‘Big Bang Signal’ Could All Be Dust

Perhaps this should be "Big Bang Gravitational Wave Signal" could all be dust.

From the headline, I was expecting something more shocking about cosmic microwave background radiation[1] generally. That would be THE Big Bang signal in my book.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_b...

I was thinking the same thing :))

Having spent my previous career studying the effects of interstellar dust (though not in this wavelength range), it's amazing how often I would be the buzz kill by arguing that something that someone saw actually probably could be explained by dust. It has major effects on the radiation we receive and its effects are sensitive to the exact details of how it's distributed and what it's composed of.

This is the Planck analysis on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.5738

I like that this is funded by a mathematician turned hedge fund billionaire. :-)