Scientists to Unveil 'Major Discovery' at Astrophysics Center Monday

Xcathdra

MystikMushroom
I know what it's going to be!

"We think we might have found even MORE evidence of liquid water on Mars!"

*eye roll*

I was gonna say.. Apparently the only way to keep NASA in the public eye is to hold a press conference on some "major Discovery".

One of these days they are going to hold a conference, no one will show up to cover it, and the scientists will be sitting around talking to the Extraterrestrials about 1st contact.

First of all, this isn't coming from NASA, it's coming from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics -- which makes me doubt it has anything to do with water on Mars (as other have postulated), considering water on Mars is not an Astrophysics issue...

However, and having said that, if NASA didn't hold those regular news conferences to announce their latest discoveries and research like they normally do, people would criticize them for hiding things.

The announcement will be today on 16:00 UT, right?

Some speculate that it's about discovering evidence of "ancient" gravity waves leftover from the apparent Big Bang.

I hope I translated it right.

On my local news portal (in Croatian):

"Kruže glasine da je signal pronađen uz pomoć posebnog teleskopa nazvanog Bicep (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) na Južnom polu", piše Guardian.

"To se naziva Svetim gralom kozmologije. Bilo bi to veliko, veliko, veliko otkriće", kazala je kozmologinja s londonskog Sveučilišta, Hiranya Peiris.

Translation:

"Rumors circulate that a signal was tracked with a special telescope named BICEP located on the south pole. - writes Guardian"

"It's called a holy grail of Cosmology. It would be a huge, huge discovery. "

Menedes567
The announcement will be today on 16:00 UT, right?

Yes, at 16:00 UT/ GMT today, Monday March 17th. That's Noon Eastern Time and 9 a.m. Pacific Time, for those in the US of A. The scientists involved are themselves the source of the talk about a 'major discovery'. If they are being as careful and cautious as scientists are supposed to be, they must really have something big, and be very sure of it.

reply to post by Ross 54


Will there be a live feed of the news conference? I'd like to be there, but the next best thing is to watch it live. If it is such a major event it really, in a perfect world, be live on all the major cable news outlets, but won't be (I assume).

I've tried to get on the Harvard-Smithstonian website but it's probably overloaded. Here is the Wikipedia page for the center:

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Aleister


well www.cfa.harvard.edu... is about the explode to much traffic will need to find another one

Dolby_X
reply to post by Aleister

 

well www.cfa.harvard.edu... is about the explode to much traffic will need to find another one

I posted my edit and then came back and saw yours. I tried it too, but nothing, white page and frozen computer. NASA TV really ought to be carrying this.

reply to post by Aleister

URL Checked:
no responseResponse Time:
unknownLast Down:
DOWN
Cfa.harvard.edu is DOWN

They found Planet X and we are all gonna die.

Didn't see that so I thought I would toss it out before it somebody else does.

Really should be interesting to see what they say.

Guys, for those of you who can watch the live press-release of the announcement, could you post a summary of what it's about here, if they hadn't made an article about it on their website by then?

reply to post by Menedes567

Guys, for those of you who can watch the live press-release of the announcement, could you post a summary of what it's about here, if they hadn't made an article about it on their website by then?

Missed you over on your prediction thread, so do you think this could be part of your big something is going to happen in March?

Just thought I would ask.

"Today, some 300 Smithsonian and Harvard scientists cooperate in broad programs of astrophysical research supported by Federal appropriations and University funds as well as contracts and grants from government agencies," CfA officials explain in a description. "These scientific investigations, touching on almost all major topics in astronomy, are organized into the following divisions, scientific departments and service groups."

Visit Space.com today at 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT) for the results of the CfA announcement.

reply to post by zilebeliveunknown


Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed

Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.

Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being. It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes.

The work will be scrutinised carefully, but already there is talk of a Nobel.

www.bbc.co.uk...

S & F

reply to post by tsurfer2000h


I don't know about that; that's the reason why I'm very interested in this announcement. I can't wait for the press conference.

Ridiculous, they know absolutely nothing about the universe ! We can see or measure 5 % of the universe, the rest (95 %) is "dark matter" and "dark energy" completely unknown.

EnigmaAgent
reply to post by zilebeliveunknown

 

Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed

Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.

Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being. It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes.

The work will be scrutinised carefully, but already there is talk of a Nobel.

www.bbc.co.uk...

spot on that it's bigbag= mostly for sure real

Researchers say they have new evidence to support Big Bang Theory; measurements taken using BICEP2 instrument at the South Pole - @BBCNews

reply to post by Dolby_X


So, gravitational waves it is. The Big Bang being proven must be the luck o' the Irish:

New York Times
www.nytimes.com...

On Monday, Dr. Guth’s starship came in. Radio astronomers reported that they had seen the beginning of the Big Bang, and that his hypothesis, known undramatically as inflation, looked right.

Reaching back across 13.8 billion years to the first sliver of cosmic time with telescopes at the South Pole, a team of astronomers led by John M. Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics detected ripples in the fabric of space-time — so-called gravitational waves — the signature of a universe being wrenched violently apart when it was roughly a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old. They are the long-sought smoking-gun evidence of inflation, proof, Dr. Kovac and his colleagues say, that Dr. Guth was correct.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this mean they found some kind of "signal" in the cosmic background? Didn't Stargate Universe toy with that idea, as the ship Destiny was sent to find it?

They pretty much already knew this. This is sort of like how they'll make a big announcement they "MIGHT have found some evidence AGAIN for the presence of liquid water on Mars!!!!!"

I mean, it's exciting if that is what you spend your entire like researching -- but certainly not to me and I'm a space nut.

EDIT: I was being taught about the expanding universe 30 years ago from my father and encyclopedia.

reply to post by MystikMushroom


More like proof than a guess. People have been searching for these waves for a long time. Nobel Prize money dancing in the eye of the beholder.

Here's the Space.com story:

www.space.com...

Astronomers have found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, the theorized dramatic expansion of the universe that put the "bang" in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, new research suggests.

If it holds up, the landmark discovery — which also confirms the existence of hypothesized ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves — would give researchers a much better understanding of the Big Bang and its immediate aftermath.