There is no way to know exactly what happened some 13.8 billion years ago, when our universe burst onto the scene. But scientists announced last week a discovery on how our universe came to be: it rapidly expanded in less than a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

A telescope at the South Pole, known as BICEP2, allowed scientists to analyse the polarization of light from 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

Scientists use the word ‘inflation’ to describe how the universe rapidly expanded after the Big Bang in a ripping-apart of space. Everything in the universe that we see now, at one time before inflation, was smaller than an electron. And then it expanded during inflation at faster than the speed of light.

Scientists believe that in the fabric of space time, there are tiny ripples called quantum fluctuations. Such fluctuations also existed at the beginning of the universe. Inflation blew them up much larger, launching gravitational waves that are now seen on the cosmic microwave background. These gravitational waves are an aftershock of the Big Bang. The BICEP2 study is the first to image them directly.

The length of one of these waves – that is, the distance between the peaks and the troughs – would have been billions of light years across.

Researchers were looking for a specific type of polarization called ‘B-modes’, which signify a curling pattern in the polarized orientations of light from the ancient universe.

This swirling polarization pattern could only be created from gravitational waves. And that is what BICEP2 found.

These results must be viewed with scepticism.

The primary issue here is the origin of everything.

The Catholic Church teaches that (a) God created the universe out of nothing, (b) that he holds it in existence, and (c) that he directs it to its final end through His divine providence.

The current theory of the Big Bang contradicts nothing of that. It is certainly reasonable to believe in it and be faithful to Catholic faith. However, the Big Bang is just a theory.