In the wake of one of the most groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs in modern times, the March 2014 discovery of gravitational ripples from the Big Bang -- an apparent confirmation of Alan Guth and Andrei Linde's theory of cosmic inflation -- John Brockman of Edge.org has gathered together some of the world's best minds to explain the universe as we currently know it. The contributors -- many pioneering theoretical physicists and cosmologists, including Guth and Linde -- provide an extraordinary picture of cosmology as it has developed over the past three decades.

A golden age of cosmology /Alan Guth -- The cyclic universe / Paul Steinhardt -- The inflationary universe / Alan Guth -- A balloon producing balloons producing balloons / Andrei Linde -- Theories of the Brane / Lisa Randall -- The cyclic universe / Neil Turok -- Why does the universe look the way it does? / Sean Carroll -- In the matrix / Martin Rees -- Think about nature / Lee Smolin -- The landscape / Leonard Susskind (with an introduction by John Brockman) -- Smolin vs. Susskind: the Anthropic Principle / Lee Smolin, Leonard Susskind (with an introduction by John Brockman) -- Science is not about certainty / Carlo Rovelli (with an introduction by Lee Smolin) -- The energy of empty space that isn't zero / Lawrence Krauss -- Einstein: an edge symposium / Brian Greene, Walter Isaacson, Paul Steinhardt (with an introduction by John Brockman) -- Einstein and Poincaré / Peter Galison -- Thinking about the universe on the larger scales / Raphael Bousso (with an introduction by Leonard Susskind) -- Quantum monkeys / Seth Lloyd -- The Nobel Prize and after / Frank Wilczek -- Who cares about fireflies? / Steven Strogatz (with an introduction by Alan Alda) -- Constructor theory / David Deutsch -- A theory of roughness / Benoit Mandelbrot (with an introduction by John Brockman).