On Monday, the science world joyously celebrated a seminal astrophysics discovery. Using a telescope in the South Pole, researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics detected ripples in the fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves. These waves confirmed the inflation theory, which stated that for a brief moment — one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang — the universe was violently expanding faster than the speed of light. Stanford’s Andrei Linde (along with MIT’s Alan Guth) was one of the thinkers responsible for working out this theory in the 1980s. In the video above, another Stanford professor, Chao-Lin Kuo, visits Linde to break the news of the discovery to him on his front porch. Finding out that much of his career had been vindicated in such spectacular fashion, Linde was appropriately moved and stunned. You can learn more about Linde’s work in The Stanford Report.
via Daily Dot
Ilia Blinderman is a Montreal-based culture and science writer. Follow him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writing at the Huffington Post.
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You may want to check the breadth of this man’s wisdom and humbleness here:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/fren-ital/opinions/
Cheers.
What a wonderful moment to capture on film :-). A joy to watch life’s discovery.