Inflation Isn’t Just Science, It’s The Origin Of Our…

Inflation Isn’t Just Science, It’s The Origin Of Our…

Inflation Isn’t Just Science, It’s The Origin Of Our Universe

“3.) There should be fluctuations on scales larger than light could have traveled since the Big Bang. This is another consequence of inflation, but there’s no way to get a coherent set of fluctuations on large scales like this without something stretching them across cosmic distances. The fact that we see these fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background and in the large-scale structure of the Universe — and didn’t know about them until the COBE satellite in the 1990s — further validates inflation.”

Beginning in 1979, a new idea arose in theoretical physics, seeking to improve upon the idea of the Big Bang: cosmic inflation. Recently, a number of physicists, including one of inflation’s cofounders, Paul Steinhardt, have come out with vitriol against the theory of inflation, calling it not even science. It’s true that inflation may not be the final answer to absolutely everything in the Universe, as there are a number of indeterminate predictions and a number of puzzles it fails to adequately solve. But that does not mean it isn’t science! In fact, inflation is the best theory we have to explain the initial conditions that the Big Bang has been observed to begin with. In addition, inflationary cosmology makes a number of powerful predictions that give rise to observables within our Universe, and a great many of them have been subsequently tested and validated. For reproducing the successes of the pre-existing theory, for explaining phenomena the old theory could not, and making new, testable, successful predictions, inflation hits all the points a scientific theory could aspire to.

It isn’t just a theory; it’s the best descriptive theory of the early Universe we’ve ever come up with. And in pushing the needle forward, it’s a shining example of the best kind of science of all.