Updated: Congratulations to FQXi's Alan Guth and Andrei Linde following the announcement of the first direct detection of B modes -- evidence of their inflation theory. Well done to those working on BICEP2, and all others who have contributed to the development of inflation theory over the years. Here's a lovely video, from Stanford University, showing Linde's reaction to the news:
[youtube: ZlfIVEy_YOA, 560, 340]
Rumours have been flying since last week about a major discovery that will have implications for our understanding of the early universe. Later today--as I'm certain you will already have heard--there will be an official announcement from the BICEP2 experiment. The experiment involves a ground-based telescope at the South Pole, specifically designed to look for the "B-mode" signature of inflation (a predicted period of rapid acceleration of the universe in its infancy) in the CMB.
This is a thread to discuss what looks most likely to be the announcement of some level of discovery of such B modes, a twisted signature in the polarisation of CMB light that could only have been made by primordial gravitational waves--ripples in the fabric of space-time, set off by the rapid acceleration of space-time during inflation. Gravitational waves have been predicted to exist by general relativity, but primordial gravitational waves are considered to be evidence for inflation theory, in particular, because only period of massive expansion in the early universe could leave us with a detectable imprint of them today.
Details on where to watch the announcement and read the papers (once available) are here:
Dear friends and colleagues,
We invite you to join us tomorrow (Monday, 17 March) for a special webcast presenting the first results from the BICEP2 CMB telescope. The webcast will begin with a presentation for scientists 10:45-11:30 EDT, followed by a news conference 12:00-1:00 EDT.
You can join the webcast from the link at www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/news_conferences.html
Papers and data products will be available at 10:45 EDT from http://bicepkeck.org.
...
thank you, John Kovac, Clem Pryke, Jamie Bock, Chao-Lin Kuo on behalf of The BICEP2 Collaboration
Stuart Clark has written an overview of the impact of such an announcement, for The Guardian, including comments from FQXi's Hiranya Peiris.
Sean Carroll has rounded up some slightly more detailed blog posts on the subject, in addition to giving his own excellent primer on the topic.
For a slightly more technical description of the different types of polarisation in the CMB, what B Modes are, and how they would be left behind by the passage of gravitational waves, you can see a great slideshow by Daniel Baumann.
Update: And here's the paper.