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Dusting for the fingerprint of inflation with BICEP3
A new experiment at the South Pole picks up where BICEP2 left off
For Symmetry Magazine:
When researchers with the BICEP2 experiment announced they had seen the first strong evidence for cosmic inflation, it was front-page news around the world. Inflation is the extremely rapid expansion of space-time during its first split second of existence, proposed to explain a number of puzzling properties of the universe, making the BICEP2 results a really big deal. Over the following months, though, the excitement evaporated: After combining their data with other experiments, the BICEP2 team showed that most or all of the signal attributed to inflation was likely produced by galactic dust inside the Milky Way.
But traces of inflation could still be hiding in the data, and that’s why scientists haven’t given up yet. BICEP3, the upgraded version of BICEP2, began collecting data yesterday. The first observations using the fully updated equipment will run through November. [Read the rest at Symmetry Magazine…]
Filed under: Symmetry Magazine Tagged: BICEP2, BICEP3, cosmic microwave background, cosmology, gravitational waves, inflation
