There should be an update pinned to the that the BICEP2 paper was withdrawn.

I am so elated that I live in the time these discoveries and in the age of the Internet where all this information can be shared freely. Im just a 36 year oilfield worker who has always had an interest in universal physics.

This popped into my recommendations recently. It's worth looking into what happened after this video was made. The B-Modes observed when this video was made were later attributed to other phenomena. Data collection capabilities are still being improved

So it won't change the price of milk? :(

*"Sharing science in a way the world will understand it"* ...that's what Brady does! _Hurray for brady_ :D

Personally, I don't fully understand some of the things these videos talk about, but I just really enjoy listening to people talk about the universe.

The last few words from the professor were amazing!!

The time between the big bang and the gravitational waves they found is about the same amount of time that content on the Internet stays original.

Been waiting for this. Thank you Brady, Prof. Copeland and Prof. Merrifield! :-)

I pity people who question in earnest if answering the question where the universe came from is worthwhile.

This is by far my favorite SixtySymbols video.

Excellent excellent talk Prof Copeland and Merrifield!! Thank you Brady!!!

Congrats on the new camera! Love your videos, and they just got even better :)

These videos just keep on getting better and better!

I'm glad they didn't actually find the B-mode polarization, and hence primordial gravity waves, since that would've put the kibosh on Steinhardt and Turok's ekpyrotic cyclic model, which I find very satisfying.

Have been waiting for this video since the announcement. Thank you for sharing and getting solid responses. =]

Was waiting for this

Once again, great vid. Good questions from Brady to make me want to understand :)

Thank you Brady! And please please please also put up extended versions for what Profs Copeland & Merrifield said here!

Gosh you have to love Science, so humble from the Professor to say im not the best person to ask about this, even though he prob knows more about it than 99% of the world he still knows to hedge his bets to say they are more qualified scientist in this field.

I was in that office yesterday for my university interview! It was so surreal to be chatting and laughing with Prof Merrifield. I even got a cute sixty symbols ruler to take home. :)))))))))

A recent update in this saga. Sounds like galactic dust might might have played Old Harry with their interpretation of the data. physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2014/sep/22/bicep2-gravitational-wave-result-bites-the-dust-thanks-to-new-planck-data

Hey Brady :) Thank you for your Videos!

Yes! Was waiting for this :)

I really like the cautious optimism shown. We will have to wait some time, probably a couple of years, before we have independent confirmation and the data has been thoroughly scrutinized before we quite uncork the champagne. Still this is very exciting news. I'm eager to see what type of confirmation we will see. Great vid Brady, been waiting for this one, nice work :D

Thanks guys! Lovely explanations!

Fine point said gravitational waves dont care about plasma in its way. You know this is a typical video I like. You folks picked a small segment, spoke at right speed, was sequential, did such a fantastic job. I enjoyed it so much. If somebody picks 20 different ideas say in a video, I don't like them for understanding. Because each one is very detailed. So you have information overload.

Would gravitational waves also produce interference? Do they have wave lengths and frequencies?

At 10:53 Ed enters Sagan-esque explanation ability mode. :)

I really like how you interlaced Dr. Copeland's and Dr. Merrifield's interviews to include both the theory's relation to the world of non-science with its more technical aspects. That is the balance you should be striving for - a little bit above the PBS-style documentaries, but brought down enough for your average person to understand and appreciate.

I might have missed this, but how did the polarisation map work out with regards to professor Copeland's cosmic superstrings?

Thank you, Brady!

Well done. Thanks, I was waiting to hear your opinions on this.

Great video!

Thanks for another really interesting video! In regard to the cosmic microwave background radiation, I understand that there is a potential problem of different regions of the universe not having had time to communicate with each other, and that this might mean that those regions oughtn't necessarily be the same temperature (for instance) - even though it's observed that they ARE, in fact, very very close to the same. I also understand that inflation is one solution to this problem (one that's now widely accepted.) But I can only assume that this means that the idea of particles in the universe (or even, I suppose, the universe as a whole, in some sense) either couldn't have been 'entangled' - or that even if that were so, it wouldn't solve the problem. I wonder if you could (if you haven't already!) do a video discussing entanglement that discusses what information exactly can or can't be entangled (i.e., "communicated") - & what that means for various physics processes. Thanks again! tavi.

What projects are running that can corroborate these findings?

I've been wating for this =)

Does anyone know what the mechanism is by which the gravitational waves affect the polarization of the BR?

Thanks, Brady. This is two consecutive winners. There seems to be a question of wavelength. Does anyone at UoN know what that might be?

We need an update on this.

Physicists always get the importance of their work backwards. Instead of saying this work will not change the price of milk (13:50) they should say our everyday lives will have no effect on the cosmic mystery of the creation of the universe.

I love this content. 👌

8:23 ... just a thought... ins´t universe by inner causality in each of his part interconnected?

a good first try. DAMN DUST!!! (Professor Copeland was, correctly, very cautious.)

Hey brady, you seem to be getting more and more interested in science stuff. Ever think of joining the winning team and being an adult student?

are those field vector diagrams?

It can't have a frequent without having a wavelength. And without those I couldn't be described as being a wave. It has to have another property too which an amplitude. And for this type of side-to-side sine wave(think wiggly rope) as opposed to a push pull wave (think slinky) the wave can also have a rotation or polarisation . These gravity waves have turned out stronger than expected - very exciting especially this is something that might be independently verified.

10/10 would watch again

Did any one notice Proffessor Copeland's eyes coming alit when he mentioned the grand unification? Please ask them to do a video on the different unifications of the forces!

why is the video black but i have audio and i can see the preview on the timeline scroll ahead thinggy?

7:40 What did he mean by 'two orders of magnitude below the planck scale'? Didnt he menat to say 'above'?

Great video. Question though: Gravitational waves imprinted their pattern on light polarization at t1=10-35 seconds. The light we observe (microwave background) emerged from the opaque universe at t2=180 000 years after many scattering events. Why didn't the information about polarization get lost during t1 and t2 in this dense universe?

they talked a lot about inflation theory. I study at Imperial College, and recently we were given a talk by leader in an area of theoretical physics research called variable constants. He said that there are so many inflation theories that whatever the data had been, it could have been said to be evidence for inflation. He has been working on a theory that supposes that the speed of light is not constant but can change, which only predicts one thing for the data, and it matches very well.

Could you explain more about light polarization? I can think of so many questions - what does it mean? How does it behave in light? How does it behave in other waves? Why does it get blocked by certain sunglasses and LCD? Can we see this in electromagnetism? Does it effect the wave's energy? How is it explained mathematically? What happens to the frequencies? Can we see polarization in DSP, like audio waves or videos?

Has spin and polarization anything to do with each other?

Why don't they do a video about how the B-mode polarization (hence the primordial gravity waves) wasn't actually found after all?

So could there be high energy quantum entangled gravitational particles at opposite ends of the universe that became separated at the earliest moments of the expansion?

Amazing, this IS going to be huge :-)

Discovered!

YES

Can gravitational waves cancel each other out like with water waves? Are they waves or particles? Can you perform a slit experiment on it?

Eddys in the spacetime continuum!

this may have been mistakenly content ID'd. I'm not getting any audio.

That's fantastic. A video within a little bit more than a week from the discovery news is really good Brady! =)

What would it take to understand what they just said? Anybody please reply.

Tasty science for my brain!

Just a thought, Brady, but next time you show that polarisation diagram with the cosmic microwave background, could you actually scale it down and position it so we can see exactly which part of it was imaged, given the labels on the axes clearly indicate it's not of the whole sky?

Just wondering. With the ability to detect these gravitational waves (primordial or not) can we explain or confirm the existence of dark matter and/or energy since dark matter and/or energy interact or exist (?) through these gravitational waves?

wonderful

The spiral structure reminds me of Tristan's mathematics of fluid flow that also claims to explain "completely" even gravitation field flow-!!!

Professors what you wished for two years ago during the Live Hang Out, might well have been realized.

Paulis exclusion principles comes from the fact that everything cannot be homogeneous and identical otherwise you won't have variations in gene or evolution or universe expansion.

Can they measure the inflation rate of the universe by observing the redshift of specifically these polarized photons?

Great discovery, never stop trying to peer into the layers of the Cosmos, humans.

The fact that no primordial milk-price changing waves have been detected yet doesn't mean they don't exist. They will probably be found emanating from somewhere between the Planck scale and the holy cow scale. The only thing that is already known about them with apodictic certainty is that their propagation is unidirectional, i. e., the price of milk is only going to go up under their influence. Declining milk prices are not a question science can deal with. Given their nature, they belong to the realm of metaphysics. They are a matter of theology, similar to other phenomena classified as miracles.

Is the polarization constant in a single spot in the sky all over the year? Maybe they should include some stars on that map to get an idea of the position and size.

Unfortunately this episode can be shelfed. The measurement of the primordial graviational waves is proven to be false recently. Maybe a better measurement can be done. So I am not saying that this video must be deleted, just shelfed.

is time continues or discreet

Who's the gent in the picture behind Ed Copeland?

Yay! We finally found it! This and the Higg's Boson. They did it! Next step, the grand unified theory of everything! ^_^

? How can they determine that the oldest detectable microwave is 300,000 years old? (since it is stated that prior to that the microwaves were bouncing in a medium dense enough to trap the radiation within) ? What sort of indicator is used to determine the cosmic background radiation age? ? And also, how can they determine how old the universe was prior to the release of this background radiation in its current form? Thanks in advance!

If light is polarized vertically: is it the magnetic or the electric field that oscillates vertically?

Please do a video about Gravito-Magnetism!

Q. What causes gravity? My guess: Something external to our universe which is not a force in the way we experience electro-magnetism, for instance. My theory is that there is a whitenoise of space-time expansion at nearly every point in space, apart from where singularities exist (black holes, particles, etc.) The differential caused by the in-flow of space-time from a higher dimensional universe would cause the gravitational effects we see today. Objects that are 'pushed' toward one another rather than being 'pulled' together. So gravity wouldn't actually be a force in the same way that the other forces work, and the other forces would be abstractions of gravitational effects but on a smaller level. Wherever there is a singularity, there are these effects. Some simgularities we call subatomic particles; Some bigger ones we call black holes. In my theory, since our universe is a sub-universe of a larger one and we are existing inside a black hole, my guess is that galaxies are actually the after-glow of individual atoms from a dying star. These atoms would be quantised to a new Planck length which is based upon the physics within the black hole universe, therefore causing subdivision of the atom into a giant cloud of matter that goes to create stars. Only a theory, though. Had to share.

Heres a practical reason why knowing this is important too: Because inflation is a circumstance where a section of space can be separated from another section of space faster than the speed of light. And that, boys and girls, puts the warp drive back in the game (Well it sort of has been since Alcubierre's solution of Einstein's field equations.) as a thing that might be possible. Strap on your spacesuit boys and girls, we've got a date with the vulcans!

Reaching deep into the well of futurism/science fiction, would sething like an Alcubierre Drive produce gravitational waves? If the answer is yes, and we don't see those, isn't that telling?

I love science!

how the hell do you build those kind of telescopes\experiments??

To add to the already very convivial conversation concerning the relation between electromagnetic radiation (as well as acoustic waves) and gravitational waves, Professor Copeland said that gravitational waves don't get canceled out. I know this is contrary to the properties of acoustic vibrations, as noise-canceling headphones take advantage of the fact that there exists destructive interference - the cancellation of waves employing their sinusoidal opposites. My question, among others which have been conjured by my thinking of this, is what in the properties of gravitational waves made us adopt the colloquialism of the term wave, as they don't seem to manifest any such behavior we would expect from some other form of oscillations such as light and sound. Also, simply to elucidate an additional idea which came to mind; considering the wave-particle duality of light and its apparent transcending nature relative to that of simple sound waves, could there be a similar relationship between gravitational waves and light waves, in which gravitational waves reign supreme in their mystery? In other words, are gravitational waves - the curvature of spacetime to light waves as light waves are to sound waves? It seems to me that both our limited conception of a literalistic application of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in a plane combining space and time which are, in Stephen Hawking's expression, "inextricably interconnected" as well as the limited understanding we have concerning the current dual theory of light would be equivalent in their mystery. But I am but a mere boy seeking recognition for my attempt at understanding the Universe. Good day.

under 301 club!

So what caused this sudden and violent expansion, and why did it not continue? (if indeed it did not)

I think I saw a ripple in spacetime the other night on Dr Who, could have been one of those gravity waves ....

pause it at 0:00

Hey. I´ve got a question: Today in physics we assume, that all physical laws are the same for all time and don´t change. It seems to me, that during the cosmic inflation there was some process going on (some force, etc. I don´t know) that started right after the big bang and stopped as quickly as it began. And it never happend again... So how does that fit in in the idea of the universality of natural laws? Maybe someone can help me with that. Or brady and his crew will make a video about that? ;) Thanks (and don´t worry I´m not a creationist intending to disprove physics :D )

Physics never ends.

The LIGO detectors in Louisiana and Washington are in their respective locations because they are the same distance apart as the wavelength of a gravitational wave. If a gravitational wavelength is over a thousand miles, how would gravitational waves affect photons before the universe was large enough for them to propagate? Surely all that gravitational energy would be mediated through higher-energy particles with smaller wavelengths. This brings us to my next question. If the limited size of the universe gave inflation a head start until it was over a thousand miles in diameter, how could the gravitational waves reach the other side in order to slow down the rate of inflation?

Why hasn't this "left over background radiation" radiated away already?

Okay, I understand that light can polarize in different ways. But why is called left-right or up-down? Aren't they the same thing if only our perspective changes 90 degrees? I think there needs to be a better name.

If there are gravitational waves, does it mean there might be anti-gravitational waves as well? If yes, could we ever built a device which will GENERATE these anti-gravitational waves? That would make the science fiction ideas of anti-gravity a reality...

when they talk about the milkyway producing polarized light, i cant help but wonder: is there anything special about it? cause to me it sounds like all light is polarized in one direction or the other :)