by Richard Easther | May 24, 2014 | Cosmology
When the news of the BICEP2 result broke, the mood was euphoric. There was open speculation about Nobel Prizes, a certain video went viral and cosmologists spoke of a radical transformation in our understanding of the early universe. And all of this may still come to...
by Richard Easther | May 19, 2014 | Cosmology
It’s two months since the BICEP2 team announced it had seen the fingerprints of gravitational waves in the microwave background, thus apparently opening a portal into the universe ten trillion, trillion, trillionths of a second after the Big Bang. In the last week,...
by Richard Easther | Apr 17, 2014 | Cosmology, Physics
A month ago the BICEP2 team announced that our universe is apparently awash with gravitational waves, pointing to the existence of an inflationary phase moments after the Big Bang. This was front page news all over the world, and cosmologists...
by Richard Easther | Apr 7, 2014 | Bad Science
A side-effect of working on the Big Bang is that I get a fair bit of crank mail (to use the technical term), a few crank phone calls, and even the occasional crank visit. These cranks – or “independent investigators” – usually believe they have solved abiding...
by Richard Easther | Apr 2, 2014 | New Zealand
Aucklanders, and those in Auckland this Sunday: MoTAT is holding its inaugural Science Street Fair. This will be a fun, informal event with all sorts of science (and scientists) on display. Not to mention a hovercraft, 3D printing and the “Ask a...
