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Astronomers from the US record Big Bang gravitational waves

The existence of gravitational waves was predicted by Albert Einstein, but until now scientists could not confirm it

NEW YORK, 18 March. /ITAR-TASS/. Scientists at the U.S. Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics fixed the so-called relic gravitational waves arising immediately after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

“The recording of the signal – gravitational waves – is one of the major challenges of modern cosmology (the science studies the structure and evolution of the universe)”, the head of the project professor at the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics John Kovak said. 

According to scientists, the recording of relic gravitational waves allows looking far into the past of the Universe and proves the accuracy of the inflationary model, which assumes an exponential expansion of the Universe immediately after the Big Bang.

Waves were recorded with the installed radio telescope at the South Pole BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization), which for three years has scanned about 2% of the microwave band.

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