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In March 2014, scientists working on the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole reported an incredible discovery: a swirling pattern in the cosmic background radiation that appeared to indicate the presence of gravitational waves. But do these ripples in space-time hold up under further scientific scrutiny? See a panel of world-class researchers weighing the evidence at “Ripples From the Big Bang: Listening to the Beginning of Time.”
This program is part of the Big Ideas Series, made possible with support from the John Templeton Foundation.
Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and is recognized for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in his field of superstring theory. His books, The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Hidden Reality, have collectively spent 65 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.
Read MoreJohn Kovac is an associate professor in the Astronomy and Physics Departments at Harvard University. His cosmology research focuses on observations of the cosmic microwave background to reveal signatures of the physics that drove the birth of the universe.
Read MoreAmber Miller aims to understand the origin and evolution of the universe by studying the cosmic microwave background, the faint glow of light left over from the Big Bang.
Read MorePaul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University, where he is also on the faculty of …
Read MoreAlan Guth is a professor of physics at MIT, and world-renowned for his discovery of inflationary cosmology, the dominant cosmological paradigm for over two decades. His current research focuses on developing mathematical tools for quantitatively analyzing inflation’s suggestion that there are an infinite number of universes.
Read MoreAndrei Linde is a professor of physics at Stanford University, one of the authors of the inflationary theory and the theory of inflationary multiverse. He invented the theory of chaotic inflation, which is the most general version of inflationary cosmology. Linde also helped to develop the theory of eternal chaotic inflation, and the mechanism of vacuum stabilization in string theory.
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