Universe, Big Bang | featured news

New results from a look into the split second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is a bit older than previously thought but the core concepts of the cosmos - how it began, what it's made of and where it's going - seem to be on the right track....

Imagine that the visible universe and everything in it was once contained in a volume many times smaller than the size of a single atom. With a quantum theory of gravity, we may be able to trace the Big Bang expansion back to its very beginning, and understand precisely how our universe arose, presumably from nothing.

Physicists investigating the make-up of the universe said on Wednesday they were closing in on the long-sought but elusive Higgs boson they believe was key to turning debris from the Big Bang into stars, planets and finally life.