Big astronomy news coming tomorrow

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…you’ve heard the rumor: the BICEP2 experiment has purportedly detected signs of gravitational waves in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

And all this time I thought BICEP2 was just astronomer-speak for Neil Degrasse Tyson’s right arm.

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I thought we had moved past science by press conference.

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That’s hardly what this will be. There will be a paper submission to go along with it. The paper, however, is likely to be something only digested by somebody who’s studied and understands a lot of cosmology. The press release is the experiment’s way of describing publicly what it is that is in the paper.

(If there’s no paper submission to go along with it, I will be extremely disappointed… but I do fully expect to see a legitimate scientific paper on arXiv.org tomorrow.)

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Maybe they finally debunked that whole green cheese thing, once and for all. And about time, I say!

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That’s just what the military/dairy complex want you to believe!

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I’m hoping for a giant, nebulous object that seems to be slowing down and matching our orbit.

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If this is about what happened shortly after the Big Bang, wouldn’t that make it old news, just about the oldest possible news?

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Anyway, what good is a press conference when the creationists are going to stick their fingers in their ears and go, “lalalalalalalalalalala”?

Does anyone have idea on that discovery?

Mutant Star Goat…we have to build Arks to escape.

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Do not fear the gravitons they only come to attract you.

OK I read the article. Sorry science, you’re going to need to sex it up a bit. I suggest calling it the God wave.

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I’ve read too much science fiction.

My sense-of-wonder lobes have grown acclimated to ever-higher levels of the outlandish and profound. To impress me, scientific discoveries not only have to be large-scale, but dramatic and “meaningful.”

So, when I hear “big astronomy news” I pathetically think of Dyson spheres and the discovery of source code comments encoded into the cosmic background radiation.

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I get what you’re saying, but that could be exactly what this is all about.

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More modestly, I’d settle for a Culture Orbital.

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V’Ger is searching for creator.

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Umm… what?

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It is more dangerous than the Regular Star Goat?