Scientists Hint That a Big Bang Dust-Up Has Fizzled Out
The best thing about science is that when they get it wrong they correct it once discovered, and that usually comes pretty quickly.
A French-language report from scientists associated with the Planck cosmology mission has thrown even more cold water on last year’s claims about the detection of gravitational waves from the inflationary Big Bang. If the report truly indicates the way things are going, the final splash of disappointment may be imminent.
The saga began last March, when physicists from the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole reported seeing the signature of primordial gravitational waves in polarized patterns of microwave radiation. If the results were confirmed, they would have been a surprisingly strong confirmation of inflationary Big Bang theory and might have earned someone a Nobel Prize. But follow-up results from the Planck mission suggested that the polarization could have been caused instead by higher-than-anticipated levels of galactic dust, and that there might not be any excess signal pointing to primordial gravitational waves. To make sure, the Planck and BICEP2 teams decided to combine their data for a final analysis.
More: Scientists Hint That a Big Bang Dust-Up Has Fizzled Out - NBC News.com