The Big Bang is often described as the explosive birth of the universe – a singular moment when space, time and matter sprang into existence. But what if this was not the beginning at all? What if our ...

Might the universe we can observe be just half the tale, with a mirror universe moving in reverse through time filling out the narrative? A new and intriguing idea from scientists at the Perimeter ...

For a fraction of a second after the big bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, most physicists believe, the newborn universe dramatically ballooned in size, jumping from being smaller than a proton to ...

In the earliest moments after the universe was born, everything changed—fast. This rapid expansion, known as cosmic inflation, was theorized to solve problems in the Big Bang model. It explains why ...

The ‘inflationary’ model of cosmology explains many large-scale features of the Universe as the result of a primordial period of exponential, almost instantaneous cosmic expansion called inflation.

Last year’s reports that the BICEP2 telescope had uncovered evidence for cosmic inflation turned out to be a false alarm, but researchers in the field haven’t given up. Matthew R Francis describes how ...