This was the most important and earliest epoch in history of the universe. It released a flood gravitational waves, which are tiny ripples in space-time's fabric.New research has shown that future detections can reveal the inner workings a process called "reheating", which could be the source of the "real" Big Bang.Astronomers don't know exactly what happened when the universe was just a second old. But they do know that it was an eventful time.Related: The first few seconds of the Big Bang: What do we know?Cosmological observations have shown that the universe is too smooth, too uniform at the largest scales, despite the Big Bang picture and the age of the universe. Even though they are separated by billions light-years, distant regions of the universe have almost the same temperature. These regions have not had enough time to exchange heat in the history the cosmos.Cosmologists believe that these observations are due to the fact that distant regions of space were once closer together. This allowed them to attain a common temperature and then be thrown apart. Cosmologists have proposed an event called inflation to do the "flinging apart" work.Before inflation, the universe had very small temperatures and density. Inflation happened and everything was sent flying apart from everything else. This explains why distant parts of the universe appear almost identical.The event of inflation occurred before the universe had even been 1 second old. It lasted less then a billionth billionths of a trillionth of seconds. Inflation happened in a very short time. The universe became billions upon trillions upon billions of dollars (and there are likely a few more billions) larger than ever before.Astronomers have found evidence of inflation in the pattern of light seen in the cosmic microwave background, radiation leftover from 380,000 years ago. Astronomers don't know what caused inflation, how it stopped, or what it did to stop.Some heatThe end of the inflationary period is a major puzzle in modern cosmology. The process of inflation, whatever it may be, is very good at smoothing over things, making things bigger, and chilling out everything. The universe became big, cool, and empty shortly after inflation was over. These are definitely not the conditions that we see in the early universe.The universe became a chaotic, hot soup of particles shortly after inflation. Cosmologists believe that inflation was caused by a decay of the source of energy, which released energy and heated up the universe, creating a flood that contains all the particles we love and know today.This reheating process could be considered the "real" Big Bang, the mechanism that created the expanding universe with radiation and particles.It is extremely difficult to observe the reheating process and inflation. Because the universe was less than 380,000 years old, it was opaque and plasma. We can't see further back into the past, at least not with any light.Feeling the Earth moveThe processes of inflation and reheating did not just flood the universe, but also produced enormous amounts of gravitational wave energy. Gravitational waves, which travel at the speed light, are ripples in space-time's fabric. Gravitational waves can be seen washing over you right now from many sources, including supernovas merging with black holes and other high-energy phenomena in the cosmos.Gravitational waves, which are also a result of inflation and reheating, will be washing over you right about now. These processes produced so much energy they could shake space-time, and gravitational waves known as "primordial" gravityal waves can still be seen ripping through the cosmos.Cosmologists have studied the potential gravitational waves signals that inflation can release for many years. Recent research was published to the arXiv preprint database. It examined the reheating that occurred at the end inflation. Researchers found that there were distinct signatures of primordial gravitational waves from different models.We don't know, for example, if reheating was gentle and slow or more abrupt. These two scenarios could lead to very different signatures for gravitational waves.These primordial gravitational wave are too low-frequency for current detectors like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (USA) and the Virgo Interferometer (Europe). Future space-based observatories like the European Space Agency's Laser Interferometer Space Antna and Big Bang Observer will be specifically designed for hunting primordial gravitational wave.These primordial gravitational waves would be a strong evidence of inflation. It would also help us to understand the physics behind it. The new research will also reveal clues about reheating and the end of inflation, as well as the detailed physics that created the universe we see today.Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @Spacedotcom
