Ripples in space-time

Ripples in space-time detected, astronomers say

March 17, 2014
Courtesy of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics
and World Science staff

As­tro­no­mers say they have de­tected “rip­ples” in space and time caused by a pro­cess in which our uni­verse ex­pand­ed out of con­trol dur­ing its first fleet­ing frac­tion of a sec­ond.

The pro­cess is said to have be­gun al­most 14 bil­lion years ago dur­ing the Big Bang, an ex­plo­sive event that gave birth to the uni­verse. In an un­imag­inably small amount of time, the the­o­ry goes, the uni­verse stretched to be far big­ger than what our best tele­scopes would be able to see.

This ver­sion of the Big Bang the­o­ry is known as “infla­t­ion.”