Michelle J. Ortiz Billoch: Gravitational waves from the fundamental era

What happened in the beginning of everything? This question has passed through the minds of everyone but now we are closer than ever to answering this question. Physicists have found a twist in light from the Big Bang that represents the first image of ripples in the universe called gravitational waves. In 1980, Physicists Alan Guth and Andrei Linde developed the theory of inflation, the idea that the rapid expansion of space in the early universe lasted from 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang to between 10-33 and 10-32 seconds. Finding the gravitational waves from the fundamental era confirms this theory, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics and also the possibility of infinite universes. 

The sighting was made by a Harvard Team in a telescope on the roof of a laboratory that sat in the South Pole. The Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) experiment found a pattern called primordial B-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The cosmic microwave background is the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. The primordial B-mode polarization is basically a swirly pattern in the light that can be created only by gravitational waves produced by inflation. 

Studying this pattern will tell us about the birth of the universe but finding them was very difficult. The expansion of the universe stretched this gravitational waves so much that today the distortion they caused are absolutely minimal. You can only see them with super sensitive radiation detection in a telescope. BICEP2 uses about 250 thumbnail size polarization detectors to look for a difference in the CMB light from a small patch of sky coming through its telescope in two perpendicular orientations. The instrument collected data between January 2010 and December 2012 at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, where there is more stable viewing conditions because of the cold, dry air.  

The timing of inflation tells physicists about the energy scale of the universe when inflation was going on. The BICEP2 researchers have reported a surprisingly large number for r, the ratio of the gravitational wave in the CMB with means that the inflation happened earlier that some models predicted.  BICEP2’s value of r, 0.20, suggests that this was the same energy scale at which all the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces of nature, except gravity, might have been merged into a single force called the grand unified theory. The finding strengthen the idea of grand unification.

Soon after Harvard Team revealed there finding, the Planck Team at Oxford University doubted there results, claiming that what they found “can be explained purely by dust”, said Jo Dunkley, member of the Planck Team. They don’t rule out the possibility that they have gravitational waves, but they claim to be higher concentration of dust in there than the Harvard Team though. Dust from exploding stars can be confused as gravitational waves because the light gets twisted mimicking the pattern, primordial B-mode, because dust particles align themselves with the huge magnetic field that stretches trough the Milky Way. In the attempt to clear up any confusing, the Planck and Harvard team have begun to share their data in a new collaboration. Now, all we can do is wait for the dust to clear.