Cosmic inflation: BICEP 'underestimated' dust problem
One of the biggest scientific claims of the year has received another set-back.
In March, the US BICEP team said it had found a pattern on the sky left by the rapid expansion of space just fractions of a second after the Big Bang.
The astonishing assertion was countered quickly by others who thought the group may have underestimated the confounding effects of dust in our own galaxy.
That explanation has now been boosted by a new analysis from the European Space Agency's (Esa) Planck satellite.
In a paper published on the arXiv pre-print server, Planck's researchers find that the part of the sky being observed by the BICEP team contained significantly more dust than it had assumed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29305985
= new reply since forum marked as read
... that portions of my house contain significantly more dust than I assumed.
It sounds like scientists may need to pull out the cosmic Swiffer.
Thanks for the post, I enjoy keeping up with cosmology.
