WASHINGTON (VOR)— It's a strange thought that some of the rays we bask in have taken millions of years to arrive.
More, that this light has taken a circuitous route, being bent by forces such as gravity. Now, scientists have begun to unravel the path of light, and in doing so may be able to develop a clearer map of the universe. To do so, scientists are attempting to track down a specific type of light which they describes as a primordial B mode. This light wave is believed to have been released less than a second after the very universe was formed. One catch to the search is that scientists don't quite know how powerful the signal may be, or in fact what it might look like. Nonetheless, vast microwave telescopes are being set up at the South Pole because of its arid climate to seek deep into space in an attempt to identify the level of polarization as well as the direction of the light wave. For insight, VOR’s Andrew Hiller spoke with Olivier Doré, a member of the Planck science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dore' speculates that some of that light may have already reached Earth. Though invisible to the naked eye, he says it may exist in the background of the spectrum. To explain, he conjures the analogy of television static picked up using an old fashioned antenna. He says that if you could look through the prism and see every wavelength of light... the distortion you receive or TV-like snow may be where these primordial b modes hide. But scientists aren't just interested in finding ancient light that's made its way to us. They want to trace it back to its origins and pick up other threads deep in space as a way of piecing together the tapestry of the universe. Dore' believes this discovery "…is really opening a new window into the physics of the universe. It's something really, really unique!" Source: Voice of Russia - US Edition
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