cosmic inflation refers to an assumed rapid expansion of the universe immediately after the big bang.
cosmic inflation refers to an assumed rapid expansion of the universe immediately after the big bang.
which term refers to an assumed rapid expansion of the universe immediately after the big bang?
cosmic inflation
currently, the leading candidate for a theory going beyond the big bang is the theory of cosmic inflation. developed by alan guth and others in the 1980s, inflation postulates a period of extremely rapid accelerated expansion of the universe prior to the expansion described by the standard big bang theory. the theory of cosmic inflation preserves the successes of the big bang while providing a natural explanation for some of the mysterious features of the universe. the theory has also received striking support from observations of the cosmic microwave background, the radiation that has filled the sky since around 380,000 years after the big bang.
string theory
in 1968 and 1970 roger penrose, stephen hawking, and george f. r. ellis published papers where they showed that mathematical singularities were an inevitable initial condition of general relativistic models of the big bang. then, from the 1970s to the 1990s, cosmologists worked on characterizing the features of the big bang universe and resolving outstanding problems. in 1981, alan guth made a breakthrough in theoretical work on resolving certain outstanding theoretical problems in the big bang theory with the introduction of an epoch of rapid expansion in the early universe he called "inflation". meanwhile, during these decades, two questions in observational cosmology that generated much discussion and disagreement were over the precise values of the hubble constant and the matter-density of the universe (before the discovery of dark energy, thought to be the key predictor for the eventual fate of the universe).
big bang