Big Bangs Smoking Gun Found says Discovery News. This relates to the instrument called BICEP2 finding patterns of polarized light from heavenly sources. If you read the Discovery News article, youd get the impression there is a direct relationship between whats been discovered in the polarized light and evidence of the Big Bang. But I also read a blog by particle physicist Matt Strassler (profmattstrassler/), in which he tried to explain for the lay person why this discovery indicates what it does. Its noteworthy that the first thing he emphasizes is the need for the results to be verified. He then explains that this polarized light (polarized refers to light ordered as if having passed through a prism) would have come from the time that the expanding universe (technically this is called inflation) cooled enough to emit a massive electromagnetic wave (i.e. a burst of light or radiation related to light). This is theorized to have happened 380,000 years after the Big Bang occurred. According to mathematical models, the presence of gravity waves would alter light, polarizing it. Gravity waves have been theorized to exist since the days of Albert Einstein but have never been discovered--up till now possibly. (The source of the gravity causing the gravity waves would be the mass of the expanding universe.) But there are several problems actually. One of course, as already stated, this finding has not been verified. Two is the gravity waves have not actually been detected, only the polarized light has. Three is this is not actually evidence of the the Big Bang per se, though it would be of an expanding universe. These three points come straight from Professor Strassler. He also mentioned that, fourth, the calculations in the mathematical model accounting for the gravity waves includes the presence of dark matter and dark energy. SUBSTANCES FOR WHICH MOST OF THE PROPERTIES ARE CURRENTLY UNKNOWN (emphasis mine, not Prof Strasslers). Could it be that these unknown substances also have the power to polarize light? Granted, the pattern of polarization matches what one would theoretically expect from gravity waves, according to Prof Strassler. Chances are that polarization from another source would show another pattern. Chances are, but I dont see how its possible to be certain as of yet. Also note that for a long time now background radiation as been taken to be the original pulse of light (or shorter than light em emission) from this particular period, redshifted over time due to the expansion of the cosmos. In this sense, the polarized light is no more evidence of the Big Bang than that the background radiation first discovered in 1964. Though this would be the first link to gravity waves, which actually has a number of interesting implications that have nothing to do with the Big Bang, which I wont explore here. Im talking about this not just because the science is interesting to me, but because it also illustrates a few truths about the nature of science itself. First off, seeing this reporting directly from a scientist and also from Discovery News reminds me that some of the sense I have that science can be arrogantly presumptuous comes from the REPORTING of science rather than science itself. As to the actual science, has the Big Bangs Smoking Gun been found? No, not really. What has been found exactly is unknown. Its interesting, worth examining more--but its not what its been reported to be...I find that real science is often like that.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 10:46:52 +0000
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