There has been much talk in scientific circles recently about a 2013 paper by Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt and Abraham Loeb, titled, Inflationary paradigm in trouble after Planck2013. The authors of the paper question the cosmological theory of inflation, which postulates that the universe underwent a period of extremely rapid expansion shortly after the big bang, and that it has been expanding at a slower rate ever since. What I think their paper does instead is lend powerful support to the fine-tuning argument, which claims that the physical constants, initial conditions and laws of the universe were designed by God. This conclusion follows naturally if we assume that the Intelligent Designer of the cosmos wanted to not only make a universe that is hospitable to intelligent beings like ourselves, but also to send a clear signal of His existence to these intelligent beings.
What is the theory of inflation?
In this post, I’m going to quote some non-technical excerpts from the new paper by Ijjas, Steinhardt and Loeb, in order to convey the gist of the authors’ argument. But first of all, I’d like to say a little bit about the theory of inflation, which Wikipedia, summarizes as follows:
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