From Subatomic Quantum Fuzz to the Largest Structures in the Universe Cosmic inflation, introduced in 1980 by Alan Guth and turned into a workable model a year later by Andrei Linde, Andreas Albrecht and Paul Steinhardt, has revolutionized the way cosmologists think about the Universe.
Inflation is probably the most important idea in cosmology since the big bang itself.
As a result, all that we can see today originated from a region of space smaller than an atom and any curvature of space or lumpiness is smoothed out. The latter prediction was confirmed last year by measurements of the cosmic microwave background made by the Boomerang and Maxima experiments. It has now been independently confirmed by today's results from the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer. An even more remarkable prediction of inflation is that the largest structures observed today, from the smallest galaxies to clusters containing thousands of galaxies, began as fuzziness in the subatomic world. Over the past 14 billion years, gravity has amplified the lumpy matter into the structure that we see today in the Universe, from galaxies to superclusters.