Gravitational Wave Effects Used to Find Evidence for Inflation

Check out the first published paper on this experiment and its findings here.

A major announcement came out today, by a group running the BICEP experiment, run from the South Pole. The group was able to find and accurately measure features of the microwave background radiation, left over from the Big Bang itself, which are caused by gravitational waves.  Gravity waves are predicted from Einstein's general theory of relativity, and have been searched for over the past century.  The observations match well with predictions from the inflation model of the Big Bang, which states the universe expanded very rapidly, just tiny fractions of a second after the Big Bang occurred.  Only inflation predicts the observed effects, so this is direct evidence supporting details at nearly the instant of the creation of our universe!  Also, this suggests that gravity should be quantized.  This article has numerous links to understand teh science better.  So in the world of physics, this is a MAJOR discovery and announcement. Congratulations to those involved with the experiment and analysis.  Of course, this still has to go through a thorough peer review, but it is looking impressive at the moment.