Have physicists discovered gravitational waves? Speculative article

[OldRightHander]

http://space.io9.com/breaking-well-h...ium=socialflow

[SunDeck]

I'll show this to my thirteen year old, who can explain it to me.
I'm struck by the fact that stuff Einstein thought up might be proven correct after over a century.

[marcshoe]

I'm sure the press conference was really called to tell us the aliens are here, but the government, who are already spreading disinformation, will step in at the last minute and make it about gravitational waves or some such thing.

It's always aliens.

[marcshoe]

The press conference has been held. They're going with the gravitational waves/big bang thing, but you know it was really aliens.

[OldRightHander]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/...pansion-found/

[Hoosier Red]

The groundbreaking results came from observations by BICEP2, a telescope at the South Pole, of the cosmic microwave background -- a faint glow left over from the Big Bang.

Some men buy muscle cars, some men name their telescopes BICEP. I say they're all compensating for something.

[SunDeck]

OK, so my kid explained this to me. Apparently, there once was a really tiny, really dense thing that became a really big thing in a trillionth of a second. And there are potentially billions of them, going on forever. The gravitational waves are like ripples in a pond after you throw a stone into it.

That explanation cost me five bucks.

[Sea Ray]

So is this "proof" that the universe is not 6000 years old?

[SunDeck]

It seems that question belongs in another forum, Sea Ray.

[marcshoe]

And still not a word about the alien suffers riding the gravitational waves, hanging 15.

[RedTeamGo!]

This reminds me of a (possible) fact I read on reddit the other day:

It is likely there are 5 to 10 times more stars in the known Universe than there are grains of sand on all the world's beaches but that a single grain of sand has more atoms than there are stars in the known universe.

In the comments section someone pointed out a grain of sand has 10^20 atoms and the universe has 10^23 stars

[marcshoe]

http://gizmodo.com/why-the-big-bang-proof-is-even-more-important-than-you-think

An interesting article. Einstein and Hawking were right; Turok was wrong.

Yes, we now have solid proof that the Big Bang actually happened. But perhaps more importantly, yesterday's discovery rubbishes the most popular competing theory.

The cyclic model, championed by Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute in Canada, predicted that the Universe expanded and contracted over very long cycles. Starting with a Big Bang and ending with a Big Crunch, the growth of the Universe, Turok reckoned, would be tempered by gravity pulling it pack together, in an endless cycle of expansion and contraction.

[Sea Ray]

http://gizmodo.com/why-the-big-bang-proof-is-even-more-important-than-you-think

An interesting article. Einstein and Hawking were right; Turok was wrong.

So this discovery not only explains the beginning of the universe, it also has implications for the future. Apparently this debunks the theory that the universe will end in a big crunch.

So how will the universe "end" or do we not know that now? Does our Universe have an end date that we can discern?

[RichRed]

So this discovery not only explains the beginning of the universe, it also has implications for the future. Apparently this debunks the theory that the universe will end in a big crunch.

So how will the universe "end" or do we not know that now? Does our Universe have an end date that we can discern?

Whenever the Cubs win the World Series.

[OldRightHander]

http://gizmodo.com/why-the-big-bang-proof-is-even-more-important-than-you-think

An interesting article. Einstein and Hawking were right; Turok was wrong.

Big news indeed. As a Christian, the big bang is very compatible with a biblical creation model, while Turok's model was more at odds, but that discussion would be more suited for the other section of the board, so I won't add any more along those lines.