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Cosmic inflation confirmation debunked by Interstellar dust

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/3...-rebuts-a-big-bang-theory.html?_r=0&referrer=

Scientists will have to wait a while longer to find out what kicked off the Big Bang.

Last spring, a team of astronomers who go by the name of Bicep announced that they had detected ripples in space-time, or gravitational waves, reverberating from the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time — long-sought evidence that the expansion of the universe had started out with a giant whoosh called inflation.

The discovery was heralded as potentially the greatest of the new century, but after months of spirited debate, the group conceded that the result could have been caused by interstellar dust, a notion buttressed by subsequent measurements by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite that the part of the sky Bicep examined was in fact dusty.

Now a new analysis, undertaken jointly by the Bicep group and the Planck group, has confirmed that the Bicep signal was mostly, if not all, stardust, and that there is no convincing evidence of the gravitational waves. No evidence of inflation.

“This analysis shows that the amount of gravitational waves can probably be no more than about half the observed signal,” Clem Pryke of the University of Minnesota said Friday in an interview.

“We can’t say with any certainty whether any gravity wave signals remain,” Dr. Pryke added. “Obviously, we’re not exactly thrilled, but we are scientists and our job is to try and uncover the truth. In the scientific process, the truth will emerge.”

When the galactic dust is correctly subtracted, the scientists said, there was indeed a small excess signal — a glimmer of hope for inflation fans? — but it was too small to tell if it was because of gravitational waves or just experimental noise.

The Bicep/Planck analysis was led by Dr. Pryke, one of the four Bicep principal investigators. Brendan Crill, of the California Institute of Technology and a member of Planck, acted as a liaison between the groups. They had planned to post their paper Monday, but the data was posted early, apparently by accident. It was soon taken down, but not before it set off an outburst of Twitter messages and hasty news releases.

One Big Bang origin theory confirmation is debunked temporarily. This was the biggest cosmic discovery of the century previously
 

KarmaCow

Member
Watch out everything about science is wrong!

Except it's not.

This doesn't disprove inflation, it's an alternate explanation for the data gathered that was thought to be gravitational waves.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Wait, are they talking about that microwave background image?
wmap.jpg
 

peakish

Member
The theory has not been debunked. The direct observation that would have spoken for the theory was, but that doesn't say anything about the theory itself.
 

terrisus

Member
"first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time"

A line like that basically tells you that the rest of the article is meant to be read in a sensationalist manner to appeal to people without a deeper knowledge of the subject.
Would've expected better from the New York Times.


To be clear, a term like 1*10^(-36) would've been far less sensationalist.
 

i-Lo

Member
Scientific method isn't about finding out the right answer from get go. Furthermore, the universe and the rules that govern it are anything but simple. Our understanding of the world is limited by technology, the things we don't know and the things we don't know we don't know.

In the next 100 years there could be other rewritings of our understanding of our surroundings; flexibility is the key to progress and not dogma.
 
HA YOU FOOLISH SCIENTIFICS. Don't you see that Science debunked their own 'Big Bang' Theory? The Devil simply put in those ripples in space to fool you, and now you're on the path to hell. Your whole Big Bang Theory is a lie, you guys even said so, that it was a false theory. Convert now and save your soul from this Space Devil!/s

I remember reading this quite a while ago, when it was new. Interstellar dust, huh? Guess that movie really flopped if it's getting dust all over it.
 

peakish

Member
Added word to conform to this
Thanks! Although to be even more correct, the observation has not been debunked temporily but permanently :)

Anyway, it's nice to see the scientific process actually working out and verifying results, even if it takes a lot of time. Like for the debunked faster-than-light result a few years ago it must be embarrassing for the team that published the results, though, especially since the public media hausses these results so much.
 

gaugebozo

Member
As some others have posted, this doesn't show that inflation is wrong, just that the data they took doesnt show evidence for or against it.

"first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time"

A line like that basically tells you that the rest of the article is meant to be read in a sensationalist manner to appeal to people without a deeper knowledge of the subject.
Would've expected better from the New York Times.


To be clear, a term like 1*10^(-36) would've been far less sensationalist.

10^(-36) is a pretty sensational number! :p
 

Unicorn

Member
I just watched a Nova documentary last night about inflation and multiverse theory from string theorist Briane Green.

I was initially looking for the documentary Brad mentioned on the Bombcast about the universe being a projection. I watched the wrong, and now disproven, documentary.
 

beast786

Member
"first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time"


To be clear, a term like 1*10^(-36) would've been far less sensationalist.

What percent of readers would even know what 1*10^(-36) Means?

I think it makes perfect sense knowing there readers
 

John Dunbar

correct about everything
Hence my original statement of:



Also,
"their" readers

why should they not appeal to their readers? it's not like they expect the average reader of the new york times to have any profound knowledge of physics or mathematics. makes sense for them to leave that to scientific journals.
 

terrisus

Member
why should they not appeal to their readers? it's not like they expect the average reader of the new york times to have any profound knowledge of physics or mathematics. makes sense for them to leave that to scientific journals.

I just would've expected a bit more from the New York Times/expected them to think a bit higher of their readership.

I wish English made as much sense to me as science ;p

The**^Def2
 

jchap

Member
I just would've expected a bit more from the New York Times/expected them to think a bit higher of their readership.

As a scientist myself I hate media translations in scientific articles as much as anyone, but the written description of such a tiny exponent is not too offensive to me. If you write down 1E-36 or some other absurd exponent, laypeople fail to grasp just how miniscule that really is. I mean right now, we can't even measure a time within many orders of magnitude of something so brief.
 

John Dunbar

correct about everything
I just would've expected a bit more from the New York Times/expected them to think a bit higher of their readership.

i think it's more logical for them to think that people with a "deeper knowledge" of this subject are not going to be reading about it in the new york times.
 

terrisus

Member
As a scientist myself I hate media translations in scientific articles as much as anyone, but the written description of such a tiny exponent is not too offensive to me. If you write down 1E-36 or some other absurd exponent, laypeople fail to grasp just how miniscule that really is. I mean right now, we can't even measure a time within many orders of magnitude of something so brief.

Well, I mean, they could always write:
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000001

Which would've used up about the same amount of characters as well.

Not that I disagree with you that people have difficulty with visualizing/imagining very small amounts of something.
But then, in that case, they could've just said "fraction of a second" and it would've been the same to most people.

i think it's more logical for them to think that people with a "deeper knowledge" of this subject are not going to be reading about it in the new york times.

This is true.
Although it is nice to have a newspaper to read, and it's possible to be interested in having a newspaper to read, and to understand the numbers, while not at the same time subscribing to an academic journal.
 

UrbanRats

Member
"first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of time"

A line like that basically tells you that the rest of the article is meant to be read in a sensationalist manner to appeal to people without a deeper knowledge of the subject.
Would've expected better from the New York Times.


To be clear, a term like 1*10^(-36) would've been far less sensationalist.

The dirty peasants shouldn't have access to such news!

There's nothing inherently sensationalist in translating mathematical formulas into more widely understandable language.
 

terrisus

Member
The dirty peasants shouldn't have access to such news!

There's nothing inherently sensationalist in translating mathematical formulas into more widely understandable language.

In other news, scientists have revealed that "The Universe is really, really, really big! Really."
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
So Bill O'Reilly once again proves he's smarter than the entire astrophysics community.

How's that "science" stuff working out for you guys now? :smug
 

UrbanRats

Member
In other news, scientists have revealed that "The Universe is really, really, really big! Really."

It drives the point home for someone who may not be versed with the type of scale we are talking about here.
Regardless, doesn't change the fact that using the raw mathematical formula would be utterly pointless.
 
In other news, scientists have revealed that "The Universe is really, really, really big! Really."

Very doesn't mean anything measurable, so is not close to being the same. What you want to say is something like "The observable universe is roughly 72 trillion million Earths in diameter!" (that math may be bs). Pretty sensationalist too. (sorry, pet peeve of mine)
 

terrisus

Member
Very doesn't mean anything measurable, so is not close to being the same. What you want to say is something like "The observable universe is roughly 72 trillion million Earths in diameter!" (that math may be bs). Pretty sensationalist too. (sorry, pet peeve of mine)

Yeah, that's a better example (I suck at thinking of intentionally bad hypothetical examples), thanks.
 
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