In the first moments after the Big Bang, the cosmos was like a pot of boiling broth. In it, like lumps of flour, dense clumps of energy — oscillons — curdled and swelled. They grew, gained strength, and soon took over the expansion of the Universe. For a while, the 'broth' stopped cooling like ordinary radiation and began acting as if it were filled with heavy bodies.

But no dumpling lasts forever. Once they reached critical mass, the oscillons burst — all at once, throughout the entire volume. Their demise spawned a storm in the very fabric of space-time — secondary gravitational waves. The power of these waves was so immense that it nearly hit the theoretical limit dictated by the number of light particle species.

Thus the inflationary field, whose idea was proposed by Alan Guth, not only inflated the Universe but also left behind 'ripples' accessible for study. Analyzing these ripples lets us peer into the nooks and crannies of physics, inaccessible even to the sharpest telescopes that capture ancient light.