Not so long ago, our very own Matthew Francis attended the press conference in which results were announced from Antarctic observatory BICEP 2. Researchers claimed that the instruments there had located the unmistakable signature of gravitational waves during primordial inflation—a period of time during which the Universe expanded at a furious rate.
But our initial article also hinted at trouble to come.
The BICEP 2 experiment measures the ratio between light scattered by gravitational waves and light scattered by everything else, which shows up in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. BICEP 2, however, is not the only instrument that can measure the properties of the CMB. Scientists have used the Planck satellite to measure the same ratio of light scatters—and guess what? The value obtained from BICEP 2 data doesn't agree with the value obtained from the Planck data.
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