PLato said,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle said "look around you at what is, if you would know the truth" To Remember: Eskesthai
Published on Jan 1, 2013
SETI Talks archive: http://seti.org/talks
Cosmological observations show that the universe is very uniform on the maximally large scale accessible to our telescopes, and the same laws of physics operate in all of its parts that we can see now. The best theoretical explanation of the uniformity of our world was provided by inflationary theory, which was proposed 30 years ago.See: Multiverse or Universe? - Andre Linde (SETI Talks)
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Figure 3: Left: BICEP2 apodized E-mode and B-mode maps filtered to 50 < ℓ < 120. Right: The equivalent maps for the first of the lensed-ΛCDM+noise simulations. The color scale displays the E-mode scalar and B-mode
pseudoscalar patterns while the lines display the equivalent magnitude
and orientation of the linear polarization. Note that excess B-mode is detected over lensing+noise with high signal-to-noise ratio in the map (s/n > 2 per map mode at ℓ ≈ 70). (Also note that the E-mode and B-mode maps use different color/length scales.)BICEP2 2014 Release Figures from Papers |
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Gravitational waves open up a new window on the universe
that will allow us to probe events for which no electromagnetic
signature exists. In the next few years, the ground-based
interferometers GEO-600, LIGO, VIRGO and TAMA should be able to detect
the high-frequency gravitational waves produced by extreme astrophysical
objects, providing the first direct detection of these disturbances in
space–time. With its much longer arm lengths, the space-based
interferometer LISA will, if launched, be able to detect lower-frequency
gravitational waves, possibly those generated by phase transitions in
the early universe. At even lower frequencies, other experiments will
look for tiny signatures of gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave
background. Source: NASA. Gravity Wave Spectrum |
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Figure 18: Results of far-field beam characterization with a chopped thermal source. Left: Typical measured far-field beam on a linear scale. Middle: The Gaussian fit to the measured beam pattern. Right: The fractional residual after subtracting the Gaussian fit. Note finer color scale in the right-hand differenced map.
BICEP2 2014 Release Figures from Papers |
In 2003 the WMAP craft measured the very small fluctuations – about one part in 100,000 – in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation (coloured regions). These fluctuations, which are in excellent agreement with the predictions of Big Bang theory, originated during inflation and evolved under the influence of both gravity and the pressure of the matter–radiation plasma before particles in the plasma recombined to form hydrogen atoms. Buried in this pattern might also be fluctuations from primordial gravitational waves, but to tease out their signature researchers have to map in detail the polarization of the photons as well as their temperature (white lines represent the electric polarization vector). Since gravitational waves produce a quadrupolar anisotropy and therefore induce polarization without an associated temperature fluctuation, they (and only they) are able to generate a polarization pattern that cannot be expressed as the gradient of a scalar. Source: NASA. See: Sounding out the Big Bang
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Cosmic searches at the South Pole. The BICEP-2
Telescope is the up-facing dish at right. The larger white dish is the
South Pole Telescope (SPT), and the building is the Dark Sector
Laboratory. Both experiments observe in the millimeter-submillimeter
part of the spectrum, mapping polarization patterns in the cosmic
background radiation.
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...... will announce a “major discovery” about B-modes in the cosmic microwave background See: Who should get the Nobel Prize for cosmic inflation?
Closing thoughts -
BICEP2: Primordial Gravitational Waves!
The BICEP result, if correct, is a spectacular and historic discovery. In terms of impact on fundamental physics, particularly as a tool for testing ideas about quantum gravity, the detection of primordial gravitational waves is completely unprecedented. Inflation evidently occurred just two orders of magnitude below the Planck scale, and we have now seen the quantum fluctuations of the graviton. For those who want to understand how the universe began, and also for those who want to understand quantum gravity, it just doesn't get any better than this.
In fact, it all seems far too good to be true. And perhaps it is: check back after another experimental team is able to check the BICEP findings, and then we can really break out the champagne.
Gravitational waves have a polarization pattern that causes objects to expand in one direction, while contracting in the perpendicular direction. That is, they have spin two. This is because gravity waves are fluctuations in the tensorial metric of space-time.
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| WMAP image of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation |
In this example I’m going to map speed to the pitch of the note, length/postion to the duration of the note and number of turns/legs/puffs to the loudness of the note.See: How to make sound out of anything.
In the late 1950s, Weber became intrigued by the relationship between gravitational theory and laboratory experiments. His book, General Relativity and Gravitational Radiation, was published in 1961, and his paper describing how to build a gravitational wave detector first appeared in 1969. Weber's first detector consisted of a freely suspended aluminium cylinder weighing a few tonnes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Weber announced that he had recorded simultaneous oscillations in detectors 1000 km apart, waves he believed originated from an astrophysical event. Many physicists were sceptical about the results, but these early experiments initiated research into gravitational waves that is still ongoing. Current gravitational wave experiments, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), are descendants of Weber's original work. See:Joseph Weber 1919 - 2000
Dr. Subodh Patil is a cosmologist at CERN and is the inspiration partner for Bill Fontana, 2012-2013 Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN winner, during his residency at CERN. Bill began his 3-month residency at CERN at an event called "The Universe of Sound" on July 4th, 2013, in the CERN Globe of Science & Innovation. In this excerpt from this event, Dr. Patil explains the parallels between physics, cosmology, sound, and music.
Watch the video of Bill Fontana's talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zjy8v...
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| We can learn about the first fraction of a second, among other things, by studying the polarization pattern of the CMB...Yuki D. Takahashi |
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| [Dr. Kip Thorne, Caltech 01] |
PURPOSE: To show the two-dimensional standing waves on the surface of a square or circular plate.
With the discovery of sound waves in the CMB, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology in which we can begin to talk with certainty about the origin of structure and the content of matter and energy in the universe.Polarization
Our view of the universe is about to change forever. Since science began, all our knowledge of what lies above, below and around us has come from long-familiar forms of energy: light, produced by distant astrophysical objects; and matter, in the form of particles such as cosmic rays. But we are now in a position to study the universe using an entirely different form of energy that until now has never been directly detected – gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves open up a new window on the universe that will allow us to probe events for which no electromagnetic signature exists. In the next few years, the ground-based interferometers GEO-600, LIGO, VIRGO and TAMA should be able to detect the high-frequency gravitational waves produced by extreme astrophysical objects, providing the first direct detection of these disturbances in space–time. With its much longer arm lengths, the space-based interferometer LISA will, if launched, be able to detect lower-frequency gravitational waves, possibly those generated by phase transitions in the early universe. At even lower frequencies, other experiments will look for tiny signatures of gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background. Source: NASA. 
The flow of energy in a cosmic phase transition is similar to that in a waterfall, with turbulence in the cosmic fluid generating a gravitational-wave background today.Modern cosmology has sharpened questions posed for millennia about the origin of our cosmic habitat. The age-old questions have been transformed into two pressing issues primed for attack in the coming decade: How did the Universe begin? and What physical laws govern the Universe at the highest energies? The clearest window onto these questions is the pattern of polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is uniquely sensitive to primordial gravity waves. A detection of the special pattern produced by gravity waves would be not only an unprecedented discovery, but also a direct probe of physics at the earliest observable instants of our Universe. Experiments which map CMB polarization over the coming decade will lead us on our first steps towards answering these age-old questions.
There are several recognized processes from the early universe that leave relic effects setting the stage for galaxy formation and evolution. We deal here with the first generarion of stars, primordial nucleosynthesis, the epoch of recombination, and the thermal history of various cosmic backgrounds.
So given the standard information one would have to postulate something different then what is currently classified?
A new Type III (what ever one shall attribute this to definition), versus Type I, Type IIa?
WMAP has produced a new, more detailed picture of the infant universe. Colors indicate "warmer" (red) and "cooler" (blue) spots. The white bars show the "polarization" direction of the oldest light. This new information helps to pinpoint when the first stars formed and provides new clues about events that transpired in the first trillionth of a second of the universe.
The expansion of the universe over most of its history has been relatively gradual. The notion that a rapid period "inflation" preceded the Big Bang expansion was first put forth 25 years ago. The new WMAP observations favor specific inflation scenarios over other long held ideas.
We don't have to wait for the giant telescope to get unparalleled results from this technique, however. One of the most pressing issues in current physics is to gain a better understanding of the mysterious Dark Energy which currently drives the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Metcalf and White show that mass maps of a large fraction of the sky made with an instrument like SKA could measure the properties of Dark Energy more precisely than any previously suggested method, more than 10 times as accurately as mass maps of similar size based on gravitational distortions of the optical images of galaxies.
With the discovery of sound waves in the CMB, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology in which we can begin to talk with certainty about the origin of structure and the content of matter and energy in the universe.
Here’s an analogy to understand this: imagine that our universe is a two-dimensional pool table, which you look down on from the third spatial dimension. When the billiard balls collide on the table, they scatter into new trajectories across the surface. But we also hear the click of sound as they impact: that’s collision energy being radiated into a third dimension above and beyond the surface. In this picture, the billiard balls are like protons and neutrons, and the sound wave behaves like the graviton.
Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.
