A Polarizing Discovery About the Big Bang!
Get a free audiobook at http://www.audible.com/minutephysics and Thanks to the following Subbable.com supporters: Owain Blackwood @vicnice137 www.lightbow.net More about the Big Bang: https://www....
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Light is a wave, and as it travels it does its "waving" along a certain direction - itspolarization. Polarization, among other things, heavily influences the way light bounces andscatters - that's why horizontally polarized light reflects off of a lake or car windshield,which in turn is why sunglasses with a vertical polarizing filter can block that light.And in the hot plasma of the baby universe, light was bouncing off of electrons left andright - until the plasma cooled enough to become transparent so the light could starttraveling through space. But before heading out on its 13+ billion year journey, thislight bounced one last time off of the plasma, and the direction each photon went was influencedby how its polarization interacted ...
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Light is a wave, and as it travels it does its "waving" along a certain direction - itspolarization. Polarization, among other things, heavily influences the way light bounces andscatters - that's why horizontally polarized light reflects off of a lake or car windshield,which in turn is why sunglasses with a vertical polarizing filter can block that light.And in the hot plasma of the baby universe, light was bouncing off of electrons left andright - until the plasma cooled enough to become transparent so the light could starttraveling through space. But before heading out on its 13+ billion year journey, thislight bounced one last time off of the plasma, and the direction each photon went was influencedby how its polarization interacted ...
