Thursday, April 19, 2018
Researchers
have
developed
a
new
way
to
improve
our
knowledge
of
the
Big
Bang
by
measuring
radiation
from
its
afterglow,
called
the
cosmic
microwave
background
radiation.
The
new
results
predict
the
maximum
bandwidth
of
the
universe,
which
is
the
maximum
speed
at
which
any
change
can
occur
in
the
universe.
The
cosmic
microwave
background
(CMB)
is
a
reverberation
or
afterglow
left
from
when
the
universe
was
about
300,000
years
old.
It
was
first
discovered
in
1964
as
a
ubiquitous
faint
noise
in
radio
antennas.
In
the
past
two
decades,
satellite-based
telescopes
have
started
to
measure
it
with
great
accuracy,
revolutionizing
our
understanding
of
the
Big
Bang.
Achim
Kempf,
a
professor
of
applied
mathematics
at
the
University
of
Waterloo
and
Canada
Research
Chair
in
the
Physics
of
Information,
led
the
work
to
develop
the
new
calculation,
jointly
with
Aidan
Chatwin-Davies
and
Robert
Martin,
his
former
graduate
students
at
Waterloo.
“It’s
like
video
on
the
Internet,”
said
Kempf.
“If
you
can
measure
the
CMB
with
very
high
resolution,
this
can
tell
you
about
the
bandwidth
of
the
universe,
in
a
similar
way
to
how
the
sharpness
of
the
video
image
on
your
Skype
call
tells
you
about
the
bandwidth
of
your
internet
connection.”
The
study
appears
in
a
special
issue
of Foundations
of
Physics dedicated
to
the
material
Kempf presented to
the
Vatican
Observatory
in
Rome
last
year.
The
international
workshop
entitled,
Black
Holes,
Gravitational
Waves
and
Spacetime
Singularities,
gathered
25
leading
physicists
from
around
the
world
to
present,
collaborate
and
inform
on
the
latest
theoretical
progress
and
experimental
data
on
the
Big
Bang.
Kempf’s
invitation
was
the
result
of
this
paper
in Physical
Review
Letters,
a
leading
journal
in
the
field.
“This
kind
of
work
is
highly
collaborative,”
said
Kempf,
also
an
affiliate
at
the
Perimeter
Institute
for
Theoretical
Physics.
“It
was
great
to
see
at
the
conference
how
experimentalists
and
theoreticians
inspire
each
other’s
work.”
“The
Pope
has
a
great
sense
of
humor
and
had
a
good
laugh
with
us
on
the
subject
of
dark
matter,”
said
Kempf.
Teams
of
astronomers
are
currently
working
on
even
more
accurate
measurements
of
the
cosmic
microwave
background.
By
using
the
new
calculations,
these
upcoming
measurements
might
reveal
the
value
of
the
universe’s
fundamental
bandwidth,
thereby
telling
us
also
about
the
fastest
thing
that
ever
happened,
the
Big
Bang.