A long held belief by scientists that the universe began to rapidly expand at the dawn of time may have been confirmed by a telescope that UC San Diego helped build at the South Pole to study the earliest moments of the cosmos.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced Monday that the BICEP 2 telescope might have detected the aftermath of the “cosmic inflation” that they think occurred just after the universe arose 13.8 billion years ago in the so-called Big Bang.
This period of inflation appears to have generated waves of gravity that left a swirl-like imprint on light from the Big Bang. The telescope saw those swirls in what could be an important clue about how the universe started.
The finding strengthens scientists support of the Big Bang theory, although it’s likely to be challenged by theologians, who see the hand of a divine creater in the rise of the universe.
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