Gravitational Waves Cause By Cosmic Inflation

Stanford professor, Andrei Linde, is surprised with the news regarding today's potential major scientific breakthrough.

It was announced today that the BICEP2 cosmic microwave background telescope at the South Pole has detected the first evidence of gravitational waves caused by cosmic inflation. This is one of the biggest discoveries in physics and cosmology in decades, providing direct information on the state of the universe when it was only 10^-34 seconds old, and the energy scales near the Planck energy, as well as confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves.

For more information, you can read this semi-technical explanation from Sean Carroll before the details were announced, as well as this technical FAQ from BICEP2.