How do you cut a quantum string the size of the universe? New research shows how the chaos of the Big Bang could have done it, and how those cuts could have led to a cosmos filled with rippling gravitational waves.
Cosmic strings are the hypothetical leftovers from the earliest moments of the universe. Within the first second of the Big Bang, the cosmos underwent several intense rounds of phase transitions as the forces of nature split off from each other. Many cosmologists believe that these transitions were far from perfect and that each one left behind flaws in space-time itself.
