Abbey Marie
03-27-2014, 12:43 PM
I see the hand of God in this; I know others will not. At the least, with the discovery of such universe-shattering concepts, I hope people will come to understand how very little we understand.
Space-time ripples hint at physics beyond the big bang
Updated 17:05 26 March 2014 by Lisa Grossman (http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Lisa+Grossman)
Slivers of a second after the universe was born, It ballooned exponentially in the blink of an eye. This vision of cosmic expansion, called inflation, got a big boost last week with the announcement of the first sighting of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in space-time linked to the universe's rapid growth spurt.
The findings – reported by the team that ran the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole – are already helping physicists sort through the mountain of theories for how inflation happened (see our video of gravitational waves explained with a towel and apple).
But there are a few wrinkles, including the fact that hints of the waves seem much more pronounced than they should be, according to previous observations of the early universe. Resolving the discrepancies – perhaps using results due out later this year from the Planck space telescope – might give a glimpse of physics from before the big bang. Or it might mean inflation is out, and that we actually have the first whiff of evidence for string theory.
...
More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25293-spacetime-ripples-hint-at-physics-beyond-the-big-bang.html#.UzRhb_ldXPY
Space-time ripples hint at physics beyond the big bang
Updated 17:05 26 March 2014 by Lisa Grossman (http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Lisa+Grossman)
Slivers of a second after the universe was born, It ballooned exponentially in the blink of an eye. This vision of cosmic expansion, called inflation, got a big boost last week with the announcement of the first sighting of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in space-time linked to the universe's rapid growth spurt.
The findings – reported by the team that ran the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole – are already helping physicists sort through the mountain of theories for how inflation happened (see our video of gravitational waves explained with a towel and apple).
But there are a few wrinkles, including the fact that hints of the waves seem much more pronounced than they should be, according to previous observations of the early universe. Resolving the discrepancies – perhaps using results due out later this year from the Planck space telescope – might give a glimpse of physics from before the big bang. Or it might mean inflation is out, and that we actually have the first whiff of evidence for string theory.
...
More: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25293-spacetime-ripples-hint-at-physics-beyond-the-big-bang.html#.UzRhb_ldXPY