If anybody is interested, I'm currently drip-tweeting some of the constraints one can obtain from considering Planck and BICEP2 data together. BICEP2 did do a bit of this in their paper, but they only considered specific scenarios. They were also often a bit coy about the implications of the combined analysis. I'll try not to be ;-).
The results should only be seen as indicative, these aren't published, and never will be in this form (maybe they could be cited if used in a paper though!). They were provided to me by Sussex Uni's resident obtaining-cosmology-from-the-CMB expert Antony Lewis, after a hurried Tuesday adding the BICEP2 data to the Planck cosmology pipeline (i.e. CosmoMC) and may contain mistakes.
Antony has himself also made some of these results public at the Cosmo Coffee website.
Questions here, or on Twitter are most welcome. If you want to see specific cosmologies, I'll do my best to show them (if I have them), or ask Antony very nicely to provide them (no guarantees, of course).
You can find my Twitter account here: @just_shaun. Feel free to share!
These new data from BICEP2 are fascinating and exhilarating (unless you are in a superposition with Schrodinger's dead cat!). Much needs to be confirmed and extended by this group and many others. We all needed a boost waiting for the LHC to restart at 13-14 TeV in 2015 (and not knowing if they will find SUSY or something else or just extend and tighten the Std. Model of P.P.), for LIGO in 2016, for more neutrino oscillations data, what with all the negative WIMP Dark matter search data out there... B-modes, Gravitational wave imprints on the CMB, Inflation all but confirmed - a spectacular additional confirmation of General Relativity - dare I say this was unforeseen by most scientists, and one of the great discoveries mixed with several confirmations, in the History of Science? Of course it is, seeing all the way back to a fraction of a fraction of a second after the Big bang - what more could any thinking person ask for? The early numbers looks like the Inflaton Field's Energy Scale is about 2x10E16 GeV. SUSY in a GUT-type Theory of the fundamental (3-Force) forces Unification Energy Scale is 2x10 E16 GeV - are these mere coincidences of the much maligned Theorists? I doubt it....
ReplyDeleteI just hope it's all definitely correct!! That it has picked out the GUT scale is super-interesting though, as you point out.
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