New APPS

For those of you who don't follow these sorts of things, there was a major announcement today in Physics/Cosmology.   The "BICEP2" group claims to have found (signs of) gravitational waves in the cosmic background microwave radiation.   This could give us a window into what happened in the very ealiest moments after the big bang.     Sean Carroll, (occasional lurker at this blog, I believe), has two great posts on his own blog explaining what this is all about:  a general background post and a post covering some of the specifics of the data reported.