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The Moment of Truth For BICEP2
StartsWithABang writes: Earlier this year, the BICEP2 team shook up the world by announcing the discovery of primordial gravitational waves: a signal from the earliest stages of the Universe, going all the way back to before the Big Bang! By looking at the photon polarization data, they claimed to have surpassed the gold "5 Sigma" standard for announcing a discovery in physics. But recently, that's been walked back, as there could have been a systematic error at play: simple emission from our own Milky Way. Later this month, the Planck team will release their results, and either confirm or refute BICEP2. Here's where we stand on the eve of that announcement.
Whenever I read articles about astrophysics, it always sounds very detached from reality. This work usually ends up making big assumptions based on radio waves that were supposedly detected in some way. We aren't talking about ones that are visible to humans, either, like light from stars. Then there's often talk about how it's the "remnants of the Big Bang" or something vague like that. And then they start throwing around numbers that we couldn't possibly be sure that we're measuring correctly. Even after reading into this subject in depth, and even taking college courses on it back in the day, it's still almost a religion in many ways.
That's right. All those fancy-pants "scientists" are actually idiots and frauds. Nothing they say can be trusted.
Whenever I read articles about astrophysics, it always sounds very detached from reality.
It's not but I can see how it might seem that way. A lot of the physics is pretty out there and not all of it can be experimentally confirmed, at least not directly. The logical underpinnings and evidence used are fairly sound but there is a LOT we don't really know. There is a lot of "if A is true then B must be true" going on but sometimes we're not actually sure A is really true. It's not faith but much of it is very theoretical. Almost everything relating to stuff like black holes should be taken with a huge grain of sodium chloride.
And then they start throwing around numbers that we couldn't possibly be sure that we're measuring correctly.
Sometimes that is true and sometimes it isn't. There are plenty of measurements we are quite confident about. Others not so much. Unfortunately for the lay person it can be hard to tell the difference. Apparently sometimes it can be difficult for those in the field to tell the difference too sometimes.
The funny thing is that there is a meeting in Italy this week to discuss the Planck polarization result. Except that the Planck team doesn't have the result ready yet, for reasons they are not explaining. To make matters worse, there is no internet access at the venue, so the rest of the world is hearing about it primarily through Twitter feeds. The Planck team should be seriously embarrassed to cock up a major announcement as badly as they have.
Regardles, Planck is releasing its polarization measurements in three weeks, on December 22. Get back to us then.
They reason they're no longer trusted is because they make big announcements of amazing results and then... later have to admit that they were wrong. Or, worse, they don't admit they're wrong, and we have to wait for someone else to retry the experiment and find that out for themselves.
What you're describing as the "reason they're no longer trusted" is called the scientific method: science is trustworthy precisely because when people are wrong, they admit it. Either that, somebody else proves them wrong.
Do you expect this shit to sprout from the head of Zeus or something?
All scientists outside the massively politicized field of climatology know this.
Climatology has only been politicized by people who aren't climatologists. The actual scientists get along just fine.