Don’t believe in cosmic inflation? You’re not alone, but you’re probably wrong. (Synopsis)

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh

Ever since the BICEP2 team reported their findings -- and evidence for B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background indicating gravitational waves from inflation -- the physics world has never been the same.

Images credit: Seljak & Zaldarriaga (L), Wayne Hu (R), viahttp://cosmology.berkeley.edu/~yuki/CMBpol/CMBpol.htm. Images credit: Seljak & Zaldarriaga (L), Wayne Hu (R), viahttp://cosmology.berkeley.edu/~yuki/CMBpol/CMBpol.htm.

Recently, there have been rumors that perhaps this B-mode signal is due to the Milky Way, and not due to inflation after all. If this does turn out to be the case, what does this mean for cosmic inflation? Is it still on rock-solid footing, or will it come tumbling down like a house of cards?

Image credit: Bock et al. (2006, astro-ph/0604101); modifications by me. Image credit: Bock et al. (2006, astro-ph/0604101); modifications by me.

Go read the whole story and find out!

More like this

With all the wonderful things in theoretical physics and astronomy, why keep posting same things over and over?

You wrote 2 articles about inflation with more or less same text and charts as this one, just 2 months ago. And they were the same as articles 2 months before that. The only news is BICEP2, but it's not news anymore.

So the question is why keep recycling?? There are so many things you never ever wrote about, especially in the realm of theoretical physics, yet you keep on pushing the same articles over and over again. :(

By Sinisa Lazarek (not verified) on 13 May 2014 #permalink

I don't believe in cosmic inflation any more. I don't have an issue with Big Bang cosmology, just inflation. This comes from my re-appraisal of the original "frozen-star" black hole interpretation, wherein the universe is likened to an inside-out black hole. The early universe started out "frozen" and therefore uniform. So you just don't need inflation to smooth it out. Inflation is thereby spurious.

By John Duffield (not verified) on 17 May 2014 #permalink

This is all fine and a relatively old stuff, except linking relevance of BICEPS 2, in a simpler script; but, a few equally old questions - was there anything / any field / etc where universe is exapnding? How can so much matter or energy confine itself to a space of size in Plank's scale? At what point could dark matter / energy have come to form?

Keep recycling. New readers arriving all the time. Maybe I only have coffee house internet so don't have time for in depth searches. The posts don't take up a lot of room: hooray for links, it starts me on a trail. And as Chaucer says, who-so list it nat y-here,Turne over the leef, and chese another tale;