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Last Week's Announcement About Gravitational Waves and Inflation May Be Wrong
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "If you've been living under a stone, you might not have heard last week's announcement that astrophysicists from the BICEP2 experiment have found the first evidence of two extraordinary things. The first is primordial gravitational waves--ripples in spacetime from the very first moments after the Big Bang. The second is that these waves are evidence of inflation, the theory that the universe expanded rapidly, by twenty orders of magnitude in the blink of an eye after the Big Bang. But that can only be possible if the gravitational waves formed before inflation occurred. Now critics have begun to mutter that the waves might have formed later and so provide no evidence of inflation. The new thinking is that as the universe cooled down after inflation, various phase changes occurred in the Universe which generated the laws of physics we see today. These phase changes would have been violent events that generated their own ripples in space time, which would look very much like the primordial gravitational waves that the BICEP2 team claims to have found. So the BICEP2 team must rule out this possibility before they can claim evidence of inflation. But the critics say the data does not yet allow this to be done. That doesn't mean inflation didn't occur. Indeed, the critics say this is still the most likely explanation. But until the phase change possibility is ruled out, the result must be considered ambiguous. So put the champagne back in the fridge."
Um also this is one experiment with no confirmation yet. No one else has repeated the results as of yet so how about putting the champagne away until another group of experimenters confirms?
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I think phase changes on a universal scale is an amazing thing to ponder.
Or perhaps our universe is still expanding at the same rate along with relative time? In other words, perhaps when you look back far enough, what is being seen is something of a mirage. Basically, the universe is infinite.
This aspect of the story is great as an example of science.
It seems stubborn to hold onto a single interpretation of evidence during pursuit a theory, including the origin of the universe.
Science is the willingness to relegate that evidence to be less significant than what some people want it to be.
When you won't relegate the evidence, then you are practicing faith (in the evidence) instead of science.
You, on the other hand, will burn in the Pit.
At least I'll be warm compared to the frozen wasteland your God has created on Earth.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
the result must be considered ambiguous. So put the champagne back in the fridge.
Already drank the champagne... Um, my fridge is, er, full, can we use yours?
... in what caused or happened before the big bang. Even so someone interested in cosmology like myself, I can only take so much more "and at 1 second after the big bang this happened and 1 min after this". Yeah ok , thats all good fun for particle physics types, but its not actually that interesting compared to the Big Question of why is there something rather than nothing? Which frankly I get the impression not many cosmologists appear to be too interested in finding out, being more content to leaving it to hand waving theorists.
Having read the original paper to the best of my ability (which is not perhaps very good), as far as I can see, the "critics" are arguing that the gravitational ripples might not have been caused by inflation directly, but by another process which happens to be a by-product of inflation. So unless I'm missing something, even if the critics are right, BICEP2 has still provided proof of inflation.
This is un-provable and wild and rampant speculation. Keep twisting the evidence to support your beliefs, meanwhile I will worship God and be granted life Everlasting. You, on the other hand, will burn in the Pit.
Have you heard the bitchin' news?! I reject your god because I don't need some elitist hipster cloud club. I've had my fill of standing in lines and getting judged at the door in this life, screw doing it again in the next. So, I bought my front-row ticket to the hottest show in Earth because all the good bands and fun people will be there.
You may be interested in my pamphlet, "So, you've decided to go to Hell."
The media hyped this up. The BICEP2 team did nothing wrong.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What really happened was that Wolowitz and Koothrappali rigged the electric can opener to create false postitive results for Sheldon's test equipment. He shouldn't have announced his findings so soon.
Proverbs 21:19
Your'e right.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
These experiments are very expensive. The results have to be presented with lots of hype.
What was observed was a peculiar pattern in the polarization of the electromagnetic waves of the cosmic background radiation. From the media summary it sounds that gravitational waves were observed, but that is not correct. The best but certainly not unique explanation is that the pattern is a consequence of the gravitational waves from the inflation period. It is circumstantial evidence, not proof beyond reasonable doubt.
Doubt, reassessment of evidence, new interpretations is the way science works. Hype is detrimental to science as a whole, but benificial to the group promoting themselves. In my opinion opinion, hyped presentation of results is dishonest.
Have you heard the bitchin' news?! I reject your god because I don't need some elitist hipster cloud club. I've had my fill of standing in lines and getting judged at the door in this life, screw doing it again in the next. So, I bought my front-row ticket to the hottest show in Earth because all the good bands and fun people will be there.
You may be interested in my pamphlet, "So, you've decided to go to Hell."
This made me so very happy! Well done!
Over the last... long while now scientists have developed a bad habit of getting really excited and presenting findings as concrete, only to get shot down. Besides, doesn't an experiment have to be repeated for the results to be confirmed? Regardless, if the alternate interpretation proves true, I find it no less significant.
It's customary in science to present your findings exactly as they are, with the statistical certainty associated with the findings. They never said their results were confirmed or "concrete", they said their findings confirmed several other theories and that they were highly certain of the results given the known sources of error and the model they were using. You can always come up with other theories that would also fit the observational data: heck, half the point of publishing your data is so the scientific community can look at it and see if you did something wrong, or if there are other interpretations that fit the data better.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Over the last... long while now scientists have developed a bad habit of getting really excited and presenting findings as concrete, only to get shot down.
I don't recall anyone saying those results were "concrete". I think that a lot of the science skeptics are simply not capable of thinking as a scientist. If you take the political and faith based systems as an example, the person makes up their mind, such as "All liberals are evil" or "The Bible says the entire world was covered with water, so it was, and I'll accept no evidence to the contrary." It is people like that who have difficulty understanding the way the scientist thinks.
The scientist is ready to move onto a new paradigm if the old one quits working. Scientists are human, and therefore subject to the same foibles as everyone else, But in general, the scientist is prepared to change their mind. In other words, scientists have no problem getting excited about something, then saying "Oops - We made a mistake!"
Besides, doesn't an experiment have to be repeated for the results to be confirmed?
When possible. But that doesn't mean that things we cannot reproduce cannot be studied. We really don't want to return to inflationary times in order to reproduce them. That's why we have theories (let us not confuse them with hypotheses)
So in the realm of cosmology, we have theories. We have hypotheses. Does what we predict pan out? Does the formula make a useful prediction.What is the math? Do I have an interesting idea?.
Note that I ran that series backwards, just as we have to do in matters of cosmology.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Scientist are still analyzing the data of ESA's Planck satellite, with first results expected in October this year. This instrument is supposedly sensitive enough to confirm or reject BICEP's results. I guess Planck's team must feel pretty depressed that the potential big discovery of their 700 MEuro instrument is scooped by the relatively small-scale BICEP experiment.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Some guy puts up a NOAA weather map and tells us this is how the universe began?? And what with this "briefly faster than light" BS? The law is the law.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's the only way to be sure. Don't forget those safety glasses!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
My question is, do these ACs PURPOSEFULLY misquote this song? By now, everyone should know that the last word in the first stanza is "confidant"; enough people have pointed it out. Or, is this just a 'bot with a fixed text file that is never updated?
What now, Ira Flatow? I trusted you and Science Friday. I TRUSTED YOU!!!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
... regurgitated champagne?
This is Slashdot - if the last word of the song was confidant then it wouldnt be on topic.
Its like "Beelzebub has a devil for a sideboard"
or
California Dreaming, I've got your Womans Day
If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they wouldn't reach a consensus.
Oh, those are great. Thank you for making a bright spot in my Monday morning. :)
It makes them reliant upon human feeding to survive.
Still here. *Whew*
There's a bathroom on the right.
If the Higgs boson is the particle which gives matter "mass" . . . and if the Higgs boson formed (like all other particles) some time after the Big Bang . . . then the universe was filled with what were then massless particles. I don't think old uncle Al would object to me accelerating a massless particle past c, would he?
Great assumed premise, guys, really.
We've jumped way past the point of claiming that polarized background cosmic radiation = gravitational waves detected (right now, the polarization is just consistent with a theory that, IF there are gravitational waves, AND a particular inflation theory requiring gravitational waves to be possible is correct, THEN the observed polarization is consistent with fossil pre-inflation gravitational waves.
We are now to the point of "alternate explanations for the gravitational waves 'observed' by BICEP2".
It's like seeing a headline that says "Aliens meet with Jimmy Carter!" in a supermarket tabloid, and then arguing about whether or not they met with Jimmy Carter, instead of arguing about whether or not aliens landed on Earth... or arguing about whether or not they landed on Earth, rather than whether aliens exist in the first place.
Try measuring smaller and smaller lengths until you hit the limit of the computers precision. Then you either can't subdivide any further or things start to get all fuzzy as rounding errors creep in.
Hold on, where have I heard of something like that in physics already....
...as someone said once are human-centered idea, that there are laws obeyed by nature that we can grasp with our minds and that those laws must be unchanging. This is the unspoken assumption, that the models that would explain the physical processes never changed in the course of the evolution of the Universe. I'm beginning to think that such assumption is no different from Newton's "mind of God" that he wanted to know -- we just call it slightly differently.
And how is this claim relevant? If those "laws" have not been unchanging, we may be wasting enormous time and money trying to find out how it all began in a way we imagine has to have happened, ie. producing theories that have no consequence other than to satisfy philosophical questions that we insist must be posed only in a certain way -- and they can't even do that. I hope at least some consequential discoveries and tools will be made along the road.
Except, of course, inflation doesn't violate Special Relativity.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... with all of that skeptical insistence on the consideration of confounding explanations that might also be compatible with the data.
Or is the term "skeptical" politically incorrect at this point, since everybody knows that no real scientist would disagree with the consensus view that he or she is told all of the other scientists have?
To be honest, the really cool thing isn't (yet) the origin of the gravitational waves observed, it is the observation of gravitational waves at all. So far, that has eluded researchers working equally hard on directly measuring them. Regardless of their cause, I'm sure we'll learn some useful stuff when issues like this are worked out, and kudos still go to the scientists involved. All of the rest of us (politically correct or not) tend to be at least marginally skeptical of transluminal neutrinos and direct evidence for the big bang until the assertions stand the test of time, even as we agree that (if correct) they are awesome achievements.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Another one: "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy."
This is known as a Mondegreen.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No one is questioning the detection of gravitational waves, which is itself highly important regardless of implications for cosmic inflation.
.: Semper Absurda
If either are true then so is the big bang. And with that gods a little more absent.
"Penrose cites concentric rings found in the WMAP cosmic microwave background survey as preliminary evidence for his model, as he predicted black hole collisions from the previous aeon would leave such structures due to ripples of gravitational waves". ref
They forgot to flex when they were talking to the media.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
"The universe expanded rapidly, by twenty orders of magnitude in the blink of an eye after the Big Bang." - what's the size of a singularity times itself 20 times? Still zero width. Great logic there. Then there's the fact that the universe expanding would actually flatten out waves. Then there's the fact that supernovas and black holes have been known to send out gravitational waves. There's actually no logic or science whatsoever behind the original headline-baiting bullshit.
And even if there was a problem with space expanding superluminally, inflation would be the least of our worries, as we would need another explanation for the size of the observable universe. (We can see objects at ~40 billion light-years distance, even though the universe is only 13.8 billion years old).
.: Semper Absurda
Only in theoretical physics is one allowed to say that the immutable laws of physics somehow changed as a way to blend the theories of the early universe after the big bang to the expanding universe we see today. The speed of light is a constant, oops, only from this point forward, same with the effects of gravity, motion and everything else.
If all of that is true, that the laws of physics, of nature, itself, can mysteriously change with no rhyme or reason, it's almost as if some external force were directing the formation of the universe. Oh, wait, that sounds too much like a deity, so that can't be correct. No, instead, we have to accept that somehow, everything around was was created in an instantaneous blink of an eye. Well everything, that is except physics. That was created separately some time later.
Or maybe, the physics didn't change, but math did. Maybe in the earliest universe it was permissible to divide by zero. I'm not sure who would have granted that permission, but if you are allowed to divide by zero, you can pretty much prove anything mathematically, so anything goes at the moment of the big bang! After all, dividing by zero just yields infinity and at the point of the big bang, the universe was an infinitesimally small place, so infinity was a lot smaller, too. So, like the speed of light, maybe infinity is relative, too, in which case it turtles all the way down (and up).
by twenty orders of magnitude in the blink of an eye after the Big Bang
A blink of an eye is in the order of 10^-3 seconds. The inflationary epoch lasted roughly in the order of 10^-33 seconds.
It was an honest question, because I tend to assume people can be taught (I know, an ignorant assumption).
wrapped up like a douche.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You'r god is tiny and weak if he can't make a universe that changes with time.
Heads up: There is no god.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I hope you aren't dissing on AGW
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
So how do you feel about evolution? I am dying to know
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
The gravity waves are hiding within the dark matter. It's so simple.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
At the risk of bursting bubbles, getting flames - Rorschach would be proud. They are seeing what they want to see. Couldn't help but think that as soon as I saw it.
Big Bang theory - Everything that there ever was and ever will be out of a single point in this universe. Seems that would be really massive and nothing could escape.
I know, I know... like evolution - it's the best story Science can come up with.