In a potentially stunning new finding, astronomers say that they have seen evidence supporting a key element in the Big Bang theory: a hypothesized period of exponential expansion of the universe known as "inflation" — or, what one researcher calls, "the bang of the big bang." Inflation is believed to have happened in the early slivers of the second during which the universe began, and researchers now say that they have seen the first direct evidence of this expansion. "These results are not only a smoking gun for inflation," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb says in a statement, "they also tell us when inflation took place and how powerful the process was." The evidence, the researchers say, is a signal left by ancient gravitational waves that would have marked the universe as a result of the expansion. The signal they detected, known as B-mode polarization, was found using a small telescope in the South Pole and appeared as a curl in the cosmic radiation left over from the Big Bang.
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