The rise and fall of cosmic inflation

摘要

Inflation is dead, long live inflation! The very results hailed this year as demonstrating a consequence of inflationary models of the universe - and therefore pointing to the existence of a multiverse - may now do the exact opposite. If the results can be trusted at all, they seemingly suggest inflation is wrong, and raise the possibility of universes that predate the big bang. In March, the team behind the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica (pictured) announced that they had seen evidence of primordial gravitational waves. These waves were revealed as telltale twists and turns in the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the remnants of the universe's earliest light.