Antarctica's South Pole telescope, with the shimmering lights of the aurora australis in the background.
Credit: Steve Padin/International Polar Foundation
SYDNEY: Astronomers will put their theory of the origin and inflation of the universe to a stringent test by observing the cosmic background of the Big Bang in the extreme cold of Antarctica.
An international team are planning to use the 10-metre South Pole Telescope at the U.S. National Science Foundation's research station in the continent's central polar region. They will use it to look for gravity waves; stirrings in the fabric of space-time first predicted by Einstein.
Direct evidence of the early moments of the universe is shielded by the pervasive leftover glow of photons created early in the history of the universe. This glow, called Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation represents a moment in time about 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the universe first became transparent.
The beginning of everything
The CMB shields observations of the universe to the electromagnetic spectrum – visible light, infrared and so on – because before the CMB was created, the universe was opaque. Therefore, if we look across the universe by observing the electromagnetic spectrum, there is a limit to how far back we can see.
In theory though, gravity waves should pass through this barrier, since they pass through everything. Experts therefore believe that gravity waves should be able to provide crucial clues as to what was happening in the very first moments of the universe's existence.
Because they should be able to reveal this very early period of the universe's history, the phenomenon could finally provide proof for what astronomers suspect happened in these first few moments of existence.
It's thought that universe expanded dramatically trillionths of seconds after the Big Bang and then slowed down, a period known as inflation. Inflation helps explain away some problematic issues arising from the Big Bang theory, such as why the universe is flat (rather than curved) and why it looks the same in every direction.
Three places to look
"If you detect gravity waves, it tells you a whole lot about inflation for our universe," said cosmologist John Carlstrom, from the University of Chicago in Illinois.
Carlstrom announced the polar scheme on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago, along with cosmologist Scott Dodelson from the University of Chicago and Fermilab Centre for Particle Astrophysics in Batavia, Illinois.
Theory says gravity waves occur at three frequencies: at one cycle in the lifetime of the universe, at one cycle per hour, and at audio frequencies. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is the main ground-based effort at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and focuses its search on the audio frequency band.
