background] from primordial gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time from the violent birth of the universe more than 13 billion years ago. Such waves are believed to have left a faint but unique imprint on the direction of the CMB's electric field, called the 'B-mode polarization.' These waves — never before confirmed through measurements — are potentially detectable today, if sensitive enough equipment is used."
Well, they lay around in bed, smoked a few cigarettes, and then the next morning... at least, that's according to Eccentrica Gallumbits.
Sadly, Zaphod is only number 2, having merely been described as the best bang since the big one.
If they could sense the input, I'd be more impressed. ;-)
A little cosmology humor there for ya.
How I met your Mother, duh
FTA:
By contrast, the new NIST detectors are designed to measure not only temperature but also the polarization. The B-mode polarization signals may be more than a million times fainter than the temperature signals.
...the colors represent the tiny temperature fluctuations, as in a weather map. Red regions are warmer and blue regions are colder by about 0.0002 degrees.
I might be missing something, but that sounds pretty impressive.
... everyone covered their ears!
Well, the summary is clear on the what - but if you're curious about the point of making the measurement in the first place (beyond because we can, etc.) - from TFA:
If found, these waves would be the clearest evidence yet in support of the "inflation theory," which suggests that all of the currently observable universe expanded rapidly from a subatomic volume, leaving in its wake the telltale cosmic background of gravitational waves.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Nope ears were covered in preparation FOR the big bang not after.
Well for some definition of ears and some other less likely definition of before.
Why bother
I figured this was "electric" (e-field) and "magnetic" (b-field), but Googling around so far has only left me more confused.
It would be a lot more interesting to know what happened before the Big Bang.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
I've been wondering for a while now; at what age should you stop wearing tshirts with funny slogans on and start buying cardigans?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
I can't believe nobody's mentioned Terry Pratchett's Listening Monks yet! :P
This only shows what happened in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Which leaves PLENTY of room for God.
He's awfully quick, you know. (As Mrs. God can attest to!)
It's worth noting that more than one such telescope hopes to probe CMB polarization on a similar timescale. Caltech and JPL are leading the BICEP2 and SPIDER collaborations (also with NIST), which will also be deploying in a few months (the former at the South Pole, the latter on a high-flying balloon) to probe E-mode and B-mode CMB polarization. The Princeton experiment mentioned in this article isn't that different - it just apparently has better press!
Didn't it happen like really long ago or something? Then we must be in a giant fishbowl which echoes :-)
Need an ISP in South Africa?
The "E-modes" and "B-modes" referred to in the article aren't quite the same as electric and magnetic fields. Here's the basic story.
Suppose you try to map the polarization of the microwave background across the sky. Each direction on the sky has some polarization magnitude and direction, which we can represent by a little headless arrows on the sky (headless because flipping the polarization 180 degrees doesn't change it). A map of the CMB polarization thus looks like a bunch of little line segments of varying sizes and orientations all across the sky.
Now imagine looking at the pattern of polarization directions near some point on the sky. This arrangement of lines can be "curl-free" if the lines are oriented radially or circumferentially around the central point; this is called an "E-mode" pattern. The polarization pattern might instead have a curl component, which is called a "B-mode" pattern. another way of looking at it: an E-mode pattern looks locally the same when mirror-reversed, while a B-mode pattern does not. Any field on the sky can be written as the sum of an E-mode pattern and a B-mode pattern.
This technicality is important because of how polarization is generated in the microwave background. It turns out that all kinds of relatively mundane processes can generate E-modes - they're still very interesting and informative, but we know they're there (and have even detected them). B-mode patterns are much more unusual - it turns out that normal CMB physics cannot generate large-scale B-modes. Inflation, however, generates a background of gravity waves in the early universe that produce a B-mode contribution to the CMB. This is incredibly tiny and difficult to detect, but it's a smoking gun for inflation.
I think it's about the time you start asking that question. Still, carpet slippers *are* comfy.
and noone can figure out what this strange figure is out in space...
Here's what it looks like What the heck is that?!?
False dichotomy. I wear cardigans over my t-shirts all the time.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
a telescope mounted in a converted shipping container.
... that they'd see a lot more if they took the telescope out of the shipping container.
Have gnu, will travel.
... everyone covered their ears!
nope. mum screamed. THEN everyone covered their ears!
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
What did you think how the Milky Way was created?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
How can this magic microwave thingie detect what clearly didn't happen? According to the devil-worshiping scientists, this "big bang" occurred billions of years before the universe existed, so we know it never happened. If it never happened, how can we possibly detect anything emanating from it? This is obviously yet another hoax designed to lead people away from GAWD. [/christianstrawman]