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A new analysis of data from the upcoming Euclid telescope will help peer into the first moments after the Big Bang.
Abstract
Cosmologists search for traces of how the Universe was born in the layout of galaxies. By analyzing triples of galaxies (not just pairs), subtle deviations from randomness can be noticed — as if we heard extra, unusual notes in a symphony. This allows testing theories about the first moments after the Big Bang. What if the Universe was not so simple right from the start?
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The Universe was born in the Big Bang and immediately underwent an ultrafast expansion — inflation. Quantum jitters imprinted themselves on the fabric of space like ripples on water from a tossed stone. These ripples became the seeds of galaxies. Usually the waves are random, but if inflation was complex, some crests are slightly higher — the shape isn't a perfect circle. Catching such a skew means reading the story of the first moments.
The European Euclid telescope will be able to check this. In their model, scientists combined two approaches: one measures the overall height of the ripples, the other catches triangular patterns from neighboring crests. Together they reduce noise and double the accuracy. The cleanest signal comes from distant galaxies half the age of the Universe. To avoid being fooled, the galaxy data is correlated with a dark matter map — the invisible scaffolding of the cosmos. This way, we can tell whether inflation was simple or multi-field, much like figuring out if one stone or several made the ripples.
🎯 If the cosmic ripples were perfectly symmetric, the Universe would have remained featureless, like white noise in headphones, and complex structures would never have formed.
🎬 In Carl Sagan's 'Contact,' a message hides in the noise of the cosmic microwave background. Astrophysicists with Euclid are also searching for a hidden signal in the cosmic ripples, but its author is not an extraterrestrial intelligence, but the quantum laws of the early Universe.
