inflation

In cosmology, a phase of extremely fast expansion thought to have occurred within 10−32 seconds of the Big Bang and in which almost all the matter and energy in the universe was created. The inflationary model based on this concept accounts for the density of the universe being very close to the critical density, the smoothness of the cosmic background radiation, and the homogeneous distribution of matter in the universe. Inflation was proposed by US astrophysicist Alan Guth in the early 1980s.