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4 articles
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    Excitement Over Gravity Waves Comes Crashing Down

    The Dark Sector Lab includes the BICEP2 telescope, seen on the left.BICEP Keck Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Science giveth, and science taketh away. What appeared earlier this year to be a long-sought glimpse of ancient ripples in spacetime now seems to have been schmutz in astronomers’ eyes.In […]
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    Is Our Universe Like Oil & Vinegar or Homogenized Milk?

    Is our Universe inhomogeneous, lumpy and uneven on many size scales, like oil droplets in water?via Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now .   In the earliest moments after the Big Bang, the Universe was a turbulent mess, a high-temperature stew of quantum fluctuations. As with turbulence in water, […]
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    The Father of Inflation Clears Up a Big Misunderstanding

    Last week researchers working on the BICEP2 experiment in Antarctica announced that they’d seen solid evidence of gravitational waves that emerged very early in the Universe’s history. This discovery lent support to inflation, a theory of cosmology long popular among physicists but still lacking in direct proof. (To learn more about the recent discovery and […]
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    Over the Universe—The Best Reactions to the Big Physics News

    These swirls in the cosmic microwave background show the effect of primordial gravitational waves.BICEP2 Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Scientists, on the whole, are a circumspect lot. When faced with a microphone or reporter’s notepad, most of them (excepting a vocal minority) hedge and temper their language, adding […]