To peer 14 billion years into the past, you don’t need a telescope, just a cloud of atoms chilled to near absolute zero. In the Bose–Einstein condensate state, discovered by Bose and Einstein, atoms merge into a giant synchronized wave. By tuning magnetism, scientists turn this wave into a tiny “pond” that models spacetime right after the Big Bang — complete with its ripples of primordial inhomogeneities. The key discovery: when the “pond” expands (like our universe), small ripples vanish without a trace, and when it contracts, large ones disappear. This “Planckian damping” breaks symmetry: contrary to expectations, ripples are not the same at all scales. This effect is a direct consequence of spacetime ceasing to be smooth at the smallest scales (where curvature plays a role). For the first time, a lab trick allows us to distinguish the inflationary theory of Alan Guth from other scenarios and peek beyond the Standard Model without giant accelerators. The temperature of this “cosmos” is a hundred million times lower than the interstellar void: the slightest heat would destroy the entire simulation.