'Smoking gun' for Big Bang expansion found as scientists get their first glimpse of the birth of the universe

  • Using the BICEP2 telescope, scientists looked at specific patterns in light waves within the faint microwave glow left from the Big Bang
  • They found pattern which they believe was caused by gravitational waves
  • Waves are ripples in the fabric of space and time found across the universe
  • 'Primordial' waves carry vital information about how the universe began
  • Work has to be reviewed, but there is already there is talk of a Nobel prize
  • Professor Peter Ade, who helped build the instrument that detected the waves, told MailOnline the discovery was 'unbelievable'

By Ellie Zolfagharifard

PUBLISHED: 11:04 EST, 17 March 2014 | UPDATED: 18:22 EST, 17 March 2014

Astronomers have detected what happened in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

This is a very brief moment of time at the beginning of everything when the universe expanded very rapidly - a theory called cosmic inflation.

According to Albert Einstein when something very explosive like this happens it leaves ripples in space-time known as 'gravitational waves'.

Scroll down to see the moment the stunned Stanford scientist is told his theory is correct

Gravitational waves from inflation generate a faint but distinctive twisting pattern in the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background, which is the afterglow of the afterglow of the Big Bang

Gravitational waves from inflation generate a faint but distinctive twisting pattern in the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background, which is the afterglow of the afterglow of the Big Bang

Scientists, from left, Clem Pryke, Jamie Bock, Chao-Lin Kuo and John Kovac smile during a news conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge to announce their groundbreaking results

Scientists, from left, Clem Pryke, Jamie Bock, Chao-Lin Kuo and John Kovac smile during a news conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge to announce their groundbreaking results

WHAT ARE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?

Scientists view the the universe as being made up of a 'fabric of space-time'. This corresponds to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity which was published 1916.

Objects in the universe bend this fabric, and more massive objects bend it more.

Gravitational waves are considered ripples in this fabric.

They can be produced for instance, when black holes orbit each other or by the merging of galaxies.

Gravitational waves are also thought to have been produced during the Big Bang.

The very first gravitational waves can tell us about the birth of the universe and scientists have discovered they leave imprints in cosmic microwave background radiation - the afterglow of the Big Bang - as they pass through space.

 

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The theory suggests that this intial spurt would have taken the infant universe from something infinitely small to something close to the size of a marble. 

'It's just unbelievable quite honestly,' Professor Peter Ade, who helped build the instrument that detected the waves, told MailOnline.

'This is confirming what is, to me, a wacky idea. The next step is quite clear; to confirm the data with another technology.'

Enlarge   This graphic shows the universe as it evolved from the Big Bang to now. Nasa scientists believe that the universe expanded from subatomic scales to the astronomical in just a fraction of a second after its birth

This graphic shows the universe as it evolved from the Big Bang to now. Nasa scientists believe that the universe expanded from subatomic scales to the astronomical in just a fraction of a second after its birth

The finding by the BICEP2 telescope (pictured) in the South Pole could rank with the greatest discoveries about the universe over the last 25 years

The finding by the BICEP2 telescope (pictured) in the South Pole could rank with the greatest discoveries about the universe over the last 25 years

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Massachusetts built super-sensitive radiation detectors and installed them in the BICEP2 radio telescope at the South Pole to find these 'ripples in the sand.'

Nine years later they found these swirling patterns in cosmic background radiation created by the gravitational waves caused by the very beginnings of the universe.

Many scientists already believed that an initial, extremely rapid growth spurt happened, but finding this evidence has been a key goal in the study of the universe.

The results have been described as 'spectacular', and are expected to result in a Nobel prize for the scientists

The results have been described as 'spectacular', and are expected to result in a Nobel prize for the scientists

The discovery gives us a window on the universe at the very beginning when it was far less than one-trillionth of a second old. The work still has to be reviewed by other scientists, but there is already talk of a Nobel prize.

'It's what's I would term Nobel prize winning physics,' continued Professor Ade. 'Just who that prize goes to, however, will be up for debate.'

Microwave radiation from the whole sky, captured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. Astronomers today announced that they have found 'primordial gravitational waves' - an echo of the Big Bang in which the universe came into existence 14bn years ago.

Microwave radiation from the whole sky, captured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. Astronomers today announced that they have found 'primordial gravitational waves' - an echo of the Big Bang in which the universe came into existence 14bn years ago.

According to Albert Einstein when something very explosive like this happens it leaves ripples in space-time known as 'gravitational waves'

According to Albert Einstein when something very explosive like this happens it leaves ripples in space-time known as 'gravitational waves'

HOW DID ASTRONOMERS FIND THE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?

A telescope at the south pole, called BICEP2 (Background Imaging of cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation) was used to search for evidence of gravitational waves.

The instrument, which scans the sky from the South Pole, examines what is called the cosmic microwave background, the extremely weak radiation that pervades the universe.

The background radiation is not precisely uniform. Like light, the relic radiation is polarised as the result of interacting with electrons and atoms in space.

Computer models predicted a particular curl pattern in the background radiation that would match what would be expected with the universe's inflation after the big bang.

It did this by detecting a subtle property of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This is radiation that was created in the Big Bang and originally discovered in 1964.

BICEP2 measured the large-scale polarisation of this microwave radiation. Only primordial gravitational waves can imprint such a pattern, and only if they have been amplified by inflation.

‘It's just amazing,’ added theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, who was not involved in the work. ‘You can see back to the beginning of time.’

Another outside expert, physicist Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the finding already suggests that some ideas about the rapid expansion of the universe can be ruled out.

Right after the Big Bang, the universe was a hot soup of particles. It took about 380,000 years to cool enough that the particles could form atoms, then stars and galaxies.

Billions of years later, planets formed from gas and dust that were orbiting stars. The universe has continued to spread out.

Professor Krauss said he thinks the new finding could rank with the greatest discoveries about the universe over the last 25 years, such as the Nobel prize-winning discovery that the universe's expansion is accelerating.

The new results were announced by a collaboration that includes researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The team plans to submit its results to a scientific journal this week, said its leader, John Kovac of Harvard.

This image shows temperature fluctuations, indicated by variations in colour, of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Researchers say since the CMB is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarisation (shown by black lines). The changes in polarisation are thought to be caused by gravitational waves

This image shows temperature fluctuations, indicated by variations in colour, of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Researchers say since the CMB is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarisation (shown by black lines). The changes in polarisation are thought to be caused by gravitational waves

Enlarge   The 14-billion-year-long history of our universe. It shows the main events that occurred between the initial phase of the cosmos -- where its properties were almost uniform and punctuated only by tiny fluctuations - to the cosmic structure that we see today, ranging from stars and planets to galaxies and galaxy clusters

The 14-billion-year-long history of our universe. It shows the main events that occurred between the initial phase of the cosmos -- where its properties were almost uniform and punctuated only by tiny fluctuations - to the cosmic structure that we see today, ranging from stars and planets to galaxies and galaxy clusters

A telescope at the south pole, called BICEP2 (Background Imaging of cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation) was used to search for evidence of gravitational waves. BICEP2 is shown here in the foreground with the South Pole Telescope in the background

A telescope at the south pole, called BICEP2 (Background Imaging of cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation) was used to search for evidence of gravitational waves. BICEP2 is shown here in the foreground with the South Pole Telescope in the background

For their research, astronomers scanned about two per cent of the sky for three years with a telescope at the South Pole, chosen for its very dry air, to aid in the observations.

They were looking for a specific pattern in light waves within the faint microwave glow left over from the Big Bang.

The pattern has long been considered evidence of the rapid growth spurt, known as inflation. Professor Kovac called it ‘the smoking gun signature of inflation.’

The scientists said the light-wave pattern was caused by gravitational waves, which are ripples in the interweaving of space and time that sprawls through the universe.

The BICEP2 telescope's focal plane uses novel technology, developed at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to build an array of devices that use superconductivity to gather, filter, detect, and amplify polarised radiation from the cosmic microwave background. Each pixel is made from a printed antenna sensitive to polarised millimeter-wave radiation

The BICEP2 telescope's focal plane uses novel technology, developed at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to build an array of devices that use superconductivity to gather, filter, detect, and amplify polarised radiation from the cosmic microwave background. Each pixel is made from a printed antenna sensitive to polarised millimeter-wave radiation

A full-sky map of the oldest light in the universe. Colors indicate 'warmer' (red) and 'cooler' (blue) spots. Nasa has called this image the best baby picture of the Universe ever taken

A full-sky map of the oldest light in the universe. Colors indicate 'warmer' (red) and 'cooler' (blue) spots. Nasa has called this image the best baby picture of the Universe ever taken

If confirmed, the new work would be the first detection of such waves from the birth of the universe, which have been called the first tremors of the Big Bang.

Arizona State's Krauss cautioned that it's possible that the light-wave pattern is not a sign of inflation, although he stressed it's 'extremely likely’ that it is.

It's ‘our best hope’ for a direct test of whether the rapid growth spurt happened, he added.

Professor Krauss and other experts said the results must be verified by other observations - a standard caveat in science.

Marc Kamionkowski, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University who didn't participate in the work, called the detection of the light-wave pattern ‘huge news’ for the study of the cosmos.

‘It's not every day you wake up and learn something completely new about the early universe,’ he said.

 

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The old, something from nothing theory.

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These people are the heroes, not idiots who throw a ball around, or shout gibberish into a microphone.

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Excellent article. We now have to go a few seconds further to discover what the comos looked like BEFORE TIME BEGAN. Now that will be worth waiting for!

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Ha ha I like that, DAVID! Can we spend the money and scientific expertise on saving our OWN planet from our OWN irresponsibility?! The big bang is ONLY a theory! If we find out for CERTAIN, it wont make any difference to the man living in a cardboard box in your local high st!

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This is what is called in the real world a SWAG. There is no substantial proof just conjecture.

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If you don't understand it, for goodness sake just say so instead of spewing ignorant commentary. I am really not interested in a laypersons interpretation of physics, nor should anyone else be. Even the legally incompetent can have an opinion, as we see every day on DM.

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If you don't understand it, for goodness sake just say so instead of spewing ignorant commentary. I am really not interested in a laypersons interpretation of physics, nor should anyone else be. Even the legally incompetent can have an opinion, as we see every day on DM.

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If you don't understand it, for goodness sake just say so instead of spewing ignorant commentary. I am really not interested in a laypersons interpretation of physics, nor should anyone else be. Even the legally incompetent can have an opinion, as we see every day on DM.

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After reading this article, I really wish I was doing more with my education.

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Meanwhile, back in the practical world, the poor are still hungry and the homeless still have no place to call home. Who cares about them?! We need to find out how the earth started before man was even an atom because...................????????

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Because knowledge is good for mankind.

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So that we don't fall on our knees is fear every time there is an eclipse. Once upon a time people wondered what good is it to know about subatomic particles, like electrons, which we cannot even see. Little did they know that that knowledge would one day usher in the Electronics Age.

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