«Nobel” for the sensational discovery in March of gravitational waves in the near future will not give. Scientists hastened to announce to the world about his success, took the interstellar dust in the ripples of the universe.
The story of the the sensational discovery of the primary gravitational waves , which has been on the lips of astronomers and physicists all this year, it seems, an inglorious end. Recall that in March of this year, a group of scientists organized in collaboration of BICEP, solemnly announced that the dream of cosmologists recent decades – to find experimental evidence of inflationary expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.
Using data from a telescope mounted in Antarctica, they allegedly revealed the polarization of the microwave background photons created as a result of the primary gravitational waves – ripples of space-time, which arose in the first fraction of a second after the big time. That discovery caused quite a stir: it began to talk about in the press, the subject has taken a long time the first place at astronomical conferences , as well as evidence of inflation predicted and the Nobel Prize.
«It can go here about the Nobel Prize and not one, as there are theorists, whose number is greater than three, and there are experimenters, who can also lay claim to it. The result is major, it is steeper than the Higgs boson, “- said in the spring,” the Newspaper “Academician Valery Rubakov, he worked on the theory of inflation.
The staff collaboration, led by John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, managed to scare, to please and and sip champagne with the main culprit celebration –
famous Russian cosmologist Andrei Linde, have put forward the theory of inflation for three decades ago.
However, soon the scientific community began to appear doubt – not too soon to rejoice ? To scientists led by Kovacka any questions about the handling and reliability of the results, as well as the main – can not see whether the Antarctic telescope interstellar dust in our galaxy, the polarization of which the scientists took over the echoes of gravitational waves?
After all, these motes in their own intricate lining along the lines of the magnetic field of our galaxy, themselves polarized light passing through them!
This story has raised the question of good faith in modern scientific work. Being not able to estimate the contribution of dust to the polarization of the photons, astronomers from BICEP just took data from prozrachki, which in the course of one of the conferences were previously presented preliminary data space telescope Planck.
And this despite the fact that the BICEP and Planck – essentially competing teams of scientists, who are fighting for a scientific result and recognition.
BICEP, using figures from the opponent’s presentation, extrapolated them to a patch of sky , which looked and decided that the dust would make an error of not more than 20%.
Their argument was that the primary dust galaxy focused in the plane of the telescope and looking perpendicular thereto, because the medium in that direction should be more transparent. And critics, and those who believe in the March discovery scientists had to wait for the publication of the second, a more complete analysis of the sky telescope Planck, which would come in the same place where the Harvard looked.
So Planck unveiled the latest results , which became disappointing for the team BICEP. In the new data, European astronomers have studied all directions of the sky, including where the telescope looked BICEP2, and came to the conclusion – the dust is everywhere. “We have shown that even the most lackluster in terms of dust emission regions are no transparent windows”, – concluded the astronomers. It was found that the noise level, which creates the interstellar dust in the direction you looked BICEP,
indistinguishable from the level of polarization, which took over the echoes of gravitational waves.
In addition, the review pointed to several areas in the sky, where the radiation dust twice less than where looked BICEP. However, this does not mean that the theory of inflation can make your point. Just search for her confirmation is delayed and will not be so rapid. “Whatever it was, our work does not mean that they (BICEP) did not measure the cosmological signal at all. Due to the difference in approaches to observation and treatment, we can not tell which part of the signal was just dust, “- says Jonathan Omont, party collaboration Planck.
Now, the two decided to collaborate collaboration to jointly compare the results. Some scholars are less optimistic. So, Paul Shteynhard of Princeton University, one of the critics results BICEP, said that article of Harvard should be revoked, “and we must return to good scientific practice».
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