One of the most exciting discoveries pertaining to the creation of the universe is being wiped out by dust.

A team of astronomers thought they had found evidence the universe had rapidly expanded at its outset due to a phenomenon called inflation. The group, known as Bicep, said the discovery was based on gravitational waves pulsating from the first few trillionths of a second of the universe’s life.

Now, according to The New York Times, what was once heralded as the greatest discovery of the new century is being undone by dust. A second group, the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite team, studied the same bit of sky where Bicep claimed to find its waves and found it very dusty.

Bicep and Planck joined forces to uncover the truth, and the results weren’t good for Bicep’s waves; it appears the team’s signal was in fact nearly all, if not completely, stardust.

“We can’t say with any certainty whether any gravity wave signals remain,” said Dr. Clem Pryke, who led the joint analysis. “Obviously, we’re not exactly thrilled, but we are scientists and our job is to try and uncover the truth. In the scientific process, the truth will emerge.”

According to Science 2.0, Bicep made its observations from the ground and collected data at a single microwave frequency, a set-up that makes it difficult to distinguish between dust in the Milky Way and the Cosmic Microwave Background, light emitted just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Bicep thought they were observing an area with low dust emissions and took their findings as cosmic in origin.

Planck, meanwhile, observed the sky in nine finely tuned microwave and submillimeter frequency channels and immediately discovered the amount of dust was higher than Bicep thought.

Cosmologists were quick to say inflation isn’t dead, they just need to go back to the drawing board.