An international team of scientists known as the POLARBEAR Consortium recently studied the subtle characteristic of cosmic microwave background radiation polarization.

Their findings, detailed in the Astrophysical Journal, are deemed vital to answering the universe's greatest mysteries.

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By isolating the "B-mode" pattern produced from gravitational lensing, scientists have made the most precise measurements yet of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background that will allow them to map the huge structure of the universe and thus to know its origins.

The process will also help define the masses of neutrinos and might possibly uncover some mysteries of dark matter and energy. 

"We made the first revelation that you can isolate a pure gravitational lensing B-mode on the sky. Moreover, we have shown you can measure the basic signal that will enable very sensitive searches for neutrino mass and the evolution of dark energy," said lead author Adrian Lee, a physicist at University of California Berkeley.

The POLARBEAR Consortium consists of 70 scientists from around the globe that used microwave detectors attached on the Huan Tran Telescope in Chile's Atacama Dessert.

The team measured light's polarization some 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The period was described by scientists as an era where the early universe was a "high-energy laboratory."

The measured cosmic microwave background could act as an enormous backlight to illuminate the structure of the universe, as well as to carry an imprint of cosmic history.

Scientists used the Large Hadron Collider at Geneva, the world's largest and most powerful collider, to simulate the era by bumping beams of protons to create new particles like the Higgs boson and to also yield evidence that new physics and new particles exist at ultra-high energies.

POLARBEAR observations will continue with additional data streams from other sources.

"We have paved the way towards solving the deepest mysteries in the quest to understand matter and energy at the beginning of time," said Physics Professor Brian Keating at UCSD.  

TagsPOLARBEAR, University of California, Large Hadron Collider