Inflation

The theory of cosmic or cosmological inflation is related to Big Bang theory. It’s been around now for the thick end of forty years. Or more. By 1980 a lot of cosmologists were happy that the universe was expanding, and that it wasn’t a steady-state universe. A lot of cosmologists also thought of the initial expansion of the universe as something fairly steady. However inflation introduced the idea that the initial expansion was very rapid: Image from Rod Nave’s hyperphysics As for how it all began,…