By Jason Glynn

As existentialist thinking beings we have long pondered things such as: where did we come from and why are we here? Well, we are now closer to explaining that.

The Big Bang Theory just had a breakthrough. No, not the TV show, I’m talking about the real theory proposed by Georges Lemaître. Hold onto your seats boys and girls, because this is some heavy stuff.

The theory goes that before there was this universe, roughly 14 billion years ago, all of it; its mass, matter, galaxies, planets, us, were concentrated in this little area no bigger than the head of a needle. Actually that’s huge; it was more like infinitely small. Then one day, for unknown reasons, KABOOM!!! Stuff exploded, hence the term ‘big bang,’ and the universe exponentially increased at the rate of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

Funny thing is, for years the common thought was that the universe was actually now retracting, but thanks to Edwin Hubble back in 1929 and the telescope in his name, he proved that in fact, it is still expanding. The moon actually goes away from us at about the same rate our fingernails grow.

So this whole inflation and Big Bang theory was just an idea, we lacked any credible proof, until now. Just the other week a team of researchers that have been on the hunt for data came forward stating that they found something, something along the lines of a cosmic fingerprint.

What was found last week by a team led by John M. Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was pretty amazing. They were stationed at the Bicep 2 telescope in the South Pole, why? Because you cannot get a clearer picture to the heavens, that’s why. The telescope picked up something that will potentially change physics books, add credence to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, and change our understanding of the history of our universe forever.

Spiral magnetic waves were observed for the first time, from when time began. These waves are markers from inflation; they put the ‘bang’ in the Big Bang. The waves were observed to have a ‘swirling’ pattern, equal in all directions. Much like one would expect as if expanding from a central location.

On an aside, you can hear cosmic radiation from the Big Bang as well. Ever hear that annoying static or ‘white noise’ on a TV that was out of tune? Yup, that’s a relic from the Big Bang.

It is still unknown what caused inflation, an antigravity explosion of sorts. But it has always been incorporated into the Standard Model of Physics, physicist’s guidebook to the universe, and Einstein incorporated it into his General Theory of Relativity as a fudge factor.

Much of the unexplained is explained by antigravity, which like dark energy and dark matter, were all once the grounds of science fiction fodder, but there is increasing proof that they are real. Just still quite misunderstood and not identified. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the next big breakthroughs come from these. There are only so many pieces to the puzzle left after all.

In the last couple years now we have witnessed two huge discoveries. The Higg’s Boson, and now this. Both will surely change our understanding of the universe; how we got here, and where we’re going. Stay tuned for more.