Cosmic Inflation

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The Universe began 13.8 billion years ago in an event called the Big Bang. Throughout its ages the universe has changed a lot, sometimes dramatically, so to appreciate these changes I’m going to discuss the History of the Universe in 10 Features. My first feature is the theory of cosmic inflation.

It was announced on Monday that the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation 2 (BICEP2 – don’t you love projects acronyms?) experiment at the South Pole found a special pattern in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The pattern they found is the B-mode polarisation signal in the CMB.  Waves that can oscillate in more than one orientation […]