THERE were no conga lines or high fives, but this gathering of cosmologists and astronomers was about as close to a celebration as physics conferences get. Seven weeks ago, when the team behind NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) released its first set of results, the landscape of cosmology changed. One of the subject's wilder ideas - that shortly after the big bang the Universe went through a brief period of extremely rapid expansion called inflation - became a proper science.
Last week's meeting was the first chance for cosmologists to get together and discuss the results, and the researchers who have spent decades working towards this moment were jubilant. "Inflation is now part of experimental science," announced David Spergel of Princeton University.
Inflation was the brainchild of Alan Guth at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He didn't have a mechanism for the expansion, just an argument that showed it ...
20:00 03 July 2008
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