Cosmic inflation

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/cosmic-inflation

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the observational support?Consistent with CMB measurements of temperature anisotropies and spatial flatness
2. What is the predictive power?Predicts a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial density fluctuations and gravitational waves
3. Why did the universe stretch so fast?The inflaton field had a negative pressure that pushed space to expand at an accelerating rate. This made the universe grow many times faster than the later, slower expansion driven by matter and light.
4. How does inflation solve the horizon problem?Before inflation, all parts of the universe were close together and could talk to each other. Inflation then stretched them apart, so even far‑away regions now look the same temperature.

Inflaton Field: A hypothetical scalar field believed to have driven the exponential expansion of the early universe.
Primordial Gravitational Waves: Ripples in spacetime generated during inflation, predicted to leave a signature in the CMB.
Scale-Invariant Spectrum: A distribution of fluctuations where the amplitude is roughly the same across all scales.