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Yes, there really was a Big Bang: South Pole scientists find space-time ripples from initial expansion of universe

Ever pondered the notion of Big Bang theory and wondered if that really, truly could be the way the universe popped into being? Does it seem a bit far-fetched that our infinitely dense universe literally exploded, nearly 14 billion years ago, from a single point and then expanded at speeds high enough to cool its homogenous gluon goop down into subatomic particles which would eventually pull each other together in an orderly enough fashion to create branches of McDonalds?

Tough, because a team of scientists from all around the world have just announced that they have found the first direct evidence to support the theory of the Big Bang. Researchers from the BICEP2 program speaking at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts,  say that they have spotted evidence of gravitational waves in cosmic microwave background radiation, which are likely to have been caused by the rapid expansion of the universe following the Big Bang.

Cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) has long been understood as an electromagnetic heat signature left from a time shortly after the Big Bang as the universe began to cool. Using a telescope based at the South Pole – the point on Earth “closest to space” – the BICEP2 team looked for patterns of polarised light in the CMBR which would have been caused by ‘primordial gravitational waves’ created as the universe went through its initial rapid expansion. These have been described as “the first tremors of the big bang” and “ripples in space time”.

Imagine space as a giant black bathtub, shaped like a cone.
Imagine space as a giant black bathtub, shaped like a cone.

According to the researchers, this finally creates a connection between Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and quantum mechanics, paving the way for the much sought after ‘grand unification theory’ of the two branches of physics.

The initial report says that the observers were surprised by the clarity of the gravitational waves, but spent three years checking their data for errors. Their work hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, however, a process that could take another six months to a year and will independently verify their findings.

UPDATE: Stanford University send a camera crew along with one of the collaborating researchers from the project, Stanford professor Chao-Lin Kuo, who went in person to surprise Andrei Linde, one of the major contributors to the theory of universal inflation after its introduction in 1980, with the news of the discovery. While there is some rather incomprehensible science babble when the news is broken to Linde, the simultaneous look of shock and relief on his face is well worth watching the video for.

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