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Dear readers,

I was reading the following news today.

Link is here.

Big bang: NASA gets to the heart of all matter

SCIENTISTS examining the oldest light in the universe say they have found evidence that matter expanded at an almost inconceivable rate after the big bang, creating conditions that led to the formation of the first stars.
Light from the big bang's afterglow shows that the universe grew from the size of a marble to an astronomical size in just a trillionth of a second after its birth 13.7 billion years ago, researchers from Johns Hopkins and Princeton universities say.
Readings from a NASA probe also show that the earliest stars formed about 400 million years after the big bang - and not 200 million years later, as the research team once thought.
"With this new data, theories about the early universe have just taken their first exam, and they passed with flying colours," said David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-author of the findings, published on Thursday.
The results are based on readings from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a robotic instrument with two telescopes that sweeps the sky every six months in an orbit 1.6 million kilometres from the Earth.
Light from the probe has also confirmed a theory that the universe is made up mostly of dark energy, a mysterious force that continues to cause the universe's expansion, said a Johns Hopkins astrophysicist, Charles Bennett, the probe's principle investigator.
"This light is just invaluable. It's really the only fossil we have from that time," Dr Bennett said.
Inflationary theorists argue that at the time of the big bang the universe was at first microscopic. But three events changed things: fluctuations in temperature, bursts that transformed energy into matter and a rapid expansion of the universe that ultimately enabled stars and galaxies to form.
By polarising and filtering out light from the earliest stars, the researchers were able to uncover evidence of those inflationary moments - fluctuations in brightness of the light scattered around the big bang's afterglow.
"It amazes me that we can say anything about the first trillionth of a second of the universe, but we can," Dr Bennett said.
The researchers say the findings also confirm that only 4 per cent of the universe is composed of the familiar atoms that make up what we see around us.
Another 22 per cent is dark matter - a gravitational force made up of cold particles - and 74 per cent is dark energy, a force that appears to be causing the universe to expand.
Experts say the findings will help cosmologists and astronomers for years as they try to unravel mysteries about the early universe and the forces that still govern it.
"The observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning," said Brian Greene, an astronomer at Columbia University. "It shows that galaxies are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky."

As I was reading this story, two quotations from two different religions just flashed in my mind.

Prajapati vai Idam agra asit,Tasya vak dvititya asit, Vag vai paramam Brahma.

(In the beginning was Prajapati, the Brahman with whom was the word, and the word was verily the Supreme Brahman).

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

(John 1: 1-Bible).

~Souvik