A view of temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background, generated when the galaxy was less than 400,000 years old, made from nine years of observations from the Wilkinson Microwave ...

Scientists believe that in the very early universe, everything was incredibly tiny, chaotic, and full of random energy ripples, known as quantum foam. It was a state where spacetime was unstable, and ...

For a fraction of a second after the big bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, most physicists believe, the newborn universe dramatically ballooned in size, jumping from being smaller than a proton to ...

First direct detection of primordial gravitational waves confirms long-held theory of rapid expansion. The BICEP2 telescope (foreground), used to observe the cosmic microwave background. - Courtesy of ...

How did the universe come into being? There are a multitude of theories on this subject. In a recent paper, three scientists formulate a new model: according to this, inflation, the first, very rapid ...

In the earliest moments after the universe was born, everything changed—fast. This rapid expansion, known as cosmic inflation, was theorized to solve problems in the Big Bang model. It explains why ...

What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning, but a middle chapter? A bold new theory now proposes that dark matter — the unseen force shaping galaxies and driving cosmic evolution — may have existed ...

Researchers analyzing pulsar data have found tantalizing hints of ultra-slow gravitational waves. A team from Hirosaki University suggests these signals might carry “beats” — patterns formed by ...

Last year’s reports that the BICEP2 telescope had uncovered evidence for cosmic inflation turned out to be a false alarm, but researchers in the field haven’t given up. Matthew R Francis describes how ...