Inflation

Last week we published new results from the BICEP1 Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization experiment. (Disclaimer: I'm a coauthor of the paper.) BICEP1 is the first in a series of experiments at the South Pole searching for the signal of cosmological Inflation in the CMB. BICEP1 took data in 2006--2008, but this is the first result to include all three years of data.

Inspired by xkcd's Up Goer Five, I attempted to explain my research using only the ten hundred most common English words. It was pretty hard.

I try to find out what caused the beginning of everything. We think we know what happened back in time until almost the beginning. We know it was very hot then and that everything was moving away from everything else very fast. We have a good idea that explains how it got that way. The idea is called "inflation."