Take a moment to let this sink in. Physicists describe the earliest moments of the universe using Einstein’s equations, updated to include Guth’s hypothetical energy field filling space, subject to the quantum uncertainty we learned from Heisenberg. Mathematical analyses of the inflationary burst then reveal that it should have left an indelible imprint, a fossil of creation in the form of a specific pattern of minute temperature variations across the night sky. Sophisticated space-based thermometers built nearly fourteen billion years later by a species just coming of scientific age here in
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