Waiting for the beginning

Following a draft published on arXiv a couple of weeks ago, the BICEP2's observations could be explained not only with the cosmic inflation, but also with another mechanism:

The recent claimed observation of primordial gravitational waves provides a dramatic new empirical window on the early universe. In particular, it provides the opportunity, in principle, to de nitively test the inflationary paradigm, and to explore the speci c physics of inflationary models. However, while there is little doubt that inflation at the Grand Unfi ed Scale is the best motivated source of such primordial waves, it is important to demonstrate that other possible sources cannot account for the current BICEP2 data before definitely claiming Inflation has been proved.

A possible contribution to BICEP2's signal could be given by a self ordering scalar field:

Finally we note that while current data cannot de nifitively rule out a SOSF transition as the source of gravitational waves, it nevertheless does imply that the source for such waves is at, or near the Grand Uni ed Scale. Thus, it allows an exploration of physics at a scale far larger than we can currently constrain at terrestrial experiments. This will be very important for constraining physics beyond the standard model, whether or not inflation is responsible for the entire BICEP2 signal, even though existing data from cosmology is strongly suggestive that it does.

About the SOSF I found some interesting paper on arXiv:
A Nearly Scale Invariant Spectrum of Gravitational Radiation from Global Phase Transitions, Probing the Gravitational Wave Signature from Cosmic Phase Transitions at Different Scales, and Gravitational waves from self-ordering scalar fields.

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via AstronomicaMens, The Physics arXiv Blog

A blink of an eye

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of our best telescopes. All this, of course, was just theory.
Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence for this cosmic inflation. Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

(from the press release)

In physics, gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as a wave, travelling outward from the source. Predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein to exist on the basis of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves theoretically transport energy as gravitational radiation. Sources of detectable gravitational waves could possibly include binary star systems composed of white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes. The existence of gravitational waves is a possible consequence of the Lorentz invariance of general relativity since it brings the concept of a limiting speed of propagation of the physical interactions with it. Gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, in which physical interactions propagate at infinite speed.

(from Wikipedia) Cosmic inflation was introduced by Alan Guth and Andrei Linde in 1981:

One of the intriguing consequences of inflation is that quantum fluctuations in the early universe can be stretched to astronomical proportions, providing the seeds for the large scale structure of the universe. The predicted spectrum of these fluctuations was calculated by Guth and others in 1982. These fluctuations can be seen today as ripples in the cosmic background radiation, but the amplitude of these faint ripples is only about one part in 100,000. Nonetheless, these ripples were detected by the COBE satellite in 1992, and they have now been measured to much higher precision by the WMAP satellite and other experiments. The properties of the radiation are found to be in excellent agreement with the predictions of the simplest models of inflation.

(from MIT)
So our universe is born after a quantum blink of an eye, or like a solution of the equation of everything.
In the following a storify with a collection of link about one of the most important discovery of the... universe!