It just means that this current data does not prove their existence. The new analysis does not rule out gravity waves altogether. This new analysis revealed… galactic dust.īut the story is not over yet – it never is with science. So they combined their data and did a new analysis of the combined data. The scientists, of course, just want to know the truth, even if it means losing the Nobel Prize for some. Now we have two sets of data coming to two different conclusions. Those scientists analysing the Planck data came to the conclusion that the features in the CMB interpreted as gravity waves were from galactic dust, not gravity waves from early inflation. Fortunately there was another independent set of data from ESA’s Planck satellite, which was just completing a very thorough mapping of the CMB. Other scientists pointed out that the data could be interpreted as the effect of galactic dust. That is what was announced last March – that the BICEP2 experiment using the Keck array to analyze the cosmic microwave background (CMB) revealed the predicted gravity waves.Īlmost immediately, however, there were possible problems. Does it make predictions about how reality behaves, predictions that can be confirmed through observation or experiment? The inflationary theory does make a specific prediction, that early inflation would have caused gravity waves, subtle ripples of gravity that can possibly be detected. They want to know if it is actually correct. It doesn’t matter how pretty, clean, or useful an idea is. Scientists, however, are not philosophers, theologians, or metaphysicists. It was a nice idea that had useful explanatory power. Rapid inflation would have had the effect of, to use an analogy frequently offered, taking a crumpled piece of paper and then flattening it out. This would explain some interesting features about the universe that would otherwise be difficult to explain, including why our universe appears to flat and uniform. Inflationary theory is the notion that in the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang the universe expanded rapidly. It seems that the story of possible gravity waves supporting inflationary theory is going the way of FTL neutrinos rather than the Higgs. This is just a sample of recent big science news stories that reveal the process of science – skeptical questioning of all claims and testing those claims against objective evidence. In those four little words, “if it holds up,” lies the essence of science. 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. ![]() In March of 2014, in what was definitely the biggest science news story of the year scientists reported detected gravity waves from the Big Bang, confirming the theory called the “inflationary universe.” The discovery was hailed as a “smoking gun.” at the time wrote: However they were still not completely sure so they kept testing, and then last year they announced that indeed they did identify the Higgs as predicted by the standard model of particle physics. By early 2012 the technical error that led to the apparent discovery was revealed.Īlso in 2012 scientists reported that, using the Large Hadron Collider, they probably found the Higgs boson, the particle responsible for mass. In 2011 scientists tentatively reported that they may have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light in apparent contradiction to the theory of relativity.
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