BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) measures the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Its mission is to find out if the theory of our universe’s rapid inflation is true (Cosmological Inflation).
Édouard Lemaitre and Edwin Hubble started the ball rolling in the 1920’s based on predictions from Einstein’s theory of relativity. During the fractions of a second after the Big Bang, Cosmological Inflation predicts that our universe grew from a tiny condensed energy/matter ball-like object to a universe that was big enough to contain early galaxies and their billions of stars and planets per galaxy. And our universe continues to grow.
What’s the connection to Gertrude & Grace?
One theory is that our universe inflated into “something.” And if that “something” contains our universe, then a reasonable extrapolation is that it probably contains many universes–the multiverse theory.
And the multiverse is one of the underlying stories within Gertrude & Grace. It’s something that Gertrude is involved with in our book and where her world collides with the world of Apple & Adel.