This is the faster than light expansion that cosmologists believe the Universe experienced in its first, fleeting moments.

BBC: Telescopes ready for rocket ride

Cosmologists reckon that at least a quarter of the universe is composed of dark matter, a mysterious substance that neither emits nor absorbs light.

WSJ: New Data Boosts Case for Higgs Boson Find

This is because most cosmologists reckon that the Big Bang could not have generated nearly enough ordinary matter--dark or light--to create a closed universe.

ECONOMIST: The dark side of cosmology

So are revelations about Britain's dysfunctional royal family and popular works by cosmologists and evolutionary biologists that purport to solve the mysteries of creation and of the meaning of life.

ECONOMIST: What the world is reading

He has written a book suggesting that the speed of light is not constant, but was faster near the moment of the big bang with which most cosmologists believe the universe started.

ECONOMIST: Modern physics

The weight of evidence still favours the cosmologists.

ECONOMIST: A symphony in gamma major

Cosmologists investigating the structure of the universe do not really mind which direction a telescope is pointing, since the universe is isotropic and homogeneous which is a fancy way of saying that it looks the same in all directions.

ECONOMIST: Mirror, mirror

For a comprehensive yet eminently comprehensible account of how cosmologists pieced together the history of the universe, turn to the latest book by Simon Singh, a British science writer best known for his bestselling account of the solution of Fermat's last theorem.

ECONOMIST: The quest to explain the structure of the universe