Backing the Big Bang
A telescope in the South Pole observing traces of the Big Bang that created the universe has turned up the first evidence of a key moment in that process: the blink-of-an-eye expansion of the universe from a dot into a vast soup of energy and particles. The discovery, using the BICEP2 telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, provided the first strong evidence of “cosmic inflation,” which scientists say occurred in a fraction of the first second of the universe’s existence, when it expanded billions of times over. The process was first proposed by MIT scientist Alan Guth in 1981. Evidence of cosmic inflation came through identifying the effects of gravitational waves for the first time. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time believed to have been created by the enormous forces at work during cosmic inflation. The finding emerged from a collaborative effort led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA),...