BICEP2 links

BICEP2 (primordial gravitational waves) links:

Killing the Straw Man: Does BICEP Prove Inflation?

Lawrence Krauss, James Dent, Harsh Mathur

"While the Inflationary signal remains the best motivated source, the current measurement unfortunately still allows for the possibility that a comparable gravitational wave background might result from a self ordering scalar field transition that takes place later at somewhat lower energy."

 

Star dust casts doubt on recent big bang wave result

(new scientist)

"An imprint left on ancient cosmic light that was attributed to ripples in spacetime – and hailed by some as the discovery of the century – may have been caused by ashes from an exploding star.

In the most extreme scenario, the finding could suggest that what looked like a groundbreaking result was only a false alarm. Another possibility is that the stellar ashes could help bring the result in line with other cosmic observations. We should know which it is later this year, when researchers report new results from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite."

 

Have galactic 'radio loops' been mistaken for B-mode polarization?

 (physics world)

"Radio loop" emissions, rather than signatures of the early universe, could account for the observation of B-mode polarization announced by the BICEP2 collaboration earlier this year. That is the claim of a trio of cosmologists that has found evidence that local structures in our galaxy generate a polarized signal that was previously unknown to astronomers studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The new foreground, which can be detected in the radio and microwave frequencies, is present at high galactic latitudes and could potentially be misinterpreted as a B-mode polarization signal caused by primordial gravitational waves, thus casting doubt on the BICEP2 finding. 

 

Sixty Symbols

Professor Ed Copeland of SixtySymbols explains some serious problems with inflation and the Big Bang theory.