Matteo Cantiello edited BICEP2.tex  over 9 years ago

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\textbf{The rise and fall of the biggest astrophysics discovery of the century and the importance of open, collaborative science}.  On 17 March 2014, the \href{http://bicepkeck.org/}{BICEP2} \href{http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/CMB/bicep2/}{BICEP2}  collaboration announced the first detection of so-called B-mode polarization, a possible signature of the exponential expansion of space in the early universe. This expansion, also called inflation, is believed to have occurred when the universe was extremely young, from $10^{-36}$ seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between $10^{−33}$ and $10^{−32}$ seconds. Inflation is thought to be resposible for the existence of large-scale structures like clusters of galaxies and to explain why the universe appears statistically homogeneous and isotropic\footnote{Meaning that at large scales the properties of the universe are the same for all observers}.