"As we found out on Monday, the universe appears to be filled with the rippling remains of an early period of ultrafast expansion, a discovery that ushers a new era of observations that will take us right up to the beginning of time. (Also: read Adam's post.)"

"The details still need to be scrutinized (and, believe me, they will!) by the scientific community. The possibility of errors — even if valiantly dealt with by the BICEP2 team — must be ironed out. And other experiments will need to confirm the numbers. But this is very exciting news indeed, something that doesn't happen often in a single lifetime."

"How lucky we are to have found the Higgs boson and evidence of gravitational waves from inflation within a two-year period!"