The Random Questions video interview associated to the Physics Frontiers podcast episode on my primordial graviton background paper, which I previously reported on in an earlier news item, has now been published on YouTube. You can find it here, where you can listen to Jim and I discuss a few (truly) random things, from the way I get my ideas, to my career, to culture shock, and so on. I hope you will enjoy it!
Physics Frontiers podcast episode on the primordial graviton background
In early December 2022 I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Jim Rantschler for his well-known Physics Frontiers podcast, where we talked about my primordial graviton background paper, other stuff in physics, and life in general. The podcast episode is now officially out, and you can find it here, or if you prefer on Spotify. There will also be an associated Random Questions video interview which will appear on the podcast’s YouTube channel in the coming weeks. It was great fun chatting to Jim, and I hope you enjoy the interview!
More media coverage for primordial graviton background paper
Over the past few weeks our primordial graviton background paper has been receiving a tremendous amount of media attention (in no small part due to the excellent joint Cambridge-Harvard press release and to its being picked up by Phys.org), particularly in the Italian and Spanish-speaking media. Particularly noteworthy is the coverage from Media INAF:
www.media.inaf.it/2022/11/04/vagnozzi-inflazione/
Remarkably, a few local Trentino Alto-Adige newspapers also picked up on this (first time for me appearing in a newspaper from Trentino):
www.lavocedeltrentino.it/2022/11/16/dubbi-sulla-nascita-del-cosmo-nel-team-anche-un-ricercatore-delluniversita-di-trento/ (La Voce del Trentino)
www.ildolomiti.it/ricerca-e-universita/2022/fondo-di-gravitoni-lo-studio-di-vagnozzi-unitn-e-del-collega-loeb-apre-una-nuova-porta-per-falsificare-il-paradigma-piu-accreditato-sulla-formazione-delluniverso (Il Dolomiti)
I particularly enjoyed the interview with Sara De Pascale from il Dolomiti, whose piece (in Italian of course) I highly recommend!
Regretfully, a number of other pieces were scientifically incorrect or misleading at best, suggesting that Avi and I claim that inflation is ruled out and should be replaced by a Big Bounce - let me clearly state once and for all that we said no such thing and made no judgement call on the status of inflation (in fact, in the second paragraph of the paper we explicitly write “Here we do not seek to take sides in the debate”…), so these issues simply amount to bad or click-bait journalism.
Press release for primordial graviton background paper
Following the publication of our primordial graviton background paper in ApJ Letters, both the University of Cambridge and Harvard University have issued a joint press release which beautifully summarizes our results, and which you can find at the following links:
www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/can-cosmic-inflation-be-ruled-out
www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/can-cosmic-inflation-be-ruled-out
Enjoy the read!
Primordial graviton background paper published in ApJ Letters!
My paper with Avi Loeb on the primordial graviton background, which I previously reported on in an earlier news item, has now officially been published in ApJ Letters! The full bibliographic coordinates for the paper are Astrophys. J. Lett. 939 (2022) L22. Here is the link to the paper (which is published Open Access).
Primordial graviton background paper accepted in ApJ Letters!
My latest paper with Avi Loeb has just been accepted for publication in ApJ Letters! I can confidently say that is at the same time one of the simplest yet most exciting papers I have ever written (Avi is really good at coming up with simple yet profound ideas, and I won’t lie, the idea behind this paper is entirely his). The short idea is that one can (with some caveats) rule out the whole inflationary paradigm, without reference to any specific model, by finding a background of relic gravitons with certain specific properties, the reason being that inflation should have washed it out: we show that this will be extremely challenging, but not impossible (I will likely have retired by the time it will even be possible). You can find the preprint version of the paper, which is also the first one I have written with my new Trento affiliation, on arXiv: 2208.14088.
