Flora Graham, deputy editor, newscientist.com
(Images: Asad Aboobaker/EBEX/Columbia University)
A 2.7-tonne telescope dangles on an almost invisible tether over
the Antarctic ice. Above it, a helium balloon the size of a football stadium
stretches towards the sky. This is the launch of EBEX, which aims to photograph
the weak light left by the big bang during its high-altitude flight.
EBEX's creators hope that it will be the first device ever
to spot a specific signature, called B-type polarisation, in the cosmic
microwave background, the big bang's afterglow.
Like a digital camera, EBEX looks at photons - but rather than visible light, it photographs microwaves that were emitted when the universe was a mere baby at 380,000 years
old.
"Something special happened at that time," says team leader Amber Miller
of Columbia University in New York. The post-bang
plasma cooled enough to allow for photons, which had previously been bound up
with electrons, to break free and travel through the universe. "As that light
got away, it carried with it an imprint, a photograph, of what the universe
looked like before anything was formed."
The B-type polarisations EBEX is looking for were created
even earlier, by gravitational waves thought to have been generated during the
big bang. "If we find the signatures of those waves, that tells us something
about the type of expansion that took place in that early universe and what
drove it," says Miller.
Data from EBEX's Antarctic flight will be combined with results
gleaned from an earlier flight in New Mexico in 2009 and from a second camera that
sits atop a 5000-metre plateau in Chile's Atacama desert.
The ultimate goal, says Miller, is to understand the origin
and evolution of the universe. For example, the team hopes to pin down the true nature of the big bang. Their findings could even help confirm that the big bang really did happen.
Megaballoon launches big bang telescope in Antarctica
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Megaballoon launches big bang telescope in Antarctica
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Megaballoon launches big bang telescope in Antarctica
