An acclaimed "smoking gun" discovery explaining the unfolding of the early universe faces rumors of a cosmic misfire. (See: "Big Bang's 'Smoking Gun' Confirms Early Universe's Exponential Growth.")

In March the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) team headed by Harvard's John Kovac announced a pioneering observation of cosmological "gravitational waves" first predicted by Einstein to headlines worldwide. The claim seemed to confirm the conventional cosmological view of the universe expanding exponentially in its earliest instant.

The cosmologists reported that, using a telescope in Antarctica, they had seen the swirled signatures of these surprisingly strong gravity ripples crisscrossing a portion of the big bang's aftermath—the so-called cosmic microwave background that emanates from every corner of