Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify

is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes

that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping

solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scaleups, in-person, and on the go. Shopify is made for

entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.

What if space itself can crack? And what if some of those cracks are still stretching across

the cosmos today?

Cracks in the fabric of the universe.

When we picture the universe, we tend to imagine as smooth and continuous,

and in this seamless fabric of space and time stretching out in every direction.

Galaxy is drift, stars burn, gravity bends space-time, but the stage itself feels intact.

No seams, no joints, no cracks.

But the early universe was not calm, settled, or tidy.

It was hot beyond comprehension, dense, beyond intuition, and changing faster than almost any physical process

we know today. And when things cool quickly, they don't always cool perfectly. Sometimes they crack.

Cosmic strings, if they exist, would be literal cracks in the fabric of the universe, not tears

you could poke a finger through, but ultra-thin defects in space-time itself, relics of the universe, not tears you could poke a finger through, but ultra-thin defects

in space-time itself, relics of the universe's earliest moments, frozen in place as reality

cooled and crystallized, not objects floating in space, but flaws of space, scars left over from

the birth of the cosmos. That phrase, cosmic string, unfortunately,

causes no end of confusion. So let's clear something up immediately. Despite the name,

cosmic strings are not the same as the strings of string theory. They do not vibrate to create

...