A DISCOVERY WITH PROFOUND GRAVITY

The 10-meter South Pole Telescope and the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation) Telescope are shown against the Milky Way. BICEP2 recently detected gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background, a discovery that supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe began. (Image credit: Keith Vanderlinde, National Science Foundation)

Approximately fourteen billion years ago, our universe burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In an infinitesimally small fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially to a truly gargantuan size, inflating far in excess of the views of our most powerful telescopes. All this, of course, was just a theory.

Astronomers from the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation (BICEP2) radio telescope at the South Pole have announced the first direct evidence for this cosmic inflation. Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, a major prediction of Einstein’s 1915 Theory of General Relativity, in effect his theory of gravity. They have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between the (until now) irreconcilable pillars of modern physics: quantum mechanics and general relativity itself.

"Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today. A lot of work by a lot of people has led up to this point," said John Kovac (Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics), leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.

These ground-breaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background - a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into became polarized too.

RELATIVELY SPEAKING, THE TIME FOR RELATIVITY IS 01:00hrs UTC THURSDAY!

Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein displaying his relativistic tongue later in life!

E=mc². It's the name of the world’s most famous equation.

Everyone’s heard of it, and yet virtually no one has the faintest clue what it's about, or of its paramount importance to our civilisation, and come to think of it our existence at all.

I’m either very foolish or brave, but at 01:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 20 (tomorrow)/ 8.00pm Eastern, I’m going to endeavour to give a 101 crash course on Einstein’s (1905) scientific paper entitled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, more popularly known as his Theory of Special Relativity. It was derived from the equations of electromagnetism developed by James Clerk Maxwell in the nineteenth century.

On a positive note, Special Relativity is magnitudes easier than Einstein’s theory of gravity, or General Relativity!

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In the forthcoming programme I try to condense the essence of relativistic speeds as required for interstellar space travel down to just five minutes! And all in plain English lay person’s terms too, without the need for time dilation or Lorentz length contractions!

To learn how it may be possible to travel to the stars in no time at all using mass converted to pure energy with perhaps warp drives thrown in too listen to the next Podcast-UFO to be broadcast on ArtBell’s Dark Matter Radio Network at 01:00hrs UTC/GMT on Thursday March 20. Click the links or logo to listen! Wish me luck!

FEEL THE PB&J (PASSION, BEAUTY, AND JOY) OF THE COSMOS? SHARE IT!