Fu-Wen Shu

A tiny star spirals around a giant rotating black hole. Slowly, it moves closer in a spiral, and this dance lasts thousands of years. All the while, waves ripple through space, like ripples on water, but these are gravitational waves. They can be "heard" with special detectors.

In the first 10⁻³⁵ seconds after the big bang, the most rapid part unfolded. Space expanded faster than light — that's expansion of the universe (inflation). Almost the entire score was performed by a single field, the inflaton, conducting the tempo and key.