The press is announcing that BICEP2 results have been disproven. Actually the results are a bit more subtle.
Everything’s Fine, Situation Normal
More results from the Planck collaboration are coming in, this time from conference in Italy. There’s been a lot of excitement building up to this new release, particularly given some of the unresolved issues in the standard model of cosmology.
Nine Skies
This month Astronomy & Astrophysics released 31 articles on data gathered by the Planck satellite. This includes nine all-sky surveys at a range of wavelengths from radio to infrared. It represents the most detailed map of the cosmic sky to date, and already there are some interesting results.
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.
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?
Twist and Shout
Measuring the magnetic fields of our galaxy poses an interesting challenge. The galactic magnetic field doesn’t emit or absorb light, and of course we can’t directly measure it at various places like we can for Earth’s magnetic field. The galactic magnetic field does, however, interact strongly with things such as ionized gas and electrically charged dust, so we can indirectly measure the field by the way it affects these things.
Beyond the Sea of Stars
For generations humans looked up at the night sky and had only questions. Now we can look up at the night sky and know. Not just what stars and planets are, but the whole sky, the universe in its entirety. And yet there are still more questions to be asked.