Space-time ripples reduced to Stardust

摘要

A sprinkle of Stardust may have skewered one of the biggest scientific results of the year. In March, the BICEP2 collaboration claimed to have discovered the first evidence of ripples in space-time hailing from the birth of the universe. Now data from the Planck spacecraft would suggest it is likely that all they saw was dust. A telescope at the South Pole, BICEP2 looks at how photons from the cosmic microwave background -the earliest light in the universe -are twisted or polarised as they pass through regions of space-time warped by primordial gravitational waves. These waves were produced when the very young universe went through a period of rapid expansion, called inflation.