His latest post continues to explain the finding from the elescope at the South Pole. You will not follow every last nuance of the expert physics, I don't, but a very large portion is understanable.:-http://profmattstrassler.com/-"But in this post, I'm going to assume assume assume that BICEP2′s results are correct, or essentially correct, and are being correctly interpreted. Let's assume that [here's a primer on yesterday's result that defines these terms]
 â- they really have detected "B-mode polarization" in the "CMB" [Cosmic Microwave Background, the photons (particles of light) that are the ancient, cool glow leftover from the Hot Big Bang]
 â- that this B-mode polarization really is a sign of gravitational waves generated during a brief but dramatic period of cosmic inflation that immediately preceded the Hot Big Bang,-"A puzzle that bothered scientists for decades, as to how the observable patch of the universe (i.e. the part that we can actually observe today; the universe may be much, much larger than this — see here) could be so uniform, would indeed be firmly solved, by a period of cosmic inflation. The extremely flat geometry of the universe would also now be firmly explained.
 
"We would also have confirmation about how the universe became hot — about how the Hot Big Bang got started. The picture would be this: a large amount of dark energy first makes the universe big, via inflation, and then the dark energy turns into energetic particles, making the universe hot (and still expanding, albeit more and more slowly [until relatively recently]). Some people like to say that inflation puts the "Bang" in "Big Bang", but remember that it also makes the universe flat and uniform and huge (typically much larger than the observable patch) before it heats it up.
 
"The existence of cosmic inflation would itself be another feather in the cap of Einstein's theory of gravity — since it is Einstein's theory that predicts that the presence of a positive cosmological "constant" [not necessarily constant], also known as "dark `energy' " [not really energy, but energy density and negative pressure in just the right combination] actually causes the universe to expand, rather than (as we'd naively expect from gravity) contract."

Note my bolded area. It allows you to believe what you want without any sense of a proof:-"So if people tells you that the universe started in such and such a way, perhaps "with a singularity" or "with a quantum fluctuation out of nothing" or "in the Big Crunch (i.e. the collapse) of a previous phase of the universe", remember that they're telling you about the red zone. They're neglecting to tell you that what they're saying is pure theory, with neither an experiment to back it up nor a clear theoretical reason to believe their suggestion is unique and preferable over someone else's alternative. Only a bit later in cosmic history, once we focus on the late stages of inflation, and forward in time from there to nucleosynthesis, do we have both data (cosmological observation and particle physics collisions) and reasonably reliable theory (Einstein's theory of gravity plus the Standard Model of particle physics). Our confidence grows as time moves forward, the observable patch of the universe cools, and physics becomes of a sort that we've tested in numerous experiments already.
 
"From this, I hope that you can see that the Big Bang Theory really isn't a single, undifferentiated structure. The most reliable part of the theory is that there was, at one point, a Hot stage of the Big Bang. (Some people call that the Big Bang, in fact.) If BICEP2′s measurement is accurate, and correctly interpreted, then the reliable portion of the theory may then include a period of inflation that preceded the Hot Big Bang. (Some people would call "inflation plus the Hot Big Bang" the "Big Bang".) But anything before inflation is not in the least reliable... in particular, the notion that the universe's heat and density increased to the extent that Einstein's equations have a singularity, presumably indicating that they're not sufficient to describe what was going on, is an assumption"-
http://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/26/which-parts-of-the-big-bang-theory-are-reliable/

This is a discussion of our space as a virtual vacuum. In fact the prediction is that there may be two type of vacuums (vacua) based on Higgs calculations. Very exotic theories, but our space is not empty containing fields and quantum fluctuations. I would point out, from a philosophic viewpoint, that as our universe expands it is expanding into total void. We are all that is.-http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/theories-and-vacua/