We all know what inflation is in our daily lives - price of milk, eggs etc rolls up into an inflation index that economists love to track. But, what about our cosmos? Does it inflate, just like the price of consumable goods?

Yes, apparently it does. It’s hard to imagine that the entire universe could have been smaller than an atom. But that’s what the theory of cosmic inflation suggests happened in the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang. During this mind-bending phase, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. While it sounds like science fiction, cosmic inflation is a key part of modern cosmology.

Inflation theory was developed in the 1980s to solve a few big puzzles in astrophysics. One issue was why the universe looks the same in all directions, something called the horizon problem. Cosmic inflation suggests that this uniformity happened because everything was once super close together, allowing energy to spread evenly before rapid expansion pushed everything apart.

Another mystery inflation theory solves is the flatness problem. The universe appears to have a flat geometry, which is hard to explain unless something caused it to flatten out. Inflation acts like a cosmic iron, stretching any initial bumps or curves until they’re nearly flat. Imagine blowing up a balloon until it looks perfectly smooth—that’s what inflation did to space-time.

This phase of inflation was short-lived but incredibly powerful. In less than a trillionth of a second, the universe expanded by an unimaginable factor. To put it in perspective, it would be like stretching a grain of sand to the size of the observable universe. This rapid growth set the stage for galaxies, stars, and planets to form billions of years later.

The idea of inflation has been tested with data from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the universe’s “baby picture.” Patterns in the CMB support the idea that space expanded rapidly early on, and scientists are always refining the theory with new observations. Some even believe inflation may have created multiple “bubble universes,” leading to the idea of a multiverse.

Inflation theory is still evolving, but it’s already reshaped our understanding of the universe’s beginnings. It’s one of those “mind-bending” concepts that challenges us to think big—really big. The next time you look at the night sky, remember that it all started with a burst of inflationary speed.