According to recent reports, an astrophysicist at Princeton University believes a new telescope in Chile might allow her team to discover what occurred during the theoretical Big Bang, which some scientists believe led to the creation of the universe approximately 13.8 billion years ago. Experts seek to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is the remnant of light leftover from the explosion of the alleged Big Bang.
This information could theoretically determine how the universe has expanded. Astrophysicist Jo Dunkley said that scientists could “extrapolate backwards and infer what could have happened to produce the patterns we see in the CMB … But there are other scenarios you could imagine that could produce those patterns.”
Dunkley continued, “Before we had any of the particles we are familiar with now – protons, neutrons, light and so on – we think the universe was permeated by a different kind of energy. We call it the inflaton field, but we really don’t know exactly what it was. The energy stored in that field drove this exponentially fast growth of space at the beginning of time. It did so until the inflaton field decayed and we started forming the particles we know and the universe evolved into the form we have now.”
The scientist explained that researchers have been utilizing the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile, however, new telescopic technology at the Simons Observatory could provide more accurate observations. Dunkley explained that she and her team seek to observe gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time that “squeeze and stretch space in a particular way; they squeeze in one direction and stretch in another.” She said, “We’re looking for this very, very faint polarized signal in the CMB that could only come from gravitational waves.”
However, the signal they are looking for is so small that researchers have to scour the Milky Way to find it, where interfering light from other galaxies along with water vapor can obstruct their search. Reportedly, using the resources provided by Simons Observatory in Chile and the BICEP-Keck telescopes at the South Pole are necessary to get a proper view.
“We’re looking for variations in what we can think of as the temperature of the CMB that are billionths of a fraction of a degree,” Dunkley said. “The polarized signal is a very subtle departure from something uniform. The Simons Observatory will help because it has tens of thousands of detectors, which is 10 times more than previous generations of telescopes such as the ACT.”
“There’s so much richness of information in the CMB,” Dunkley enthused. “I remember a few years ago people thinking we had measured the CMB, and that was it, done. Then we realized how much there is to know, not only in its polarization, but as a backlight through the whole universe. It just keeps producing more exciting stuff.” Dunkley has been praised for her work in the field of astrophysics as an esteemed Professor of Physics and Astrophysics at Princeton University and the author of “Our Universe: An Astronomer’s Guide.”
Featured image credit: Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Acknowledgement: William Blair (Johns Hopkins University), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Messier83_-_Heic1403a.jpg
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