Inflation
Inflation
[Megan sits at a computer, conversing with Ponytail.] Megan: Imprinted on the sky are the gravity waves that were sloshing across the universe when it was this big.
Megan: So really, we're using the entire universe as a giant microscope pointed at itself when it was small.
[Megan turns to face the computer.] Ponytail: That's neat. Megan: Yeah. But... Ponytail: But what? Megan: Well, look.
Ponytail: Oh. Hmm. Megan: Yeah. Ponytail: What... Megan: I don't know.
[Below is an image of the universe showing the cosmic microwave background, featuring a series of circles and the Spalding basketball logo, as though the universe had been imprinted with the image of a basketball.]
The comic is inspired by the now disproven BICEP2 discovery of gravitational waves from the early universe, hence providing evidence for the cosmic inflation hypothesis. Megan is excited about this and tells Ponytail all about it. She is impressed by the fact that these waves were created when the universe was extremely small and the expanding universe has "imprinted" the gravity waves. (See also 1642: Gravitational Waves ).
She compares this to the nature of a microscope - which optically expands a small image, just like the universe has done to itself. Ponytail is impressed by it until Megan looks at the image captured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) .
The concept of an expanding universe is sometimes explained by the "balloon model", where the two-dimensional skin represents our three-dimensional universe and the inflation of the balloon represents expansion over time. But instead of showing a balloon, Randall uses a basketball, which cannot inflate as easily as a balloon.
The elliptical Mollweide projection of this cosmic microwave background (CMB) image of the sky makes the map look a bit like a basketball. Randall further exaggerates this by superimposing the traditional curves that are visible on a basketball and the Spalding company logo over the original image available at the bottom here. The mentions of scale and basketballs in this comic might be a reference to the "If the Earth were the size of a basketball" comparison, similarly to 1074: Moon Landing and 1515: Basketball Earth .
Megan and Ponytail are both disconcerted by this, and the title text references the 1996 basketball movie Space Jam by promising images of main characters Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny if the polarization of the view is changed to E-mode , a type of polarization of the cosmic background radiation arising from the radiation scattering off non-uniform plasma.
The image was updated between 7 AM and 8:30 AM EST on May 7. Originally the Spalding logo was shown from left-to-right; however, in the updated image, the Spalding logo is shown in reverse. The WMAP image has the correct orientation in both versions. This was likely due to a mistake on Randall's part, as the comic suggests the universe is contained inside a Spalding basketball. Seen from the inside, the Spalding logo would be shown in reverse, as seen in the updated image. The first image can be found here . Both the original and updated version don't exactly match the pattern on a typical basketball. Most basketballs are divided into eight identical (ignoring reflection) pieces in a pattern that allowed traditional leather basketballs to be made from a single template, while the image shows a pattern that would split a basketball into two types of pieces.
[Megan sits at a computer, conversing with Ponytail.] Megan: Imprinted on the sky are the gravity waves that were sloshing across the universe when it was this big.
Megan: So really, we're using the entire universe as a giant microscope pointed at itself when it was small.
[Megan turns to face the computer.] Ponytail: That's neat. Megan: Yeah. But... Ponytail: But what? Megan: Well, look.
Ponytail: Oh. Hmm. Megan: Yeah. Ponytail: What... Megan: I don't know.
[Below is an image of the universe showing the cosmic microwave background, featuring a series of circles and the Spalding basketball logo, as though the universe had been imprinted with the image of a basketball.]