Brand-new data came out yesterday–the best picture yet of the early, early universe. Jim Peebles (who long ago taught me graduate quantum mechanics) flew down to St. Thomas yesterday with four papers in an unopened envelope; he had pledged not to look at them until exactly noon. Did he wait? I asked. I did, said Jim Peebles.
Wired calls it “the smoking gun” for inflation; the NYT calls it the “earliest signs yet of a violent baby universe.”
I also love this quote from the NYT article:
“Inflation theory, which was invented by Alan H. Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been the workhorse of Big Bang cosmology for the last 25 years…
Dr. Guth, who is at a conference in the Caribbean, was said to be walking around with a big smile.”
I can confirm that Alan Guth is smiling, since I sat next to him at breakfast this morning. But then, so were all the rest of us–what a beautiful morning!
And if Frank hadn’t left his computer in the room, I’d be out enjoying it, instead of sitting here blogging.