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| (Courtesy to Microsoft Encarta for these photographs.) |
Right after the Big Bang (between 10-35 to 10-32 seconds afterward), the Universe grew a hundred trillion trillion trillion trillion times its original size. This stage was called cosmic inflation and during cosmic inflation, the temperature of the Universe dropped to almost zero. In a comparison between the the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, the Big Bang would be like an elephant is to a blue whale.
Cosmic inflation was a theory that was thought up in 1979 by a particle physicist called Alan Guth. He was only thirty-two at the time and was working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the state of California. He did some calculations and developed his theory of cosmic inflation.
Right before inflation, there was a unified "superforce." Gravity separted from this superforce and later on during inflation, the strong force, weak force, and the electromagnetic force separated from this superforce. This superforce also was in the vacuum between the subatomic particles and antiparticles. As the Universe cooled to 1028 degrees, this superforce was supposed to split into the three other forces other than gravity. What happened though was that the superforce did not split and this unstable state made the Universe grow tremendously. After the cosmic inflation, the three forces split from the superforce and this created a huge amount of energy. This overflow of energy created the first particles which was the first certain amounts of matter.
If cosmic inflation had not happened, the Universe we live would look choppy. Whenever we would look up at the sky we would see different regions in the sky. In this way you could say it would look patchy. Cosmic inflation made the Universe very large. To get an idea of how large the Universe became, you can think of an area smaller than atom became larger than a galaxy. The Universe may still have regions, but we are deep within our region, so our Universe looks as if it is smooth.
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