As Creation Stories Go, the Big Bang Is a Good One

Deep in the depths of time, there was the Ocean of Milk. The gods and demons both desired amrita, the nectar of immortal life, which could only be obtained from the great ocean. The supreme god Vishnu told them to use Mount Mandara as a churning stick, and to rotate the mountain with the giant serpent, Vasuki, as a rope. For a thousand years, they churned until amrita emerged. The gods and demons fought and quarreled over amrita until the gods prevailed. The churning produced other wonders: the physician of the gods Dhanvantari, the goddess of riches Lakshmi, the goddess of misfortune Jyestha, the white elephant, the seven-headed horse Uchchaisrava, and a wish-granting tree. And finally came the moon, Chandra.

More recently, modern scientists are churning the universe for another treasure. They are searching for the ripples in spacetime, known as gravitational waves, leftover from the primordial big bang. Scientists believe that when our universe was less than a second old, it underwent a radical phase transition, dramatically inflating in size. That event shaped the future evolution of the cosmos, planting the seeds that would one day grow to become galaxies and clusters. That cataclysmic event, perhaps the most powerful episode the universe has ever experienced, left nothing else behind but the most subtle churning of gravitational waves. Scientists hope to find these gravitational waves because the earliest moments of the Big Bang are shrouded in mystery, and perhaps the only relics of that era are those faint whispers of gravity.

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