Key Signature of the Big Bang's Origin Discovered

  South pole telescope detects echoes of Big Bang

UPDATE MARCH 17: All the rumors were true. The story below was written yesterday, before today's announcement that "primordial B-waves" have been found in the cosmic background radiation. These must have arisen from inflation-driven gravitational waves rippling through spacetime in the first 10^–34 second of the Big Bang. 

• Watch Sky & Telescope.com for new material soon!

MARCH 16: Rumors have been racing through the physics and cosmology communities for the last few days that long-sought, Nobel Prize-worthy evidence for cosmic inflation driving the Big Bang will be announced on Monday, March 17th. A press conference for a "major discovery" regarding this topic is scheduled for noon EDT (16:00 UT) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, just up the street from Sky & Telescope. We'll be there.

Word of what may be announced first broke into wide circulation late Friday night, when The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. published an article online, Gravitational waves: have US scientists heard echoes of the big bang? Here are excerpts:

Watch Sky & Telescope.com for new material soon!

 South pole telescope detects echoes of Big Bang Mail & Guardian

First glimpse of big bang ripples from universe's birth    NewScientist

Swirls of colour reveal primordial gravitational waves   NewScientist