Adds weight to the claim in March that b-mode polarization from primordial gravity waves were discovered by radio telescope in Antarctica:
An international collaboration of more than 70 scientists involved in a project called POLARBEAR say they have detected the universe’s oldest light along with evidence of the first cosmic inflation, which took place in the initial fraction of a second following the Big Bang.
“It’s a really important milestone,” said Kam Arnold from the University of California, in San Diego. “We’re in a new regime of more powerful, precision cosmology.”
POLARBEAR measures remnant radiation from the Big Bang, which has cooled and stretched with the expansion of the universe to microwave lengths. This cosmic microwave background (CMB) acts as an enormous backlight, illuminating the large-scale structure of the universe and carrying an imprint of cosmic history.
Arnold and many others have developed sensitive instruments called bolometers to measure this light. Arrayed in the telescope, the bolometers record the direction of the light’s electrical field from multiple points in the sky.
“It’s a map of all these little directions that the light’s electric field is pointing,” Arnold said.
POLARBEAR has now mapped these angles with resolution on a scale of about 3 arcminutes, just one-tenth the diameter of the Full Moon.
The team found telling twists called B-modes in the patterns of polarization, signs that this cosmic backlight has been warped by intervening structures in the universe, including such mysteries as dark matter, composed of substance that remains unknown, and the famously aloof particles called neutrinos, which elude capture making them difficult to study.
More: http://canadajournal.net/science/scientists-obtain-most-accurate-measurement-of-cosmic-microwave-polarization-17723-2014/
And more: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/1021/POLARBEAR-project-offers-clues-about-origin-of-universe-s-cosmic-growth-spurt