In the very early universe, physics were weird. A process known as inflation, during which the universe went from a single infinitesimal point to everything we see today, was one such instance of those weird physics. Now, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science have sifted through 15 years of pulsar timing data in order to put some constraints on what physics looks like.
[More recent work has seen pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) such as NANOGrav successfully identify a specific flavor of gravitational wave known as the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). The SGWB is similar in concept to the cosmic microwave background—a consistent glow from the early universe that astronomers can see as a series of microwaves coming from all directions at once.]
First time I’ve heard of this concept.