Bold statements, whether they are true or not, have an impact on a scientifically credulous public. This week the world has heard how scientists working at the South Pole think they have “proof” for what occurred in the first fraction of a second of the Big Bang. They claim to have discovered the elusive gravity waves predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity 99 years ago. What the unsuspecting public are duped to instantly believe is that these gravity waves prove the Big Bang cosmology, whereas these gravity waves do not in fact prove anything about a theoretical event that has come to be known as the the Big Bang.
Sadly, many cosmologists are so locked in to the big bang theory that they are blind to any evidence that contradicts it. They suppress all evidence that is critical to an expanding universe. For example there is evidence for quasar pairs originating from the active nucleus of Seyfert galaxies, yet their astonishingly different redshifts to their parent galaxy cast doubt on an expanding universe, so the evidence that quasars are connected to disturbed galaxies must be rejected! (see http://johnhartnett.org/2014/01/01/galaxy-quasar-associations/). Yet when their ‘expanding universe’ was thought to be accelerating, they invent fudge factors such as dark energy to prop up their precious theory. Such is the slavish obedience to redshift only being due to cosmological expansion and not due to other effects.
What Cosmologists really needed was some conclusive evidence to support their 'theory in crisis'. Something to remove the suspicion and doubt that the word ‘theory’ conveys. The inflation version of the big bang predicts gravitational waves, so their eventual discovery must (in their mind) prove their theory correct! Couple Einstein into the equation and you have a sensation that is front page news!
According to the inflation version of the big bang the Universe expanded faster than the speed of light for just 10-36 second within the first 10-32 second. This supposedly smoothed out any irregularities and set up gravitational waves which still ripple through the fabric of the space-time continuum. According to theory, these gravitational waves would polarise the subsequent electromagnetic radiation that was emitted 340,000 years later, which we now see as cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).
This however assumes the CMBR is evidence for the big bang, which many scientists such as Sir Arthur Eddington do not subscribe to. George Gamow, an advocate for the Big Bang, predicted in 1961 the afterglow from the big bang should give the CMBR a temperature of 50 Kelvin, whereas Eddington’s calculations based on the universe being bathed in sunlight predicted 3 Kelvin. When CMBR was discovered in 1964 by Penzias and Wilson it was measured at 2.7 Kelvin. Yet it is still claimed as evidence for the big bang. See http://legacy-cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/contents/379/arj/v7/cosmic_microwave_background.pdf.
There are also other contending theories for polarisation. Radiation can be strongly polarised by magnetic fields surrounding galaxies, which is why BICEP2 looked at a part of space with no known galaxies. Or it may be the result of needle-shaped space dust reflecting the radiation similar to air molecules reflecting light from the sun. Hence BICEP2 pointed away from known galactic dust lanes. Aerosols can also give a similar effect, hence BICEP2 was stationed at the South Pole. (For a more detailed evaluation see http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/bang_for_the_bu083451.html).
The European Space Agency’s Planck satellite launched in 2009 aimed to measure to high accuracy the polarisation of CMBR anisotropies which, it is believed, encodes not only a wealth of cosmological information but also provides a unique probe of the thermal history of the Universe during the time when the first stars and galaxies formed. Polarisation measurements also hoped to detect the signature of a stochastic background of gravitational waves generated during inflation, 10-35 second after the Big Bang. No polarisation was found (http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5083), but this contrary lack of evidence is discarded now that BICEP2 has data to say there is polarisation.So does the latest discovery from the South Pole actually offer any conclusive evidence for the big bang? Probably not, but this will not stop big bang devotees hijacking them to fit their theory any more than cosmic microwave background radiation was 50 years ago. (See also http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2014/03/17/has-cosmic-inflation-been-proved). Do these results conclusively prove gravitational waves, first generated in the inflation phase of the big bang, are the cause of polarisation of the CMBR? Mike Wall from Space.com recently wrote: "We really need to understand what this substance - this inflation - is. And until we do that, it's just like dark matter or dark energy - we give it a name, but we don't know what it is." – see http://www.space.com/25078-universe-inflation-gravitational-waves-discovery.html.