With rumors, the internet has been flooded today about the possible discovery of gravitational waves for the first time by an American group of astrophysicists.
Rumors have been sparked by Harvard University's astronomy center announcement that next Tuesday at 18: 00 Greece will announce a scientific breakthrough in a press conference, without giving any further information.
From that point on, on social media and in the newsgraphics agencies there has been much speculation as to what the discovery might be, with the most imaginative talking of detection of life in space, but the opinion quickly prevailed that the news would be related to the discovery of gravitational waves, an idea derived from Albert Einstein's equations describing space and time.
According to the theory of Relativity, nothing is transmitted faster than the light, and this even applies to forces, such as gravity. Einstein's theory describes gravity through the curvature of space-time caused by mass and energy, and according to it, it is transmitted by gravitational waves, which are essentially wrinkles in the structure of space-time.
Because gravity is a very weak force, the detection of these waves has proven to be a very difficult task, and it is certainly impossible with technical means on Earth.
It has been suggested, however, in the past, that gravitational wave detection could be achieved by studying polarization in background radiation, in the wake of the Great Explosion created by the Universe before 13.8 billions of years.
According to inflation theory, the predominant view of the evolution of the Universe, following the Big Bang followed a brief period where the universe grew exponentially in size. The main predictions of this theory are the imprinting of gravitational waves in the background radiation spectrum, which at the first moments of the Universe was much stronger due to the high energies that prevailed.
Given that the Harvard Astronomy Center houses the BICEP2 experiment, which is dedicated to study of the polarization of the background radiation, it is considered very likely that astrophysicists have detected the gravitational wave imprint of the early Universe.
If this information is confirmed, it will be one of the most important discoveries of the last century that will surely make sense. Next update will follow on Monday.
