BICEP2 Found Interstellar Dust, Not Primordial Gravitational Waves
The Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago and evolved from an extremely hot, dense and uniform state to the rich and complex cosmos of galaxies, stars and planets we see today. The key source of information about that history is the Cosmic Microwave Background - CMB - the legacy of light emitted only 380 000 years after the Big Bang.Astronomers have been searching searching for a particular signature of cosmic ‘inflation’ – a very brief accelerated expansion that, according to current theory, the Universe experienced when it was only the tiniest fraction of a second old. This signature would be seeded by gravitational waves, tiny perturbations in the fabric of space-time, that astronomers believe would have been generated during the inflationary phase. read more