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"Big Bang Signal" Could All Be Dust 133

An anonymous reader writes Scientists have shown that the swirl pattern touted as evidence of primordial gravitational waves — ripples in space and time dating to the universe's explosive birth — could instead all come from magnetically aligned dust. A new analysis of data from the Planck space telescope has concluded that the tiny silicate and carbonate particles spewed into interstellar space by dying stars could account for as much as 100 percent of the signal detected by the BICEP2 telescope and announced to great fanfare this spring. The Planck analysis is "relatively definitive in that we can't exclude that the entirety of our signal is from dust," said Brian Keating, an astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the BICEP2 collaboration.
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"Big Bang Signal" Could All Be Dust

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  • Dust? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:47PM (#47967123)
    So is the Universe coming, or going?
    • Yes.

    • The universe already came, now we just need to figure out where it's going. ;-)

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Both. It took an aphrodesiac-laced laxative.

    • Its coming...with one hand apparently...
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      evitaleR si emiT

      • evitaleR si emiT

        Pro Tip: Turn your keyboard around.

        • evitaleR si emiT

          Pro Tip: Turn your keyboard around.

          I tried that, but no matter how hard I hit the thing, only a couple of the keys on the underside would press, and I couldn't make any intelligible words.

    • Re:Dust? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Beck_Neard ( 3612467 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @04:54PM (#47969079)

      There seems to be a lot of confusion about this article.

      The dust only accounts for the swirl patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), not the CMB itself. In other words, the 'imprint' of gravitational waves in the CMB might be an erroneous discovery, and this is not unexpected at all, since gravitational waves have yet to be demonstrated.

      But the CMB is still there, and it's still pretty strong proof of the big bang, as it always was. Nothing about this news disproves the big bang.

      • The dust only accounts for the swirl patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), not the CMB itself. In other words, the 'imprint' of gravitational waves in the CMB might be an erroneous discovery, and this is not unexpected at all, since gravitational waves have yet to be demonstrated.

        It is unexpected depending on your expectations on the BICEP2 paper. If you read the paper, they go through a lot of checking in the analysis to demonstrate that the signal is real. From that perspective it is a believable demonstration. If you are very skeptical, you would say the dust maps they used are perhaps not up-to-date or accurate. Naturally, scientists are skeptical. So we were anticipating the release of the dust maps by the best detector, the ESA Planck mission.

        What they demonstrate in their pap

    • So is the Universe coming, or going?

      Coming from what?
      Going to what?
      Well, I don't care as long as my signal is good for the two new Big Bang Theory episodes tonight!
      (Headline had me freaked for a second)
      And if existence does end I hope the next one is not a re-run... I'm tired of re-runs...

  • The big bang was the first "FIRST" comment

  • Well that is an understatement I'm sure.
    • Well, even the summary makes it complicated. The dust can account for 100% of the signal, and occam's razor suggests that's the best assumption for explaining their measurements. But dust can also cause other signals, and what science calls for here is an experiment that can differentiate the two hypotheses. Which sounds hard, because what can you measure changes in besides the light, which would be affected by magnetic dust?

      Maybe neutrons? Or neutrinos(good luck)? The distinction might still be measur

      • by radtea ( 464814 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @02:17PM (#47967461)

        Which sounds hard, because what can you measure changes in besides the light, which would be affected by magnetic dust?

        The spectral shape of the dust signal and the CMB signal are different, so multi-frequency analysis can be used to tease out the various effects. There are various technical reasons the BICEP2 team chose a single frequency (150 MHz) but additional measurements at different frequencies (353 MHz is mentioned in TFA) would allow untangling of the two, albeit with some loss in sensitivity. This sounds like the approach that will be taken in future by various teams investigating this.

        The BICEP2 team got bitten by designing their experiment around a flawed theoretical understanding of the dust distribution in our galaxy, which is too bad, but this is the way science works: we publicly test our ideas, and let others see if what we've done can stand up to scrutiny. I've worked on experiments in the design phase where the design team has missed important backgrounds: it's easier than you'd think. And I once worked on an experiment that had been taking data for two years before it was found that there was a background process that precisely aped the signal (it had been missed originally because of a dropped sign in a calculation that caused two terms to nearly cancel when they should have added up.)

        In the best case we find these sorts of things before we publish. In the worst case--such as this one--after.

  • by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:54PM (#47967223)

    Is it, at least, magic dust?

    • Sort of, it's star dust, so there's a chance that five billion years from now it will have evolved to the point where it will be looking at the remnants of our solar system with its own telescopes.
  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @01:57PM (#47967247) Journal

    Conservative deniers are going to have a field day with this: "How can we trust scientists on evolution and global warming when the Big Bang turned out to be nothing more than God's dirty windshield!".

    • Honestly the young earth creationist types(who are the only anti-science conservatives relevant in this case) don't pay that much attention to hard data and observational methodology at all. Certainly light that was moved magnetically over the course of billions of years of travel is not evidence that they'd be particular inclined to use, even in that case.

      Their objections fall more into the category of dismissing things with "common sense" objections that reflect very little understanding of the idea being

      • Honestly the young earth creationist types(who are the only anti-science conservatives relevant in this case) don't pay that much attention to hard data and observational methodology at all.

        LOL ... no shit.

        Their objections fall more into the category of dismissing things with "common sense" objections that reflect very little understanding

        Pretty much by definition this is true.

        The only way you could be a young Earth creationist is to be well outside science and understanding.

        Because it's pretty much "I reje

        • by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

          Less their own beliefs, they have their God to do their thinking for them and their Pope to speak for them.

          These "beliefs"are pretty much spoonfed to them piecemeal, just slow enough that they don't form curiosity about what they're being told.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by i kan reed ( 749298 )

            A. The pope, in line with Catholic Orthodoxy, is not creationist. Not in the totally nutter, young earth science denialism sense, anyways.
            B. Everyone believes at least a few objectively wrong things. Getting on religion for the grandiosity of the incorrect claims it makes just seems silly. In the end, big things matter less to be wrong about, not more.
            C. It doesn't all come from "believing what they're told." It comes from personal feelings, intuition, common sense, and a host of other inputs as well

            • by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

              Atheists tend to have much smaller brain regions for [a part of the brain responsible for causing religious experiences].

              Yes indeed. Evolution does trend towards improving species.

              • On the other hand, evolution almost certainly selected for its existence in the first place as a means of causing eusocial behavior, a claim I lightly corroborate with the fact that that region of the brain is activated by communal experiences.

                But now we're getting into lazy evo psych where I come up with ad-hoc explanations for things and use it to justify my biases. So I don't think I'm going to go out of my way to defend the claim.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • We're not raised atheist, most of us, you know, right?

                And your brain doesn't morphologically change much after early development. I mean, I won't say you're wrong with certainty, but it seems less plausible.

            • One of the more interesting Nova episodes I watched, a few years ago now, focused on a group of Catholic scientists priests (Astronomers, Physicists, Biologists, etc). It was refreshing to see that even within the Catholic Church there is room for faith and science, as they are sanctioned and paid by the Church.

              There are a lot of "nutters" that do abuse Religious doctrine and pound the shit out of their bibles. At least the official stance of the Catholic church acknowledges and respects science, and does
              • Just like a lot of things. Here [uni.edu] you go.

              • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

                by Anonymous Coward

                The Catholic Church had a hand in creating the scientific method, you know. And "scientific" names are all Latin for similar reasons. Not to mention setting up the whole university system to begin with. They came up with the theory that a rational God would create a rational universe that obeyed rules that could be understood by humans when those prior had studied things more or less as a long series of special cases of cause and effect.

                While people might not agree with the "rational God" part, the "rati

              • The big bang theory was the brain child of a Catholic priest who was employed by the vatican as an astronomer. The priest's theory was sarcastically coined "BBT" by a well known astronomer who dismissed the idea as nonsense. The name stuck, and the priest's evidence eventually forced the astronomer to change his mind. The names escape me, I think the astronomer was Patrick Moore but can't be bothered googling.
            • Nice open mindedness. Really. But you make one mistake. Your reasoned response assumes that the people they are talking about actually exist, at least in any real numbers.

              I've known plenty of thumper Baptist young earth types, and not one of them would engage in any debate on this, or question this research, or anything like that. In fact, they tell their kids the same thing everyone else does about this: "Make good grades and you could be the scientist doing this for a living, and a darned good one." (Depe

          • Apparently, you know very little about Catholicism.

        • This also goes for crystal rubbers and Gaea believers who trend leftward. Each side has its flakes.

        • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I'm an "old earth" creationist. The Earth is obviously old. But I do beleive in a Creator. Science shows us several things in this regard.

          - The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.
          - The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.
          - The universe was created by an intelligent Creator is the sole, logical conclusion.

          God for me is faith. Science still can prove, one way or another, the origins of the universe with science. Science is a useful tool given to us by God

          • by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:09PM (#47968039) Homepage Journal

            Oh hey, I'll just fix that for you:

            - The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.
            - The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.
            - The universe was not created.

            Cheers!

            • by buchner.johannes ( 1139593 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @02:01AM (#47971671) Homepage Journal

              Oh hey, I'll just fix that for you:

              - The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.
              - The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.
              - The universe was not created.

              Cheers!

              Thermodynamics is a theory valid for a large number of particles, and deals with the emerging phenomena based on a statistical basis, i.e. what constitutes rare phenomena. This is not enough to deal with the early universe. Even if it was, there might be an infinite "time" or "tries" before our universe exists so we can observe it.
              Also, the term "create" is vague. Arguable, one can speak of creation as early inflation expands the universe and cools the soup of radiation into massive particle. In that sense some earlier state *did* create the universe as we understand it (time, space, and matter).

              Also it is not true that "The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this." It is possible to create a universe from nothing. What you do is borrow energy from a quantum fluctuation. You would have to give it back in a time proportional to the energy borrowed. Then inflate the universe by 10^26 so that the quantum fluctuation becomes a size-able scale, and quantum mechanics do not apply anymore. The energy borrowed obviously necessitates a balancing energy, which is stored (as negative energy) in the curvature of the universe. In a sense, enormous inflation allows you to run away with borrowed energy.
              Sorry for being brief in my explanation, but the above is not a crackpot theory. It is one that is consistent with the data of the CMB and large-scale structure correlations (e.g. galaxy clusters), and commonly presented in cosmology talks. You can find some books on the subject if you search for "universe inflation", one by Alan Guth who came up with the basic theory.

              The right answer is "We do not know yet where the universe came from."
              and "We do not know yet if the quest for a 'cause' makes sense in the early universe or has a testable answer. But we will continue trying."

              Now it is possible to call the "creation" of the universe a god, in the Greek sense of the word. The creator. A mechanism. But it is a long way from there to argue a currently present, omnipotent but willfully acting, personally addressable God.

              • by Bengie ( 1121981 )
                I can appreciate believing in a creator of some sort because it's hard to wrap my mind around anything in physics being infinite and existing outside of time. I can assume these two things on "blind faith" in order to understand the Big Bang, but the notion of "time" and nothing being infinite is hard to just shrug off.
                • by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

                  If you can't "wrap your mind around" how your average bunny rabbit could rule a world of vicious, hungry, intelligent tigers, does that make you "appreciate the idea"? Are you willing to extend "blind faith" in this direction as well?

                  I think the premise that you can "appreciate it" because "you don't get it" is just politically correct appeasement.

                  Why not just go with "I don't get it" and so "it's not worthy of confidence, only speculation, and that utilizing the knowledge we do have, until or unless I do"?

              • by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

                It is possible to create a universe from nothing. What you do is borrow energy from a quantum fluctuation.

                No. You can't have a quantum fluctuation when there is nothing to have a quantum fluctuation in. Your assertion requires the pre-existance of a universe in the first place.

            • by jpvlsmv ( 583001 )

              - The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.

              - The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.

              - The universe was not created.

              You left out the most important 4th point:

              - Ergo, the universe does not exist.

              • by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

                Ergo, the universe does not exist.

                Assumes facts not in evidence, to wit, that creation is required in the first place. Consider: everything we have and know about was not "created", it was always present in some form or other. Assuming that this is not the case for a time/dimensional configuration for which we have neither evidence or understanding is, at best, fact-free speculation - certainly in no way an inevitable logical conclusion.

          • - The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.
            - The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.
            - The universe was created by an intelligent Creator is the sole, logical conclusion.

            At least the first point above is just plain wrong, and the second is either wrong or meaningless, depending on exactly what you mean by "create itself".

            • by Altrag ( 195300 )

              The first is not specifically wrong. Thermodynamics implies that the big bang's energy had to some from somewhere. The trouble is that we have no idea where it would come from, which is why no respectable description of the big bang will leave out the part about us only knowing/theorizing up to the first few nanoseconds.

              Prior to that everything we know about the universe upends itself in ways that we can't even begin to describe with any consistency because all of our known (testable) laws of physics have

              • The first is not specifically wrong. Thermodynamics implies that the big bang's energy had to some from somewhere.

                No. This is specifically wrong. Thermodynamics implies no such thing.

                The Big Bang does have thermodynamic issues, but the primary problem is entropy, not energy. And the problem is that the entropy of the early universe is too low, not too high. (Inflation, BTW, is one way to explain the initial low-entropy state of the universe, but even that is an incomplete explanation.)

                • by Bengie ( 1121981 )
                  The only way I can currently get my self to attempt to understand how the current Universe may exist is that even enough time, the Universe will enter a state of maximum entropy, at which time, time will cease to exist. At this point, the Universe will no longer experience time as increasing entropy and will enter a quantum state where all possible will happen, but the Universe will only exit being in a quantum state into one of the many possibilities. Rinse and repeat a infinite number of times, and you ev
              • Thermodynamics is a statistical science that summarizes the actions of zillions of molecules in a very useful form. I think you're looking for conservation laws here, and I'm not convinced they apply under Big Bang conditions. By Noether's theorem [wikipedia.org], conservation of energy is a consequence of physical laws being invariant over time. If physical laws do change over time under some circumstances, there's no real reason to believe in conservation of energy (and, if energy isn't conserved, laws of physics are

          • Science still can prove, one way or another, the origins of the universe with science.

            This is perhaps the textbook example of how science is misunderstood. Science cannot prove how something that was not directly observed happened. It can only disprove certain proposed mechanisms based on current observation and understanding.

            So, when someone says that "the CBR proves the big bang theory is correct", what they actually should say is that "the CBR is consistent with the big bang theory". I.e., the former doesn't disprove the latter.

            A good analogy is found in art. I have a painting on my wa

            • This is perhaps the textbook example of how science is misunderstood. Science cannot prove how something that was not directly observed happened. It can only disprove certain proposed mechanisms based on current observation and understanding.

              That's still a bit misleading. It is right that science can't prove how something that was not directly observed happened. But it also can't prove how something that was directly observed happened either. The difference between direct and indirect observation is arbitrary and insubstantial.

              Not only can you not how something happened. You can't prove if it happened either. In fact, you can't prove anyting in science. You also can't disprove anything. Proof and disproof are too strong words, and only apply to

              • What we call an observation is really just a hypothesis:

                You may call your hypotheses "observations". To do that, you need to go deep into the metaphysical where eventually you have to decide if what you see is real or just a figment of your imagination. "I think my memory is reliable" kind of things.

                I'm talking about the difference between using a thermometer to measure temperature and measuring the thickness of a tree ring. One is a direct observation, the other indirect. Only those who spend years contemplating their navels would argue that the two measurem

            • " a God able to create a Universe from a single word"

              Doesn't seem plausible. Oh, I believe in a Creator. But I think creating the universe was likely really really hard. Work of a 'lifetime' even.

              "forge it to look like it was billions of years old"

              Don't see the point of that. Remember; you created the 4 dimensional space-time manifold, so thus obviously exist outside of it. From your perspective, everything happened at once; everything is always happening. By touching something in ancient Egypt or striking

              • Doesn't seem plausible.

                What you mean is that you cannot comprehend how one could exist, therefore it is implausible. The arguments against there being a God typically depend on human comprehension, or lack there of, and the belief that what a human cannot comprehend cannot exist. You think it would be really hard for a God to create a universe, therefore a God that can create a universe easily isn't plausible.

                This is the same kind of failure that has people using "password" for a password. "Nobody would ever guess that's my pas

            • CBR is more than consistent with the Big Bang theory. It is a predicted result of Big Bang theory, and not of other theories. It's pretty strong evidence (not proof, of course, there being no way to prove that the Universe isn't a fancy illusion, or a simulation, or hastily faked up by the FSM for a wild party).

          • I'm an "old earth" creationist. The Earth is obviously old. But I do beleive in a Creator. Science shows us several things in this regard.

            - The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.
            - The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.
            - The universe was created by an intelligent Creator is the sole, logical conclusion.

            God for me is faith. Science still can prove, one way or another, the origins of the universe with science. Science is a useful tool given to us by God via our increased knowledge as we grow as a species. God and science go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other.

            Suppose we discovered that our universe was created by a non-supernatural being that lives in a "parent" universe.

            Would we worship that being?

            Would we unquestioningly do whatever it wanted?

            Would we look to it for ethical guidance?

            Would we look to it for the meaning of life?

            • "Suppose we discovered that our universe was created by a non-supernatural being that lives in a "parent" universe."

              Such a being would be "super-natural" to us, as in above and beyond the laws of our universe. As to the questions, it depends on the character of this being.

              • So, whether something is supernatural depends on your frame of reference? In our universe it's supernatural, but in its universe it's just that dork that's wasting its life creating universes in its mother's basement?

                And if we manage to create a sentient artificial intelligence in a virtual environment, to it we'll be supernatural and that other hypothetical being will be supersupernatural?

                • Pretty much. Just bear in mind supernatural does not imply omniscient or omnipotent. Any being that can modify/break the rules of our universe would be supernatural(i.e. above our 'natural' laws.).

      • True, but this will be reported as proof against the Big Bang.

    • Conservative deniers are going to have a field day with this: "How can we trust scientists on evolution and global warming when the Big Bang turned out to be nothing more than God's dirty windshield!".

      Apparently Liberals area already all over it. You can't fix stupid.

    • Just so it's completely clear (the parent is probably aware of this): The dust levels do not cast the Big Bang into doubt. We have enormous emounts of evidence for the Big Bang, with the most important ones being:

      1. The cosmic microwave background
      2. The fact that it follows a black-body spectrum
      3. The pattern of wiggles in it
      4. The apparent velocities of galaxies
      5. The red-shift of distant objects
      6. The relative abundance of light elements in the universe
      7. The clumpiness in the distribution of galaxies
      8. D

      • Just so it's completely clear (the parent is probably aware of this): The dust levels do not cast the Big Bang into doubt.

        I was surprised, and even mildly offended, that the recent discovery was being hyped as "proof of the big bang". The long-ago discovery of the CMB is one of the handful of science's greatest achievements.

  • At least we know where he stands more or less.
  • by PvtVoid ( 1252388 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:05PM (#47967995)
    The Planck dust measurement in pretty damning, but it is not the final word.

    (1) Planck measured the dust contamination with greatest sensitivity at 353 GHz. It was not sensitive enough to measure the dust signal at 150 GHz, where BICEP was observing. They had to extrapolate the dust contribution from the higher frequency to the lower. This is actually a pretty big extrapolation, since the dust emission at 150 GHz is less than 1% of the dust emission at 353 GHz.

    (2) The uncertainty in the dust emission amplitude is still pretty high, so the Planck measurement is consistent with an "all dust" model, or with a "mostly dust" model, or with a "mostly primordial, with some dust" model. It does pretty conclusively rule out a "no dust" model.

    (3) They have not released the results of a joint analysis of Planck and BICEP2, which is what is necessary to actually shed some light on exactly how much of the BICEP2 signal is likely to be dust.

    But it's clear that the BICEP team was being over-optimistic in their assumptions about galactic dust, which is a bummer.
    • I'd like to bet somebody a dollar that we go to a steady-state universe in our lifetime.

      It's just that the big bang is starting to feel too convenient to me. It's just a feeling.

      We take it for granted, but it's just a theory. Red shift: these are the gravitational waves you've been looking for. Well, they're dimensional waves, and have the effect to the observer of stretching space, even though the universe is not expanding. It's complicated...

      Any takers?

      • Sure. Go ahead and send me the dollar in case one of us dies unexpectedly.

        And while it's in the mail... even if there was reason to doubt the big bang, why the heck do you think we would go back to a steady state universe? The universal trend in science is to discover that the universe and all its workings are far stranger than we thought, not more intuitive.

        Intuition comes from brains that evolved to operate on a certain scale of space and time. When we start getting away from that in any direction (lar

        • Yeah, I should probably get that in the mail asap. That's why I said a dollar, something I could afford to lose.

          Your point was my point, perhaps made poorly; a steady state universe would be far stranger than the big bang. I find the big bang more intuitive than steady state. Steady state blows my mind, whereas science and religion agree on the big bang. That makes the big bang far more comfortable. And that, makes me suspicious.

      • I'd like to bet somebody a dollar that we go to a steady-state universe in our lifetime.

        As several other posters have pointed out, whether BICEP2 is seeing gravity waves or dust has very little to do with whether or not the Big Bang is right. Even if BICEP2 is entirely explained by dust, the Big Bang is still just fine as a theory. Sorry to disappoint you.

  • I just want to say that the title on this story is absolutly horrible.

    I don't think they could have dumbed it down anymore.

    How about "BICEP2 Team working to qualify their results with Planck researchers"?

    Not as exciting, I know, I know. I really wish news articles here would challenge us to think more.

  • ....Big Band.

    Never mind. Wrong kind of Stardust [youtube.com].

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