Scientists make key big bang discovery

A dizzying scientific achievement: Astronomers have gotten a look back at what one scientist calls "the beginning of time ... the universe at the very beginning." That is, they've detected gravitational waves that could be the first direct evidence that within a fraction of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the cosmos began to, in the New York Times' description, "swell faster than the speed of light for a prodigiously violent instant." Such an event (dubbed "inflation") was theorized in 1979 by physicist Alan Guth, but finding evidence of it "has been a key goal in the study of the universe," the AP reports. The findings must still be confirmed by other experiments, though the lead astronomer says there's only a one in 3.5 million chance the team's results are a fluke.

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