This week’s report from the Background
Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) project is said to spectacularly
provide support to how the universe rapidly expanded less than a trillionth of
a second after the Big Bang known as inflation or cosmological inflation. The
telescope allowed the analysis of the polarization of light left over from the
early universe, leading to the landmark announcement.
Given the significant importance of this
work the measurements described are difficult to make and could potentially be
contaminated. The Planck space telescope collaboration is expected to release
results on polarization of the cosmic microwave background as well other
experiments working toward similar goals.
Inflation theory has been well documented
and debated over the last 30 years. The human aspect of the story is at once
fascinating and endearing. As a junior
particle physicist, Alan Guth first developed the idea of cosmic inflation in
1979 at Cornell and gave his first seminar on the subject in January 1980.
He knew there were problems with it. “He
wrote a paper saying, I think this is a very important idea, but I can show it
doesn’t work in the form I am proposing,’” Michael Turner, a University of
Chicago astrophysicist, told MIT’s Technology Review. “He invited other
scientists to think about inflation and improve it.”
The image above is of his notebook dated
Dec 7, 1979. Clearly, Guth saw the importance of this insight describing it as
a “spectacular realisation”. Indeed it was….
