Big Bang's Smoking Gun Found

astroengine writes "For the first time, scientists have found direct evidence of the expansion of the universe, a previously theoretical event that took place a fraction of a second after the Big Bang explosion nearly 14 billion years ago. The clue is encoded in the primordial cosmic microwave background radiation that continues to spread through space to this day. Scientists found and measured a key polarization, or orientation, of the microwaves caused by gravitational waves, which are miniature ripples in the fabric of space. Gravitational waves, proposed by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago but never before proven, are believed to have originated in the Big Bang explosion and then been amplified by the universe's inflation. 'Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today,' lead researcher John Kovac, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement."

Comments

Gravity waves from the first inch of expansion

[jfdavis668]

Pretty damn cool.

Astrology is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

My hat's off too all the hard-working, dedicated cosmetologists that made this possible.

Re:Astrology is amazing

[jfdavis668]

and give everything a nice, healthy glow

Re:Astrology is amazing

[skids]

We sould really have a holiday of appreciation for these people, like we do for veteranarians.

Re:Astrology is amazing

[hawkinspeter]

I always thought that a comma was kind of like a Baroque period,

Re:Creationists

[TheCarp]

I think you have it wrong. You see, these creationists...they have a book which describes exactly how the world was created. It is called the Bible and it states pretty clearly how it happened. The problem here is that this so called "evidence" contradicts the very strong evidence they have...namely, their book.

Since it contradicts their book by claiming to take billions of years, it must (by very definition) be wrong. So what you really have is the Big bang is a bad interpretation of the natural world.

Now excuse my while I go wash my hands for typing that.

Re:Creationists

[jasonrice22]

Perhaps if the Bible said '7 units of time' then there wouldn't be such a big emotional fuss over such a meaningless argument.

What was that noise?

[ZorinLynx]

Did you hear that? That was the sound of millions of religious zealots pressing their palms harder against their ears and screaming LA LA LA even louder.

Re:Next up: a direct detection

[Zalbik]

metric giga-fuckton of energy as gravity waves

For our metric-impaired American friends, the conversion rate is 4.739 giga-fucktons to a mega-shitload.

Re:Creationists

[TheCarp]

I don't know why you need to go arguing about all these fancy foreign words; if English was good enough for Jesus then it should be good enough for us to understand his teachings. You think if he wanted us using Hebrew words, he would have written the bible in it.