The announcement yesterday that scientists working on the BICEP2 experiment in Antarctica had detected evidence of “inflation” may not appear incredible, but it is. It appears to confirm longstanding hypotheses about the Big Bang and the earliest moments of our universe, and could open a new path to resolving some of physics’ most difficult mysteries.
Here’s the explainer. BICEP2, near the South Pole (where the sky is clearest of pollution), was scanning the visible universe for cosmic background radiation – that is, the fuzzy warmth left over from the Big Bang. It’s the oldest light in the universe, and as such our maps of it are our oldest glimpses of the young universe. Here’s a map created with data collected by the ESA’s Planck Surveyor probe last year:
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