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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Big Bang is often described as the explosive birth of the universe – a singular moment when space, time and matter sprang into existence. But what if this was not the beginning at all? What if our ...

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 ...

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 ...