宇宙暴胀的「确凿证据」是银河系尘埃的污点

怎么回事

为什么会这样

• 在同行评审前就召开新闻发布会宣布：七西格玛、诺贝尔框架、「确凿证据」——这一主张首先是媒体事件，其次才是论文，因此纠错必须与头条标题对抗
• 单一仪器、单一频率：BICEP2 看不到需要减去的尘埃，因此三年的检查错过了要点——一个与其无法测量的前景无法区分的信号
• 附带条件已在记录中，而头条正在滚动：已接受的论文附有尘埃附录，David Spergel 在 6 月就提出了尘埃问题——比联合论文早了数月
• 非凡的主张需要对手的数据：只有在 Planck 的全天空尘埃图和联合分析到来后，事情才得以解决——此时距新闻发布会已过去十个月

后来呢

The collaboration recovered by doing the right thing twice: it co-authored the refutation with its rival, and its instruments kept running. Every limit since — r < 0.12 in 2015, r < 0.07 in 2018, r < 0.036 in 2021 — has found no trace of the signal, and primordial gravitational waves remain undetected. The affair gave cosmology its running joke about dust and produced a book, Brian Keating's Losing the Nobel Prize (2018), written by a collaboration member about what the rush cost: credibility, and a Nobel that never was.