Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, South Africa, Feb. 6) -- The Spider experiment – short for the Suborbital Polarimeter for Inflation, Dust and the Epoch of Reionisation experiment – sailed through the cold blue skies of Antarctica for 16 days about 35km above the surface of the Earth, searching for elusive gravitational waves in the ancient signals from the early universe. Illinois professor Jeff Filippini, a member of the Spider team, says the landing site was near a few outlying stations in West Antarctica, thousands of kilometers from where it was launched.