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Axion Monodromy Gets New Lease on Life at r=0.2
In the spirit of the "old" days of Usenet, I've given this message a
title much like what you might have seen back in the 80's. :-) Actually this is about the discovery announced on Monday that the BICEP2 experiment has detected the "fingerprints of inflation - the exponential expansion [super-luminal i.e. c] that put the "bang" in the Big Bang" according to an article published Monday by Sky & Telescope. /quote The discovery of primordial B-modes [polarization patterns observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation] comes from the second round of Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) experiment. It’s among one of several projects observing the CMB in what’s called the Southern Hole, a patch of sky visible from Antarctica that’s a direct sightline out of our galaxy and into the cosmic depths. The BICEP2 scope has an aperture of less than 30 centimeters (12 inches), but it doesn’t need to be big. Cooled to 4 kelvin, it gazes at a 20° patch of sky 24/7, detecting the CMB’s faint microwaves — and, crucially, how they’re polarized. /end-quote This is about as big a deal in astronomy/astrophysics as you will likely see for this decade anyway. According to the S&T article some further tidbits of this discovery a /quote 1. The first hard evidence that gravity is quantized, or comes in discrete packets as light does. The gravitation waves that produced the B-modes were born as quantum fluctuations in gravity itself... 2. This is the first detection of gravitation waves' action on matter other than their source... 3. The first detection of Hawking radiation... /end-quote Full article can be found he http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/...250681381.html More background details can be found he http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/...250522521.html Steve Willner, still partying or how's the hangover? ;-) Dave |
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