A Princeton University astrophysicist believes that with the help of a new telescope in Chile, she and her team can confirm exactly what happened after the Big Bang that created the known universe 13.8 billion years ago.
Scientists have theorized that by observing the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the remnant of the light left after the explosion of the Big Bang, they could determine how the universe has been inflating ever since.
But as astrophysicist Jo Dunkley explained, scientists can “extrapolate backwards and infer what could have happened to produce the patterns we see in the CMB … But there are other scenarios you could imagine that could produce those patterns.”
Dunkley told New Scientist’s Jonathan O’Callaghan, “Before we had any of the particles we are familiar with now – protons, neutrons, light and so on – we think the universe was permeated by a…
