Skip to main content

The Birth of the Universe: Major Gravitational Wave Discovery


We've all heard of the Big Bang. The theory goes that the universe started at an extremely dense and hot point and rapidly expanded from there and is now still expanding to this day. Here's the thing though: The "Big Bang" occurred over 13 billion years ago. In case you haven't figured out, it's really hard to look this far into the past and that is why it is has been so hard to conclusively say what the universe was like at its birth.

Except maybe not! Physicists are a clever bunch and have found a way to validate the theory of the rapid expansion of the universe at an early age called Inflation (by early age, I'm literally talking about a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a second….that's seriously early). What many physicists theorized was something called "gravitational waves". These were kind of like ripples that should have been left over from Inflation. If we could detect these, that would prove that Inflation was true. The thing is though that these "ripples" have been travelling through space for billions of years, so they have become incredibly weak and hard to detect. Technology steps up however as ultra sensitive detectors used by the BICEP2 group (the team that discovered this) allowed the gravitational waves to be detected!

And the results…are outstanding! Not only have they verified the Theory of Inflation and the work of countless physicists, the discovery raises some important questions and leads us now in very interesting directions. The findings better predict the moment at which inflation began (a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang), which in turn slightly change our views on how the early universe developed. Also, the discovery brings us a step closer to a 'Theory of Everything". This is something that we've been working towards for a long time - a theory that would bring gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong/weak forces together in one beautiful framework.

Before this, we had a very accurate history of the universe back to abound 380 000 years after the Big Bang. The number is 380 000 because this is when light from the early universe was "released" (meaning we can only see that far in the past). BICEP2 helps bridge what we knew before to the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang, It is quite the discovery indeed and we can expect more to come from subsequent research as other groups work hard to verify the findings.

There are still many questions left unanswered, but this is a huge breakthrough for physics. This, my friends, is the cutting edge. We are slowly clipping away at our ignorance and digging deeper and deeper into some of the most profound questions we have to ask. Science is the tool that allows us to do this.

Big shout out to the BICEP2 group that made this incredible discovery and also to several theoretical physicists who have worked on this problem for so many years.

Here is an awesome video of Professor Andrei Linde learning for the first time that his work had been experimentally verified. You can really see the emotion. It's a beautiful video and reminds you of the years of human sacrifice that go into the amazing science that people do every single day.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Big Is a Million, Billion and Trillion?

Millons, billions, trillions - we've heard it all, but do we really understand them? Most people know that a trillion is bigger than a million for example, but just how big is the difference really? How about we find out!? Time  Here'a a neat exercise. Without doing any math or calculations, I want you to try to guess how long it was 1 million seconds ago….Okay, got a number in your head? The answer is: 11. 52 days  Hmmm…interesting. But here's the better part. Now that you know how long it was 1 million seconds ago, I want you to guess at how long it was a billion seconds ago…Got it? What did you guess? A month or two? Well, it turns out the answer is: 32 years  Wow! I don't know about you, but I really underestimated that one. If you're under 32, that means you haven't even existed for a billion seconds…and yet, a million seconds was less than two weeks ago. Okay, now that we know that, let's do the same for a trillion. Take a guess…The answ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Uncertainty Principle & the Non-Commutative Property

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commutative_property Scroll down for relevant discussion on the uncertainty principle. Understanding the mathematics behind the physics involved is imperative to really understanding Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. We've already discussed the logic behind it and the physical consequences, but now it's time to really get down to the fundamentals. We're going to look at something we tend to take for granted in our daily interactions with math: the commutative property of mathematics. The commutative property in math applies to addition and multiplication. It basically states that, when combining two "elements" (i.e. numbers), the order does NOT matter. This is demonstrated in the following diagram: It doesn't matter whether the blue or orange dots are counted first - same result But we've always known this stuff, right? I mean, everybody knows that 2+3 is the same as 3+2 (at least I hope)! The same rules fly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

6 Weird Animal Defence Mechanisms

There are approximately 8.7 million species on Earth! With that big of a number, you're bound to find some very interesting ones with some very peculiar methods of defending themselves. Humans may have guns and weapons, but most people have nothing on these guys… 6. Frog Breaks Its Own Bones To Stab Enemies  When threatened by predators, a particular type of frog, commonly known as the "Hairy Frog", uses quite the unorthodox method indeed. It has the ability (and audacity) to break its own toe bones  and then push them out of his skins. This frog will then use these sharp bones sticking out its feet as little swords to stab its enemy. Some scientists believe that the frog is able to bring the bones back into his body for healing with its muscles…either way, this frog is pretty crazy.  5. Opossums Play Dead…For Real! We've all heard of the old trick of "playing dead". You're supposed to lay there, secretly pretending to be dead until yo...
1 comment
Read more