Scientists Detected Gravitational Waves From Big Bang

In physics, gravitational waves, which are different from gravity waves, ripple in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as a wave, travelling outward from the source. It was predicted long ago, but never seen directly. But seems like that is about to change. Lately, some scientists from Harvard have claimed that they have detected gravitational waves from big bang.


gravitational waves

Scientists use the word “inflation” to describe how the universe rapidly expanded after the Big Bang in a ripping-apart of space. Chao-Lin Kuo, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a co-leader of the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) collaboration said, “Inflation is the theory about the ‘bang’ of Big Bang. It explains why we have all this stuff in the universe.”

BICEP2

Scientists specifically discovered a twist of light called primordial B-mode polarization. This refers to the swirling effect that enormous gravitation waves had on photons that escaped from the Big Bang and serves as proof that those gravitational waves actually exist. If gravitational waves do exist that means that the rapid expansion of the universe in the moments after the Big Bang actually happened.

BICEP2-B-mode-signal

Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who first predicted inflation in 1980 the field, said, “There’s a chance it could be wrong, but I think it’s highly probable that the results stand up. I think they’ve done an incredibly good job of analysis.”

Source: Scientific American

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Anatol

Anatol Rahman is the Editor at TheTechJournal. He loves complicated machineries, and crazy about robot and space. He likes cycling. Before joining TheTechJournal team, he worked in the telemarketing industry. You can catch him on Google+.

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