The press is announcing that BICEP2 results have been disproven. Actually the results are a bit more subtle.
Walk the Planck
One of the recent sagas in cosmology began with the BICEP2 press conference announcing evidence of early cosmic inflation. There was some controversy since the press release was held before the paper was peer reviewed. The results were eventually published in Physical Review Letters, though with a more cautious conclusion than the original press release. Now the Planck team has released more of their data. This new work hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, but it doesn’t look good for BICEP2.
Papers Please
The BICEP2 paper has officially been accepted in Physical Review Letters. Having survived peer review, does that mean we can now declare that inflation has now been officially observed? Not necessarily.
Point/Counterpoint
Back in March, a project known as BICEP2 held a press conference where they announced the discovery of inflation in the early universe. This created quite a stir in the press. When the announcement was made, the results had just been made public, and their paper had not been peer reviewed. As everyone started analyzing the work, what initially looked like a pretty strong result started to look less strong. Then there started to be murmurings that perhaps the announcement had been premature.
Dirty Laundry
Recently rumors have been flying that the BICEP2 results regarding the cosmic inflationary period may be invalid. It makes for great headline press, but the reality is not quite so sensational. There may be some issues with the BICEP2 results, but that isn’t what the press is excited about. What they are really excited about is how science groups are airing their dirty laundry, publicly. So what’s really going on?
Loop de Loop
Last month research project known as BICEP2 announced evidence of inflation within the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Now a new paper argues that a different effect known as a radio loop could produce similar results, which raises the question of whether inflation was detected after all.