This game is played by two people, using small rackets, called battledores, made of parchment or rows of gut stretched across wooden frames, and shuttlecocks, made of a base of some light material, such as cork, with trimmed feathers fixed around the top.
An alternative model which once enjoyed equal status with the big bang is the steady state theory, first proposed in 1948 by Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle. This model, too, assumes that the universe is expanding, but proposes that it has no beginning or end in space and time.
A year later, Guth found a solution. At the beginning of the big bang, for an incredibly small fraction of a second, the universe could have expanded exponentially fast, rapidly transforming curved space into flat one. Quickly running out of energy, the expansion would slow down, eventually reaching todayâs sluggish pace.