If the discovery announced this morning holds up, it will allow us to peer back to the very beginning of time—a million billion billion billion billion billion times closer to the Big Bang than any previous direct observation—and will allow us to explore the fundamental forces of nature on a scale ten thousand billion times smaller than can be probed at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator.
MORE: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/03/a-scientific-breakthrough-lets-us-see-to-the-beginning-of-time.html
See also...
Big Bang breakthrough announced; gravity waves detected
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/tech/innovation/big-bang-gravitational-waves/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
