Thread: But what about the inflationary theory?

There's been a lot of threads about the Big Bang theory; but what about the inflationary theory?
The inflationary theory basically attributes the creation of matter to Energy. The Universe basically 'expanded' like a balloon out of complete nothingness (well, energy was present).
What do you think? Is it plausible? Does it in any way contradict the BB theory?

Inflation explains the horizon problem in the big bang. The big bang is a more complete theory with the help of inflation. Inflation is a subset of the big bang theory.

Is it plausible... yes. As I said, it has explanatory power.

Cheers

Doesn't it also "explain away" the monopole and flatness problem william? The problem with the inflation hypothesis at present is that it is entirely ad hoc, we really have no mechanism to switch it on or switch it off - it is manually placed into the big bang to make things work. At leasts that's the way i have seen it demonstrated, but i could be horribly wrong. Comments?

Originally Posted by river_rat

Doesn't it also "explain away" the monopole and flatness problem william?

Yes, and yes.

I haven't kept up on the latest news about inflation, so I suppose I can't comment much further.

Seems like there might be a connection between dark energy and inflation though....

Cheers

What amazes me about Inflation is that it is calculated that the early universe expanded by a factor of at least 10^26 in 10^-33 seconds. In other words the universe expanded 100000000000000000000000000 times its original size in .000000000000000000000000000000001 fraction of a second (if I've counted my zeros correctly). Someone described this as expanding a basketball to the size of the observable universe in this very short amount of time.

certainly i do not want to add credence to BBT, but i do think that version of expansion has been dropped. remember the current theory infers expansions is going on today. since we see the left overs of 14 billion years or so. imagine the suggested size if what happened in .00000001 of a second during the next 14 billion years. the theory seems to be happy with near light speed to today...that singularity must have really been packed !!!