The standard model of cosmology includes a period of extremely rapid expansion at early times. This period, known as cosmological inflation, lasted for only a tiny fraction of a second, but provided ...

The ‘inflationary’ model of cosmology explains many large-scale features of the Universe as the result of a primordial period of exponential, almost instantaneous cosmic expansion called inflation.

Repulsive gravity at the quantum scale would have flattened out inhomogeneities in the early universe First light The cosmic microwave background, as imaged by the European Space Agency’s Planck ...