Far out cosmology: Bicep2 becomes Bicep 3 (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, March 17, 2015, 21:39 (3540 days ago) @ David Turell

The folks won't give u. bicep 3 is about to reach the end of more data:-http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2015/03/17/a-year-later-bicep2-astronomer-upbeat-as-he-hunts-for-elusive-big-bang-signal/?wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1-"We're very far along in the next analysis of the next data set. It's going to be much more powerful,” Kovac told me.-"This is a man who has devoted his professional life to South Pole astronomy, making 24 trips there, each as arduous as you can imagine (fly to New Zealand, then to the McMurdo station on the Antarctica coast, then to the South Pole). In his early 20s, he overwintered at the South Pole, spending 14 months straight at the bottom of the world. In the early 1990s, South Pole astronomer was a much more rugged affair with primitive equipment and a lot of exposure to the elements. He showed me a photograph in which, dressed almost like an astronaut, he's climbing onto a telescope with a giant tank of liquid helium on his back. This kind of astronomy requires very cold instruments, which is why he has spent two decades lugging liquid helium to the South Pole. As he puts it, the South Pole just isn't cold enough by itself.-"It's safe to say that if Kovac and his colleagues can't detect the signal of cosmic inflation, it won't be for lack of trying.-"I asked if the new observations will tell us whether there really are cosmological signals in the CMB, or just polarization generated by dust.-"'That's going to depend on what the universe has to say,” he said. “The power of our data is going to keep getting better.'"