Epic Big Bang Discovery Might Just Be Space Dust

Planck's View of the Cosmic Microwave Background — Map showing the tiny variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observed by Europe's Planck satellite.

(Image credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration)

One of the most exciting astrophysics discoveries in recent memory may be a mirage.

In March, a team of scientists announced that they had found evidence of primordial gravitational waves, hypothesized ripples in space-time whose existence would suggest that the universe did indeed expand many times faster than the speed of light in the first few instants after the Big Bang, as posited by the "cosmic inflation" theory.

The BICEP2 team saw a polarization pattern known as "B modes" in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the ancient light left over from the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago. Wide acceptance of the purported find will likely come only if other instruments pick it up, too — in particular, the European Space Agency's Planck satellie, which mapped out the CMB in fine detail from 2009 to 2013.

"We have started a collaboration with BICEP2. We are directly comparing their data with the Planck data, in the same frequency, 150 GHz, and trying to exploit the image of the contaminants we reach with Planck at other frequencies," Baccigalupi said. ‪"This way, we hope to be able to give a definitive answer. In fact, we might find that it was indeed a contamination, but, given that we’re optimists, we might even be able to exclude it with confidence."

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Michael was a science writer for the Idaho National Laboratory and has been an intern at Wired.com, The Salinas Californian newspaper, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He has also worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz.