The purpose of biceps collaboration is to look for obvious signs of inflation: the curling pattern in the aurora light is called the B model. These rotational patterns may be caused by gravitational waves (just rippling in space and space itself). The current phase of this collaboration is called the biceps array and includes by far the most sensitive receiver, each with 10 times more functional than the earlier ones. Although the collaboration has not detected the B model, it sets the strongest upper limit for brightness in the field.
“These restrictions help to reduce the correct theory of inflation and recently ruled out some of the otherwise attractive inflation models,” Bock said.
A new perspective on the cosmic network
Data from Spherex and Bicep-Keck can teach us more about inflation than itself and make cosmologists hope that one day they will discover the process behind inflation. But while CMB provides a very powerful tool for detecting inflation theory related to the aurora, it does limit the types of inflation theory that Spherex is testing.
“CMB is basically a shell,” Korgut explained. “This is the 2D surface of light. With Spherex we will see it in 3D.”
CMB’s research measures spots or hot spots in background light, while Spherex’s large 3D galaxy map will consider the late evolutionary stages that occur after the hot spot gravity grows from the galaxy to the galaxy.
John A. McCon (not on the Spherex team) of Caltech. “Spherex will provide us with another window of inflation and there aren’t many windows. Its data will be invaluable.”
Using Spherex’s galaxy map, scientists will be able to look for many attractive features of inflation theory, which until now was almost impossible to solve – i.e. whether the distribution of tiny ripples of matter formed during inflation follows the so-called Gaussian distribution. Gaussian distribution (commonly called bell curves) is a concept used in statistics. For example, if you map the height of hundreds of adult women in the United States, the result will follow the bell shape, with most women approaching about 5’4″, and women with less or shorter or shorter height. This is Gaussian distribution. However, if you draw the size of all women, including children, you won’t see the bell shape, as many children have shorter sizes that will distort things. The result will be non-Gaussian.
Whether the distribution of the original ripples of matter is Gaussian has a profound impact on the first moments of our universe. Physicists believe that inflation is caused by a repulsive explosion in a high-energy field called inflation, in other words, from one field. According to theorists, a single domain often leads to a simple Gaussian distribution. But more complex inflation model calls Various Interact with each other to produce fields that are non-Gaussian distributions.
“Suppose one field may have a small scale change, followed by a large scale change in another field. These fluctuations can interact, so that the number of small scale changes is larger or smaller in large sizes. This effect can give You provide non-Gaussianity,” Bock said.
These primitive ripples from the Big Bang are still visible in the way we distribute in our universe. By measuring the extent to which galaxies come together in the sky, researchers can test complex non-Gaussian inflation models against simpler Gaussians.
This timeline shows the history of our universe, beginning with the era of the Big Bang and ending with modernity. The chart is split to show two different cosmic inflation models tested by NASA’s Spherex Mission. One goal of the project is to ask whether cosmic inflation occurs from a single field or multiple interaction areas. If the latter is correct, the model can predict that galaxies seen on a large scale should cluster them into larger clusters with larger gaps than in a single-field model . This is reflected in the artist’s concept, showing the galaxy structure in the lower half of the drawing. Spherex has the only way to explore this problem, as it creates a large number of 3D maps of hundreds of millions of galaxies in our universe.Credits: Caltech/Robert Hurt (IPAC)
The task is similar to analyzing where people live in a country. How close is it to the countryside when people gather in cities? A non-Gaussian signature would be more crowded with cities than a simple inflation model (or in the language of our metaphor) to indicate its own dense group of galaxies.
But it is not only the intensity of galaxy clustering in specific areas of the sky. Since the imprint of inflation will be strongest in the maximum range, the best information for inflation comes from drawings of a large number of universes. Going back to the city’s metaphor, finding a non-Gaussian signature is like drawing an increasingly larger area of the earth and discovering a larger city with fewer gaps between them.
“The largest sizes also provide us with a window to inflation because they don’t complicate other physics,” Bock said. “For example, at smaller scales, the gravity interaction between galaxies is more intense, It can cover up the imprint of the primitive universe.”
Spherex is perfect for mapping these large scales because it will be in space, the instrument is not affected by the Earth’s atmosphere and is extremely stable, and because it will be observed in infrared light.
“The dust in our galaxy absorbs light and messes up large scales, but infrared is much weaker than optics,” Bock said.
Doré added: “That’s why we need Spherex. We are following a unique imprint on the cosmic network, which can only be seen by drawing galaxies in the huge spheres around us. The imprint to see the birth of the universe from this structure is Shocking, beautiful and magical. It’s a unique power of physics.”
The team will also study the triangles between galaxies to measure the agglomeration of galaxies.
“Extruded triangles are triangles connecting three galaxies that are very short, and are great for finding couplings between large and small scales from multiple fields,” Bock said.
Caltech research scientist Chen Heinrich pointed out that the types of quantum-scale particles and field interactions they are studying cannot be replicated in laboratories on Earth. “The universe did experiments for us,” she said. “We can understand the earliest moments of the universe by analyzing the cosmic galaxy network. It’s so cool.”
The largest map
To capture such a huge 3D sky map, Spherex needs to trade off between the number of galaxies it can observe and the accuracy of its measured distance. The distances of galaxies are determined by a phenomenon called redshift, which occurs when light transferred to the galaxy is transferred to longer wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe.
“One of Spherex’s innovations is low-resolution spectroscopy, which we use to get a lot of redshifts,” Bock said. “On the one hand, you don’t see many spectral lines, but you can see faster with low-resolution spectroscopy More sky. We will see hundreds of millions of galaxies with low precision, high precision galaxies.”
Korgut explained that Spherex is essentially the opposite of what NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) does well. “JWST can really go deep into a large swath of sky and explore galaxies in detail,” he said. “For us, galaxies are just points in space.”
For comparison, JWST’s field of view is about 1% of the full moon area from the perspective of the Nircam (near infrared camera) instrument, while Spherex’s field of view is equivalent to a sky area of about 200 months. “The ratio of Spherex field of view to entity angles in Nircam on JWST is 14,000,” Korgut said.
Part of the challenge of building Spherex is creating a thermally stable spacecraft. The spacecraft that is about to orbit the earth must compete with the heat of our planet and the heat of the sun. “Where you point, the temperature of the detector should be the same,” Korgut said. The instrument itself was mainly tested at Caltech and will remain at a cold 45 kelvin or minus 228 degrees Celsius. This temperature is maintained by three nested Martini cones surrounding the entire spacecraft and passively radiates excess heat back into space.
After Spherex is launched, it will continuously collect data that is disclosed within two months of collection. The mission will be carried out for a total of two years. A year later, a complete data packet analyzed by the scientific team will be released. Like other all-weather missions, like NASA’s wise, map promises to lead to discoveries that are near-out. Astronomers will use the mission’s data bounty to study comets, asteroids, stars, our Milky Way, other galaxies and more. What the task of cosmic inflation will reveal remains to be seen. “From this small telescope, we can study the maximum scale structure of galaxies and understand the primitive universe,” Bock said. “It’s amazing.”
NASA and SpaceX are targeting the end of February for Spherex to launch. For updates, please visit
