WIREDGOV

New results announced yesterday by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics provide the first direct evidence on inflation – a key part of our understanding of how the Universe formed.

Cosmologists on the BICEP2 project have announced that they have detected ‘B-mode polarisation’ – the signature of gravitational waves shaping the very early Universe during a phase called inflation. Almost 14 billion years ago the Universe seems to have expanded exponentially in a fraction of a second.

STFC’s Chief Executive, Professor John Womersley said: “Modern cosmology is based on three underlying assumptions – inflation, dark matter and dark energy.  We don’t know what any of them actually are, but over the last few years we have seen increasingly strong evidence that they are real effects …today’s announcement from the BICEP2 project continues that process. Inflation is the very rapid expansion of the very early universe that is one of the pillars of our understanding of cosmology.  Without inflation we would not be here. A detection of primordial B-mode polarisation provides very strong evidence for inflation and if the BICEP2 results are verified by other experiments, that will be what we have. With the recent confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson and now the first direct evidence for inflation, these are very exciting times to be a physicist.”

The full results of the BICEP2 project are now being scrutinised by scientists around the world. If they are accurate, and can be replicated, it could be ‘the most significant cosmological discovery in nearly two decades!’  UK astronomers and cosmologists have been following the news in real time and providing expert comment to the media.

Find out more about what got our scientists excited here:
Harvard-Smithsonian press release
Symmetry article

Corinne Mosese corinne.mosese@stfc.ac.uk
01793 442870

Corinne Mosese

STFC Press Officer
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Tel: +44(0)1793 442870
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