The short, extremely rapid expansion in the very early universe that explains why the universe looks so flat and smooth on the largest scales today is called Cosmic Inflation. It was an epoch of incredibly fast, exponential expansion of spacetime that occurred immediately after the Big Bang, lasting from approximately 10^-36 seconds to 10^-32 seconds after the universe's birth. During this fleeting period, the universe expanded by a factor of at least 10^26, growing from subatomic scales to roughly the size of a grapefruit. This immense expansion addresses two major puzzles: the flatness problem and the horizon problem, which explain the universe's observed large-scale flatness and smoothness. The energy driving inflation is theorized to have come from a hypothetical scalar field called the 'inflaton field.'
Flatness: The 'flatness' of the universe refers to its overall geometry. A flat universe is one where the geometry....
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