Explain The Enormous Expansion In The Early Universe Called Inflation

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6. Explain the enormous expansion in the early universe called "inflation"

The theory of Inflation was created to solve many of the problems that the Big Bang Theory had. At the very beginning of the universe everything was very close. Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe began to cool down, this allowed strong force and electroweak force to disconnect. This caused tons of energy to be released and thus the universe suddenly inflated. A fraction of a second passed and then everything began to expand rapidly. One more second passed and things started expanding at a slower rate. This theory helps to explain why scientists can look at radiation on the Cosmic Microwave Background in two very different locations and come up with similar temperatures. The reason they are coming up with similar temperatures is because at one point shortly after the Big Bang, the two locations were very close together. After the universe began expanding, the two locations moved very far away from each other. This can be explained by writing on a balloon. At first the letters are close together, but once you begin to blow up the balloon, the letters all spread apart
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The universe is hanging in the balance of what astrophysicists like to call Omega. Omega has a value of 1. If it had a value of any more than 1, the universe would eventually collapse in on itself. If the value was less than 1, the universe would continue to expand forever. (Tate, 2014, March 17). According to Cosmos, “critical density is the average density of matter required for the universe to halt its expansion”. They also explained that living in either an open or closed universe the density levels of our universe would still be in critical density. (Cosmos, n.d.) Any curvature the universe might have had before was forced to zero during inflation. This leads many people to believe that our universe is flat. (Tate, 2014, March