Major Discovery: Smoking Gun for Universe's Incredible Big Bang found

Hope this is in the right forum. Mods feel free to move if not.

Anyway, check this out ATS. There was news of a big scientific announcement here on ATS about a week ago and I stumbled upon it on Space.com. Space.com is abuzz with excitement over this. It appears that scientists are claiming that proof of the Big Bang has been found.

"The smoking gun is a type of polarization in the CMB known as "B-modes." The spectacular expansion of the universe during inflation produced gravitational waves, which, in turn, generated the B-modes, according to the theory. So multiple teams have been hunting for the B-modes; indeed, Bennett last year referred to their detection as "the current Holy Grail of the business." In the new study announced today, Kovac and his team report that they have spotted the characteristic swirls of B-mode polarization using the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica. (BICEP is short for "Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization.")

So, what I'm getting from the article is that this find proves the Big Bang theory to be correct and it validates the theory of Relativity. This news is huge to the scientific community and it will provide a sort of road-map to future scientists. This discovery, if proven true, will be far-reaching. What say you, ATS?


www.space.com...

The spectacular expansion of the universe during inflation produced gravitational waves, which, in turn, generated the B-modes, according to the theory.

...according to the theory.

So it's a "proof" based on a theory? I don't understand anything that was being stated, but it doesn't seem very concrete.

reply to post by lostbook

It appears that scientists are claiming that proof of the Bug Bang has been found.

I got bug-banged on the back of my husband's Harley when he decided to 'duck' so that the bugs all hit me. I started to cry (this was 8 hours into a non-stop ride from Chicago back home)....



"BuzzyWigs" heh

reply to post by ChaosEpsilon


Just because it has theory in it doesn't mean it is in the traditional sense.

en.wikipedia.org...

Thats incredible proof that our Creator is even more fantastic than we originally thought. Thanks science.

BuzzyWigs
reply to post by lostbook

 

It appears that scientists are claiming that proof of the Bug Bang has been found.

I got bug-banged on the back of my husband's Harley when he decided to 'duck' so that the bugs all hit me. I started to cry (this was 8 hours into a non-stop ride from Chicago back home)....

"BuzzyWigs" heh

edit on 3/17/2014 by BuzzyWigs because: (no reason given)

Thanks for the heads-up. Fixed typo. However, the Bug Bang is a very important discovery itself.

reply to post by lostbook


I know right??!!!!
It was awful. Lesson: always be the passenger on a bike with no windshield.

Anyway, I'm afraid that the article was over my head. I failed at physics and chemistry at school....otherwise I was a 4.0 student.


Can you explain it in laymen's terms, please?

I can help the science guys out here. maybe help them save some time so they can move on and do something meaniful with they're brains and energy. Here ya go. The big Universal secret they need to know. Ready? Gravity always wins. Your welcome!
See? now instead of spending huge sums of cash trying to figure out if gravity is a particle, wave or Yankee's fan, they can use that taxpayer cash to build another rover for Mars! So there was a big bang. or there wasn't. it doesn't make a difference. We're just angry monkey's on a dead planet who's time is almost up. BANG!

BuzzyWigs
reply to post by lostbook

 

I know right??!!!!
It was awful. Lesson: always be the passenger on a bike with no windshield.

Anyway, I'm afraid that the article was over my head. I failed at physics and chemistry at school....otherwise I was a 4.0 student.

Can you explain it in laymen's terms, please?

I'll give it a try.

Scientists have found the key through Polarization of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background); and the expansion of Gravitational Waves. Gravitational waves generate B Modes. Using the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica, Astronomers have found these B Modes; their smoking gun.

Of course, these findings are up for scientific scrutiny but the scientists are pretty positive that they have a winner.

This sort of thing is always a bit mumbo jumbo to me, the big bang is still a theory, and what sound or signal can be defined and pin pointed as the (alleged) big bang.
I am always skeptical of this sort of science, they are telling us they have found earth like planets in far away galaxy's with and yet a fair bit of our system is still guess work.
Pass the salt for pinching please.

Here you go, Zeevar. I always keep some with me, because I always need it lol.

reply to post by zeevar

This sort of thing is always a bit mumbo jumbo to me, the big bang is still a theory, and what sound or signal can be defined and pin pointed as the (alleged) big bang.

The theory of gravitation is also a theory. Care to test it by jumping off your roof to see if you accelerate at 9.8 m/s2? Maybe if you try it enough times you can prove the theory wrong.

I am always skeptical of this sort of science, they are telling us they have found earth like planets in far away galaxy's

No they aren't.

reply to post by lostbook

Scientists have found the key through Polarization of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background); and the expansion of Gravitational Waves. Gravitational waves generate B Modes. Using the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica, Astronomers have found these B Modes; their smoking gun.

Ah! So - it's a math equation proven by observation then! ..is that right? To be honest, I don't get how microwaves work either.

I am rather pedestrian at technology....
thanks for your effort. I know lots of people on here are way more sci-savvy than I am.

reply to post by Phage


Gravity is something I am aware of as I interact with it every day. Somebody came up with a "maybe there was this explosion idea".. and try to sell it as fact....the same happend about this God fellow you know.

Google "earth like planet discovered" and I say yes they do.

reply to post by zeevar


Nope not in other Galaxies as you said in your post.
We have in our own galaxy but not others...yet.
(In before Phage and one of his Phageslaps lol)

Also the difference is Science has stuff to back claims up..including this amazing discovery.

reply to post by ChaosEpsilon

So it's a "proof" based on a theory?

No. It is a confirmation of a prediction made by an hypotheses about the way the expansion of the universe proceeded.

I don't understand anything that was being stated, but it doesn't seem very concrete.

The 'big bang' is the nickname for the 'scientific hypothesis' that our current universe came into existence, expanded rapidly, and continues to expand. There is more than enough 'scientific proof' of that hypothesis to demonstrate that it is correct so it is considered a 'Scientific Theory'.

For example, from the OP's referenced article, the fact that the 'cosmic microwave background' radiation' (CMB) is the same temperature all over the sky indicates that our entire sky came from one small region in space and that the universe expanded from that point. However, not every detail of that expansion is understood, and there are many unproven hypotheses about various aspects of it.

I don't pretend to understand this completely, but the hypothesis under discussion appears to predict that as the universe expanded the CMB would be polarized by Gravity waves much as light is polarized when passed through a polarizing lens such as as Polaroid Sunglasses. The polarization should be detectable as something called a 'B-mode'.

A scientific hypothesis is an explanation for an observation that makes predictions that can be tested. A statement that makes no testable predictions is not an hypothesis, it is just a statement. When a hypothesis makes a prediction that proves correct, it may be incorporated into the appropriate scientific theory. Competing successful hypotheses are measured against each other for completeness and simplicity.

In this case, the hypothesis was tested by looking for the predicted B-mode polarization in the CMB and it appears to have been found. The data will continue to be analyzed to ensure they haven't misinterpreted it.

The smoking gun analogy goes something like this: we have the bullet lodged in the tree (the CMB) so we know that a gun was fired and the direction from where it must have been fired. Now we can see the smoke coming out of the barrel of the gun itself, feel the heat of the barrel, and smell the burnt powder (the B-mode).

BuzzyWigs
reply to post by lostbook

 

Scientists have found the key through Polarization of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background); and the expansion of Gravitational Waves. Gravitational waves generate B Modes. Using the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica, Astronomers have found these B Modes; their smoking gun.

Ah! So - it's a math equation proven by observation then! ..is that right? To be honest, I don't get how microwaves work either.

Rather pedestrian at technology....
thanks for your effort. I know lots of people on here are way more sci-savvy than I am.

Some of the real scientists here on ATS could explain it a little better. But yes, it is proof gained from observation in a sense. I think that Microwaves is one of the ways light is dispersed and the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) are the dissapating light waves left over after the Big Bang. Like when you drop a rock in a pond-the first ripples are larger, faster, and closer together but as the waves extend out, they get shorter, slower, and farther apart. Those shorter, slower, and farther apart waves is what scientists see now as remnants of the Big Bang.