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Listening to the Big Bang

Just-reported ripples in space may open a window on the very beginning of the universe
For six months each year, the perennially dark and wind-swept plains of the southern polar ice cap
have an average temperature of about 58 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. In summer, when the
sun returns for its six-month-long day, the glacial terrain hardly becomes more inviting, with
temperatures climbing to minus 20 degrees. Not the kind of place most of us would choose to
visit.
But if youre an astronomer seeking a collection of photons that have been streaming toward us
since just after the Big Bang, then the South Poles Dark Sector Laboratory is what the Met is to
opera or Yankee Stadium to baseball. Its the premier place to practice your trade. With the
coldest and driest air on earth, the atmosphere lets photons travel virtually unimpeded, providing
the sharpest terrestrial-based space images ever taken.
For three years, a team of astronomers led by Harvard-Smithsonian researcher John Kovac braved
the elements to point a brawny telescope known as Bicep2 (an acronym for the less euphonious
Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) at a patch of the southern sky. In March,
the team released its results. Should the conclusions stand, they will open a spectacular new
window on the earliest moments of the universe, and will deservedly rank among the most
important cosmological findings of the past century.
Its a story whose roots can be traced back to early creation stories intended to satisfy the primal
urge to grasp our origins. But Ill pick up the narrative laterwith Albert Einsteins discovery of the
general theory of relativity, the mathematical basis of space, time and all modern cosmological
thought.
Warped Space to the Big Bang
In the early years of the 20th century, Einstein rewrote the rules of space and time with his special
theory of relativity. Until then, most everyone adhered to the Newtonian perspectivethe
intuitive perspectivein which space and time provide an unchanging arena wherein events take
place. But as Einstein described it, in the spring of 1905 a storm broke loose in his mind, a
torrential downpour of mathematical insight that swept away Newtons universal arena. Einstein
argued convincingly that there is no universal timeclocks in motion tick more slowlyand there
is no universal spacerulers in motion are shorter. The absolute and unchanging arena gave way
to a space and time that were malleable and flexible.
Fresh off this success, Einstein then turned to an even steeper challenge. For well over two
centuries, Newtons universal law of gravity had done an impressive job at predicting the motion
of everything from planets to comets. Even so, there was a puzzle that Newton himself articulated:
How does gravity exert its influence? How does the Sun influence the Earth across some 93 million
miles of essentially empty space? Newton had provided an owners manual allowing the
mathematically adept to calculate the effect of gravity, but he was unable to throw open the hood
and reveal how gravity does what it does.

In search of the answer, Einstein engaged in a decade-long obsessive, grueling odyssey through
arcane mathematics and creative flights of physical fancy. By 1915, his genius blazed through the
final equations of the general theory of relativity, finally revealing the mechanism underlying the
force of gravity.
The answer? Space and time. Already unshackled from their Newtonian underpinnings by special
relativity, space and time sprung fully to life in general relativity. Einstein showed that much as a
warped wooden floor can nudge a rolling marble, space and time can themselves warp, and nudge
terrestrial and heavenly bodies to follow the trajectories long ascribed to the influence of gravity.
However abstract the formulation, general relativity made definitive predictions, some of which
were quickly confirmed through astronomical observations. This inspired mathematically oriented
thinkers the world over to explore the theorys detailed implications. It was the work of a Belgian
priest, Georges Lematre, who also held a doctorate in physics, that advanced the story were
following. In 1927, Lematre applied Einsteins equations of general relativity not to objects within
the universe, like stars and black holes, but to the entire universe itself. The result knocked
Lematre back on his heels. The math showed that the universe could not be static: The fabric of
space was either stretching or contracting, which meant that the universe was either growing in
size or shrinking.
When Lematre alerted Einstein to what hed found, Einstein scoffed. He thought Lematre was
pushing the math too far. So certain was Einstein that the universe, as a whole, was eternal and
unchanging, that he not only dismissed mathematical analyses that attested to the contrary, he
inserted a modest amendment into his equations to ensure that the math would accommodate his
prejudice.
And prejudice it was. In 1929, the astronomical observations of Edwin Hubble, using the powerful
telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, revealed that distant galaxies are all rushing away. The
universe is expanding. Einstein gave himself a euphemistic slap in the forehead, a reprimand for
not trusting results coming out of his own equations, and brought his thinkingand his
equationsinto line with the data.
Great progress, of course. But new insights yield new puzzles.
As Lematre had pointed out, if space is now expanding, then by winding the cosmic film in reverse
we conclude that the observable universe was ever smaller, denser and hotter ever further back in
time. The seemingly unavoidable conclusion is that the universe we see emerged from a
phenomenally tiny speck that erupted, sending space swelling outwardwhat we now call the Big
Bang.
But if true, what sent space swelling? And how could such an outlandish proposal be tested?
The Inflationary Theory
If the universe emerged from a sweltering hot and intensely dense primeval atom, as Lematre
called it, then as space swelled the universe should have cooled off. Calculations undertaken at
George Washington University in the 1940s, and later at Princeton in the 1960s, showed that the
Big Bangs residual heat would manifest as a bath of photons (particles of light) uniformly filling
space. The temperature of the photons would now have dropped to a mere 2.7 degrees above

absolute zero, placing their wavelength in the microwave part of the spectrumexplaining why
this possible relic of the Big Bang is called the cosmic microwave background radiation.
In 1964, two Bell Labs scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were at wits end, frustrated by
a large ground-based antenna designed for satellite communications. Regardless of where they
pointed the antenna, they encountered the audiophiles nightmare: an incessant background hiss.
For months they sought but failed to find the source. Then, Penzias and Wilson caught wind of the
cosmological calculations being done at Princeton suggesting there should be a low-level radiation
filling space. The incessant hiss, the researchers realized, was arising from the Big Bangs photons
tickling the antennas receiver. The discovery earned Penzias and Wilson the 1978 Nobel Prize.
The prominence of the Big Bang theory skyrocketed, impelling scientists to pry the theory apart,
seeking unexpected implications and possible weaknesses. A number of important issues were
brought to light, but the most essential was also the most
basic.
The Big Bang is often described as the modern scientific theory of creation, the mathematical
answer to Genesis. But this notion obscures an essential fallacy: The Big Bang theory does not tell
us how the universe began. It tells us how the universe evolved, beginning a tiny fraction of a
second after it all started. As the rewound cosmic film approaches the first frame, the
mathematics breaks down, closing the lens just as the creation event is about to fill the screen.
And so, when it comes to explaining the bang itselfthe primordial push that must have set the
universe headlong on its expansionary coursethe Big Bang theory is silent.
It would fall to a young postdoctoral fellow in the physics department of Stanford University, Alan
Guth, to take the vital step toward filling that gap. Guth and his collaborator Henry Tye of Cornell
University were trying to understand how certain hypothetical particles called monopoles might
be produced in the universes earliest moments. But calculating deep into the night of December
6, 1979, Guth took the work in a different direction. He realized that not only did the equations
show that general relativity plugged an essential gap in Newtonian gravityproviding gravitys
mechanismthey also revealed that gravity could behave in unexpected ways. According to
Newton (and everyday experience) gravity is an attractive force that pulls one object toward
another. The equations were showing that in Einsteins formulation, gravity could also be
repulsive.

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