The inflationary universe is a research area in cosmology focused on models in which the very early universe underwent a brief epoch of accelerated, quasi-exponential expansion driven by a high-energy vacuum-like component, typically modeled by a scalar inflaton field. This framework addresses the horizon, flatness, and monopole problems of standard Big Bang cosmology and predicts a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations and a stochastic background of gravitational waves. Research in this area investigates specific inflationary potentials, reheating dynamics, connections to particle physics and quantum field theory in curved spacetime, and confronts model predictions with precision cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure observations.
How did the universe come into being? There are a multitude of theories on this subject. In a Physical Review Letters paper, three scientists formulate a new model: according to this, inflation, the first, very rapid expansion ...
General Physics
Oct 24, 2025
1
92
How exactly did the universe start and how did these processes determine its formation and evolution? This is what a study published in Physical Review Research hopes to address as a team of researchers from Spain and Italy ...
Astronomy
Aug 28, 2025
100
37
Astronomers have peered back in time to find what looks like a population of "hidden" galaxies that could hold the key to unlocking some of the universe's secrets. If their existence is confirmed it would "effectively break ...
Astronomy
Apr 10, 2025
0
153
On March 11, NASA launched a new space telescope into orbit to explore the origins of the universe. The mission will use sophisticated software, developed at the Arizona Cosmology Lab at the University of Arizona, to analyze ...
Astronomy
Mar 22, 2025
0
79
If there were such a thing as a photo album of the universe, it might include snapshots of pancake-like disks of gas and dust, swirling around newly formed stars across the Milky Way. Known as planet-forming disks, they are ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 4, 2025
0
101
Before there was light, there was cosmic inflation.
Astronomy
Mar 3, 2025
2
116
As physicists continue their struggle to find and explain the origin of dark matter, the approximately 80% of the matter in the universe that we can't see and so far haven't been able to detect, researchers have now proposed ...
Almost 14 billion years ago, at the very beginning of the Big Bang, a mysterious energy drove an exponential expansion of the infant universe and produced all known matter, according to the prevailing inflationary universe ...
Astronomy
Oct 28, 2024
11
257
We live in a golden age for learning about the universe. Our most powerful telescopes have revealed that the cosmos is surprisingly simple on the largest visible scales. Likewise, our most powerful "microscope," the Large ...
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2024
14
160
Various large-scale astrophysical research projects are set to take place over the next decade, several of which are so-called cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. These are large-scale scientific efforts aimed ...
