All Questions
11
questions
11
votes
3
answers
2k
views
What would the wavelength of the Cosmic Background Gravitational Wave radiation be?
Considering electromagnetic CMB can only see light as old as 380,000 years after the Big Bang, whilst theoretically those being gravitational should be formed from the beginning, what would their ...
- 441
1
vote
1
answer
69
views
Gravitational analogue for Cosmic Microwave Background? [duplicate]
Penzias and Wilson famously discovered the CMB as a signal that they failed to be able to account for after removing all other known radio-sources. It's apparently close to the same strength in all ...
- 1,945
5
votes
1
answer
420
views
How much uncertainty has the relic graviton background?
In the paper [1], it is mentioned that inflation predicts that a relic graviton background is about 0.9 K (cf. cosmic neutrino background, 1.945 K, and cosmic microwave background, 2.73 K). How much ...
- 6,611
1
vote
2
answers
123
views
What information about inflation could be gained from a measurement of the Cosmic Gravitational Wave Background?
I understand that inflation predicts that there is a primordial gravitational wave background due to quantum fluctuations in the gravitational field. Inflation is, of course, very important in terms ...
- 149
3
votes
1
answer
84
views
Gravitational Waves from the beginning of time
I just heard a physicist say
"[an] exciting discovery would be to find gravitational waves from the beginning of time."
Since gravity travels at the speed of light, wouldn't gravitational waves ...
- 163
6
votes
1
answer
668
views
Gravitational wave and string theory
I'm new to physics and have been reading about fundamental and textbook physics text, which is the Young & Freedman University Physics (good book).
I'm little skeptical towards string theory as ...
- 225
9
votes
2
answers
158
views
CMB curly B-modes and dark matter
I raised a question a while ago regarding weak gravitational lensing of galaxies and the CMB. With all the fuzz with the BICEP2 data, I think it is time to raise even more questions about this amazing ...
- 14.5k
3
votes
2
answers
244
views
BICEP2 experiments
How was the polarization experimentally measured in the BICEP2 experiments and why did they look specifically at B-modes? Why is it implying the existence of gravitational waves and the need to ...
- 1,707
5
votes
1
answer
346
views
What do the BICEP2 results mean for string gas cosmology and the ekpyrotic universe?
The imprint of gravitational waves created shortly after the big bang may offer direct evidence for inflation theory, according to a discovery by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole and released ...
- 904
9
votes
1
answer
1k
views
What do the line segments on the BICEP2 B-mode polarization map mean?
The first image of BICEP2 visuals shows the "BICEP2 B-mode Signal", described as follows:
Gravitational waves from inflation generate a faint but distinctive
twisting pattern in the polarization ...
- 505
81
votes
6
answers
7k
views
What was the major discovery on gravitational waves made March 17th, 2014, in the BICEP2 experiment?
The Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics held a press conference today to announce a major discovery relating to gravitational waves. What was their announcement, and what are the implications?
...
- 5,569