What causes cosmic inflation?

In our modern conception of cosmic inflation, that period of rapid, accelerated expansion is driven by a new character to join the cosmological cast: something called the inflaton. In this picture, the inflaton is a quantum field that permeates all of space and time.

What is cosmic inflation for kids?

Cosmic inflation is the idea, first proposed by Alan Guth in 1981, that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion (the inflationary epoch) that was driven by a negative pressure vacuum energy density. This expansion is similar to a de Sitter universe with positive cosmological constant.

What is meant by inflation in cosmology?

The term inflation refers to the explosively rapid expansion of space-time that occurred a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

Who invented cosmic inflation?

Physicist Alan Guth
The Founder of Cosmic Inflation Theory on Cosmology’s Next Big Ideas. Physicist Alan Guth, the father of cosmic inflation theory, describes emerging ideas about where our universe comes from, what else is out there, and what caused it to exist in the first place.

Is cosmic inflation faster than light?

Cosmic inflation is a faster-than-light expansion of the universe that spawned many others. In its earliest instants, the universe expanded faster than light (light’s speed limit only applies to things within the universe).

In what era the inflation of the universe began?

These observations can be explained if the universe experienced a period of rapid expansion, which scientists call inflation, about 10–35 second after the Big Bang. New grand unified theories (GUTs) are being developed to describe physical processes in the universe before and at the time that inflation occurred.

How big was the universe after inflation?

If by ‘universe’ you mean all the stuff that makes up the visible universe, its radius after initial inflation was (very roughly) 10 cm, the size of your fist if we understand correctly. That’s to be compared with 14 billion light years now.

What does the balloon represent in cosmic inflation?

But it is true that space itself is stretching out between galaxies like the rubber stretches when a balloon is inflated. This stretching of space, which causes the distance between galaxies to increase, is what astronomers mean by the expansion of the Universe.

Is the universe still inflating?

According to eternal inflation, the inflationary phase of the universe’s expansion lasts forever throughout most of the universe. Because the regions expand exponentially rapidly, most of the volume of the universe at any given time is inflating.

What came before cosmic inflation?

Before this period of inflation, the entire Universe could have been in causal contact and equilibrate to a common temperature. Widely separated regions today were actually very close together in the early Universe, explaining why photons from these regions have (almost exactly) the same temperature.

Is cosmic inflation accepted?

The basic inflationary paradigm is accepted by most physicists, as a number of inflation model predictions have been confirmed by observation; however, a substantial minority of scientists dissent from this position. The hypothetical field thought to be responsible for inflation is called the inflaton.

Is there any evidence to support cosmic inflation?

Physicists find of cosmic inflation. The BICEP2 experiment has detected signs of gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background radiation, with big implications for the theory of cosmic inflation. Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the big bang.

Why do we need cosmic inflation?

Eyes on the horizon. We can see a tremendous volume of raw space.

Straight and narrow. As best as we can measure,the geometry of our universe appears to be perfectly,totally,ever-so-boringly flat.

Just one pole.

Just make it big.

Is cosmic inflation still a hypothesis?

Cosmic inflation is the idea that the very early universe went through a period of accelerated, exponential expansion during the first 10-35 of a second before settling down to the more sedate rate of expansion we are still experiencing, so that all of the observable universe originated in a small (indeed, microscopic) causally-connected region.

Was cosmic inflation the ‘Bang’ of the Big Bang?

Although the properties of the Big Bang are very special, we now know that the laws of physics provide a mechanism that produces exactly this sort of a bang. The mechanism is known as cosmic inflation .