New BICEP2 Results Are Published - Dust Rules

Hey Space Placers!

Sorry to be out of touch the last few days but I just returned from attending the funeral for a dear, dear, friend who lost his brutal nine month battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. The next heartbeat is a privilege and not a right so make sure you live each day to the fullest and do what you want to do - your time on this planet is not infinite……..

Planck View of BICEP2 Region
Date: 30 January 2015
Satellite: Planck
Copyright: ESA/Planck Collaboration. Acknowledgment: M.-A. Miville-Deschênes, CNRS - Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Université Paris-XI, Orsay, France

You may remember last year's mega-announcement in March about the discovery of gravitational waves in the data acquired at the South Pole by BICEP2. At the time there was talk of Nobel Prize and this being a great discovery.

Well, not so fast.

The announcement was done before any formal paper was published and/or peer reviewed. Now that such a necessary process has been done it turns out that the all important signal could be caused by dust from our very own Milky Way Galaxy.

Read these illuminating articles  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/02/02/bicep2-discovery-gravitational-waves/#.VM-78Uv3XUl   and   http://sci.esa.int/planck/55362-planck-gravitational-waves-remain-elusive/.

Sky Guy in VA