A New Search for Ripples in Space From the Beginning of Time
The New York Times
As it studies cosmic microwaves, the Simons Observatory in Chile aims to help prove or disprove cosmic inflation, a notion that the universe expanded rapidly in the moment after the Big Bang.
The universe burst into existence 13.8 billion years ago. What happened in that earliest moment is of intense interest to anyone trying to understand why everything is the way it is today.
“I think this question of what happens at the beginning of the universe is a profound one,” said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports research at the frontiers of mathematics and science. “And what is remarkably exciting to me is the fact that we can do observations that can give us insight into this.”
A new $110 million observatory in the high desert of northern Chile, $90 million financed by the foundation, could uncover key clues about what happened after the Big Bang by looking at particles of light that have traveled across the universe since almost the beginning of time.
The data could finally provide compelling corroboration for a fantastical idea known as cosmic inflation. It holds that in the first sliver of time after the universe’s birth, the fabric of space-time accelerated outward to speeds far faster than the speed of light.
Alternatively, the observatory’s measurements could undercut this hypothesis, a pillar in the current understanding of cosmology.
The observatory is named after the foundation and its founders: Jim Simons, the hedge fund billionaire and philanthropist who died on May 10, and his wife, Marilyn, a trained economist. Two of the four telescopes began taking measurements in April, in time for Dr. Simons’s 86th birthday on April 25.
For a century, exoplanet hunters have “discovered” planets around a nearby star, only to retract the claims. But the latest find is for real.
The unidentified patient had recently returned from Africa, where the virus has caused a deadly epidemic, health officials said.
The event produces some of the year’s fastest meteors, although the nearly full moon may make them challenging to spot.
Mr. Musk dug into his companies’ budgets, preferring to cut too much rather than too little and to deal with the fallout later. Under Donald Trump, he is set to apply those tactics to the U.S. government.
Behind the scenes at a Chicago zoo, chimpanzees who spent years entertaining humans are learning to befriend their own kind.
The agency’s top medical official was responding to rumors that Suni Williams had lost an unusual amount of weight during an extended stay in orbit.
Artificial intelligence has become a subject for people in the art and theater worlds who are worried about being replaced by it.
President-elect Trump says tariffs will help American businesses, but many in the wine industry foresee few benefits and a lot of pain for all involved.
Ball pythons were long assumed to be solitary, but scientists discovered the snakes in captivity prefer each others’ company when given the chance to live socially.
The Justice Department and four Democratic state attorneys general argued that United’s takeover would limit competition and harm consumers needing home or hospice care.
It took nearly 25 years for biologists to discover that a swimming and glowing organism in the ocean’s midnight zone was actually a sea slug.