You're looking at the face of the big bang, seen for the first time. This swirl of colour is the first clear signal of primordial gravitational waves, picked up by a lab at the south pole. It's a visualisation of the data from an experiment called BICEP2: blue and red shading show the intensity of the clockwise and anticlockwise twisting in the polarisation of the cosmic background radiation.
Today, scientists working with the BICEP2 collaboration announced their discovery with this image. The distinctive eddies made by the waves are more pronounced than the team expected: models had suggested that gravitational waves from this early era would be incredibly weak and perhaps even undetectable.
Read more: "First glimpse of big bang ripples from universe's birth"
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