Space-time ripples left over from the Big Bang have been picked up for the first time by Harvard scientists.

Astrophysicists have been hunting for ‘primordial gravitational waves’ since they were predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in 1916.

Today, after days of rumour and speculation, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre announced they had recorded the first direct evidence of gravitational waves rippling through the infant universe.

“The implications for this detection stagger the mind,” said project leader Jamie Bock. “We are measuring a signal that comes from the dawn of time.”

Our universe burst into existence 13.8 billion years ago. Fractions of a second later, space and time were created, expanding exponentially in an episode known as ‘inflation’.

It was theorized that inflation should also produce gravitational waves – ripples in space-time which spread throughout the universe.

“Think of the ripples you see when you throw a stone into a pond,” said Professor Martin Hendry of the department of Physics and Astronomy at the Univesity of Glasgow.

“But these aren’t ripples on the surface of the water, they are gravitational waves emitted billions of years ago, rippling through the fabric of space and time itself, in the universe’s earliest moments.

“We always suspected they were still washing about but we haven’t been able to detect them.

[...]The signal was found using a specialised telescope called Bicep (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) at the South Pole.

It scans the sky at microwave frequencies, where it picks up light energy from slightly after the Big Bang – around 380,000 years later. Scientists have been searching for tiny ripples in this light which would show it is being slightly stretched by gravitational waves.

• Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and the scientific confirmation of its accuracy
• measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation
• red-shifting of light from galaxies moving away from us
• radioactive element abundance predictions (from supernovae)
• helium/hydrogen abundance predictions (nuclear fusion)
• star formation and stellar lifecycle theories
• the second law of thermodynamics

1. There was no space causally prior to the universe beginning to exist
2. There was no time causally prior to the universe beginning to exist
3. There was no matter causally prior to the universe beginning to exist

1. Whatever causes the universe to appear is not inside of space, because there was no space causally prior to the creation event. The cause must therefore be non-physical, because physical things exist in space.
2. Whatever causes the universe to appear is not bound by time (temporal). It never began to exist. There was no passage of time causally prior to the big bang, so the cause of the universe did not come into being. The cause existed eternally.
3. And the cause is not material. All the matter in the universe came into being at the first moment. Whatever caused the universe to begin to exist cannot have been matter, because there was no matter causally prior to the big bang.

1. Abstract objects, like numbers, sets and mathematical relations
2. Minds, like your own mind