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Nature 423, 817-818 (19 June 2003) | doi:10.1038/423817a

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Cosmology: Beyond the inflationary border

Steven Gratton & Paul Steinhardt

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Observational data now offer strong support for inflation — a period of exponentially fast expansion in the early history of the Universe. But is the theory complete?

Cosmologists are exhilarated by recent cosmological observations1 that have confirmed some of the long-standing predictions of the standard cosmological model, a picture based on a combination of Big Bang theory and inflationary cosmology. At the same time, some may worry that cosmology has "become a victim of its own success"2 — that the basic outline of cosmic history is understood and all that remains is the unglamorous task of determining the precise quantitative details.

  1. Steven Gratton and Paul Steinhardt are in the Department of Physics, Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-0708, USA.

Correspondence to: Steven Gratton e-mail: Email: sgratton@princeton.edu

Correspondence to: Paul Steinhardt e-mail: Email: steinh@princeton.edu