I have a new story published by New Scientist today. For me, it was a particular thrill to swap detailed emails with physicist Alexei Starobinsky, who predicted the gravitational waves way back in 1979. His extraordinary theoretical insight has been vindicated by this new discovery. I so wanted to call this article 'Who's the daddy?'

"The first clear glimpse of ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves, is being widely hailed as validation for inflation, the notion that the baby universe ballooned in size mind-bendingly fast just after the big bang. Reported last week, the discovery may earn some scientists a Nobel prize if confirmed by further experiments. But who are the founders of inflation?

Like the Higgs boson, which was hypothesised in various forms by several groups around the same time, it turns out that inflation has many fathers. That's partly because it draws on many disparate ideas in physics and cosmology. ..."

You can read the full story here.