^ Yeah, andromeda moving towards us is a local movement that overrides the expansion with relative speed or something. i think i remember reading that hubble first looked at andromeda and discovered a blue shift, then found the red shift everywhere else (might have remebred that wrong).
As far as the discovery announced yesterday, they were making way more of it on the news than it seemed to justify when i heard the details (like they said 'proof' of inflation or something which it seems far from at the moment). Also it's still after the big bang so says nothing about 'before' or anything. Gravity waves (if that's what they are) would be massive (har) though, as is being able (apparently) to look before the light started.
I just caught the end of something on Today this morning where they had Stephen Hawking talking about how it proves a bet he had with another physicist and he sounded quite upbeat about it; but they then talked to the geezer he had the bet with (Turok i think) and after hearing what he had to say, it all seemed less cut and dried (as science usually is i suppose).
i still have problems with some of the wish fulfilment they seem (to me as a layman) to have in big bang cosmology - like inflation itself (this possible proof notwithstanding, there's not, much explanatory power in it - it just happens somehow so the data fits); and dark energy and matter seem fishy too in that regard (and to some cosmologists too, not just idiots) - it just seems possible that something they haven't found out yet might be able to explain these things better somehow.
