In the following, I quote speedfreek and Cougar and comment on their comments: The first paragraph by one of us is preceded by that person's pseudonym. Succeeding paragraphs by the same person are not so labeled.

speedfreek: Well sometime around 2003 we found what looked like a repeating pattern in WMAP data that indicated that the universe might be shaped like a Poincare dodecahedral space, which is why we were investigating these models. There was some observational evidence of a non-trivial topology that required further investigation and that investigation isn't finished yet.

If you were in charge, would you have said the shape is too implausible to investigate, bearing in mind that we already had some data that seemed to indicate that shape?

dcl: Without meaning to be derogatory in any way, I'm interested in knowing whether by "we" you mean a research group of which you are a member. If so, I am impressed and hope to learn from you. Can you refer me to a description of what was found in 2003 that would be accessible on the Internet? Alternatively, can you summarize briefly what was found? What group is or was doing this investigation?

Cougar: I don't believe any particle physicist has said that, certainly not confidently. 10^-43 is the Planck Time. (Actually, it's 5.39 x 10^-44.) It is supposedly a barrier beyond which measurement cannot go, even in principle.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang Note the caveat at the beginning of the section on the very early universe:

"All ideas concerning the very early universe (cosmogony) are necessarily speculative. As of today no accelerator experiments probe energies of sufficient magnitude to provide any insight into the period. All proposed scenarios differ radically, some examples being: the Hartle-Hawking initial state, string landscape, brane inflation, string gas cosmology, and the ekpyrotic universe."

dcl: I've seen the equivalent of that statement and number in a large enough number of different sources that I've assumed, possibly erroneously, that it was factual. I'd appreciate your citing statements to the contrary if you can.

I appreciate your referring me to the Wikipedia article you cited. Incidentally, it gives 10 exp -43 second not as the Planck era but as the end of the Planck era. It gives the interval starting at 10 exp -43 second and ending at 10 exp -36 second as the Grand Unification Era.