New Research Limits Big Bang's Output of Gravity Waves
A significant advance in our understanding of the early evolution of the universe has been achieved by a team of scientists associated with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. The team's results appeared in the August 20, 2009 issue of the journal Nature. The gravitatioaal-wave scientists, including Lee Samuel Finn, a Penn State professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics, and Benjamin Owen, a Penn State professor of physics, have put new contraints on the details of how the universe looked in its earliest moments. Analysis of the team's data, taken from 2005 to 2007, has set the most stringent limits yet on the amount of gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang.
"Our results are a major step toward the detection of primordial gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space and time - that were created as the universe expanded in its earliest moments," said Finn, who has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since its inception. More....