An Infinity of Worlds: Cosmic Inflation and the Beginning of the Universe

What happened before the primordial fire of the Big Bang: a theory about the ultimate origin of the universe.

In the beginning was the Big Bang: an unimaginably hot fire almost fourteen billion years ago in which the first elements were forged. The physical theory of the hot nascent universe—the Big Bang—was one of the most consequential developments in twentieth-century science. And yet it leaves many questions unanswered: Why is the universe so big? Why is it so old? What is the origin of ...