A Critical Look at Inflationary Cosmology | Philosophy of Science | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

Abstract

Inflationary cosmology won a large following on the basis of the claim that it solves various problems that beset the standard big bang model. We argue that these problems concern not the empirical adequacy of the standard model but rather the nature of the explanations it offers. Furthermore, inflationary cosmology has not been able to deliver on its proposed solutions without offering models which are increasingly complicated and contrived, which depart more and more from the standard model it was supposed to improve upon, and which sever the connection between cosmology and particle physics that initially made the inflationary paradigm so attractive. Nevertheless, inflationary cosmology remains a promising research program, not least because it offers an explanation of the origin of the density perturbations that seeded the formation of galaxies and other cosmic structures. Tests of this explanation are underway and may settle the issue of whether inflation played an important role in the early universe.

References

Abbott, L. (1988), “The mystery of the cosmological constant”, Scientific American 258 (May): 106–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Abbott, L. F. and Pi, S.-Y. (1986), Inflationary Cosmology. Philadelphia: World Scientific.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Adams, F. C., Freese, K., and Guth, A. H. (1991), “Constraints on the scalar-field potential in inflationary models”, Physical Review D 43: 965–976.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Albrecht, A. (1996), “How to falsify scenarios with primordial fluctuations from inflation”, astro-ph/9612017.Google Scholar

Albrecht, A. and Steinhardt, P. J. (1982), “Cosmology for Grand Unified Theories with Induced Symmetry Breaking”, Physical Review Letters 48: 1120–1223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Bartusiak, M. (1986), Thursday's Universe: A Report on the Frontier on the Origin, Nature, and Destiny of the Universe. New York: Times Books.Google Scholar

Belinskii, V. A., Grishchuk, L. P., Zel'dovich, Ya B., and Khalatnikov, I. M. (1986), “Inflationary stages in cosmological models with a scalar field”, Soviet Physics. JETP 62: 195–203.Google Scholar

Belinskii, V. A. and Khalatnikov, I. M. (1987), “On the generality of inflationary solutions in cosmological models with a scalar field”, Soviet Physics. JETP 66: 441–449.Google Scholar

Börner, G. (1993). The Early Universe: Facts and Fiction (3rd ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Bucher, M., Goldhaber, A., and Turok, N. (1995), “An open universe from inflation”, Physical Review D 52: 3314–3337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Bucher, M. and Turok, N. (1995), “Open inflation with an arbitrary false vacuum”, Physical Review D 52: 5538–5548.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Carroll, S., Press, W., and Turner, E. (1992), “The cosmological constant”, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 30: 499–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Coleman, S. (1988), “Black holes as red herrings: Topological fluctuations and the loss of quantum coherence”, Nuclear Physics B 307: 867–882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Coles, P. and Ellis, G. F. R. (1994), “The case for an open Universe”, Nature 370: 609–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Coles, P. and Ellis, G. F. R. (1997), Is the Universe Open or Closed? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Collins, C. B. and Hawking, S. W. (1973), “Why Is the Universe Isotropic?”, Astrophysical Journal 180: 317–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cornish, N. J., Spergel, D. N., and Starkman, G. D. (1996), “Does Chaotic Mixing Facilitate Ω < 1 Inflation?”, Physical Review Letters 77: 215–218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Dicke, R. H. (1969), “Gravitation and the Universe”. Jayne Lectures for 1969. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar

Earman, J. (1995), Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Ellis, G. F. R. (1988), “Does inflation necessarily imply Ω = 1?”, Classical and Quantum Gravity 5: 891–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Ellis, G. F. R. (1991), “Standard and Inflationary Cosmologies”, in Mann, R. and Masson, P. (eds.), Gravitation. A Banff Summer Institute. Singapore: World Scientific, 3–53. 76.Google Scholar

Ellis, G. F. R., Lyth, D. H., and Mijié, M. B., (1991), “Inflationary models with Ω ≠ 1”, Physics Letters B 271: 52–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Ellis, G. F. R. and Stoeger, W. (1988), “Horizons in inflationary universes”, Classical and Quantum Gravity 5: 207–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Ellis, J. and Olive, K. A. (1983), “Inflation can solve the rotation problem”, Nature 303: 679–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Gibbons, G. W., Hawking, S. W., and Siklos, S. T. C. (1985). The Very Early Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Gibbons, G. W., Hawking, S. W., and Stewart, J. M. (1986), “A Natural Measure on the Set of All Universes”, Nuclear Physics B 281: 736–751.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Goldsmith, D. (1995), Einstein's Greatest Blunder? The Cosmological Constant and Other Fudge Factors in the Physics of the Universe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Goldwirth, D. S. and Piran, T. (1992), “Initial Conditions for Inflation”, Physics Reports 214: 223–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Gribbin, J. (1996), Companion to the Cosmos. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar

Guth, A. (1981), “Inflationary universe: A possible solution for the horizon and flatness problems”, Physical Review D 23: 347–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Guth, A. (1991), “Can a man-made universe be created by quantum tunneling without an initial singularity?”, The Birth and Early Evolution of the Universe. Physica Scripta T36: 237–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Guth, A. (1993), “The Inflationary Universe”, in N. S. Hetherington (ed.), Cosmology. New York: Garland Publishing, 411–444.Google Scholar

Guth, A. (1997), The Inflationary Universe. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar

Hawking, S. W. (1984), “The Cosmological Constant”, Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) A 310: 303–310.Google Scholar

Hawking, S. W. and Page, D. N. (1987), “How Probable Is Inflation?”, Nuclear Physics B 298: 789–809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Hawking, S. W. and Turok, N. (1998), “Open Inflation Without False Vacua”, hepth/9802030.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Hempel, C. G. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar

Howson, C. and Urbach, P. (1993), Scientific Reasoning (2nd ed). Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar

Hoyle, F. (1960), “A covariant formulation of the law of the creation of matter”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 120: 256–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Hoyle, F. and Narliker, J. V. (1962), “Mach's principle and the creation of matter”, Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) A 270: 334–341.Google Scholar

Hu, Y., Turner, M. S., and Weinberg, E. J. (1994), “Dynamical solutions to the horizon and flatness problems”, Physical Review D 49: 3830–3836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Kolb, E. and Turner, M. (eds.) (1990), The Early Universe. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar

Kragh, H. (1996), Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Kuhn, T. (1970), Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Langacher, P. and Pi, S.-Y. (1980), “Magnetic Monopoles in Grand Unified Theories”, Physical Review Letters 45: 1–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Lederman, L. and Schramm, D. (1995), From Quarks to the Cosmos: Tools of Discovery (2nd ed). New York: Scientific American Library.Google Scholar

Lemaître, G. (1934), “Evolution of the expanding universe”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 20: 12–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Liddle, A. R. (1996), “The Early Universe”, Preprint SUSSEX-AST/12–1.Google Scholar

Liddle, A. R. and Lyth, D. H. (1993), “The cold dark matter density perturbation”, Physics Reports 231: 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Lightman, A. I. and Brawer, R. (1990), The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Linde, A. (1982), “A New Inflationary Universe Scenario: A Possible Solution of the Horizon, Flatness, Homogeneity, Isotropy and Primordial Monopole Problems”, Physics Letters B 108: 389–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Linde, A. (1990), Particle Physics and Inflationary Cosmology. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Linde, A. (1994), “The self-reproducing inflationary universe”, Scientific American 273 (November): 32–39.Google Scholar

Linde, A. (1996), “Prospects of Inflationary Cosmology”, astro-ph/9610077.Google Scholar

Linde, A., Linde, D., and Mezhlumian, A. (1994), “From the big bang theory to the theory of a stationary universe”, Physical Review D 49: 1783–1826.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Linde, A. (1995), “Do we live in the center of the world?”, Physics Letters B 345: 203–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Linde, A. and Mezhlumian, A. (1993), “Stationary universe”, Physics Letters B 307: 25–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Madsen, M. S. and Ellis, G. F. R. (1988), “The evolution of Ω in inflationary universes”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 234: 67–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Maeda, K. (1995), “Naturalness of Inflation”, in F. Occhionero (ed.), Birth of the Universe and Fundamental Physics. New York: Springer, 45–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Maoz, D, and Rix, H.-W. (1993), “Early-Type Galaxies, Dark Halos, and Gravitational Lensing Statistics”, Astrophysical Journal 416: 425–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Narlikar, J. V. and Padmanabhan, T. (1991), “Inflation for Astronomers”, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 29: 325–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Penrose, R. (1986), Review of The Very Early Universe, The Observatory 106: 20–21.Google Scholar

Penrose, R. (1989), “Difficulties with Inflationary Cosmology”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 271: 249–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Preskill, J. (1979), “Cosmological production of superheavy magnetic monopoles”, Physical Review Letters 43: 1365–1368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Shapere, D. (1997), “Testability and Empiricism”, preprint to appear in the Proceedings of the Symposium on Observation held in Parma in May 1995.Google Scholar

Thorne, K. S. (1987), “Gravitational radiation”, in Hawking, S. W. and Israel, W. (eds.), 300 Hundred Years of Gravitation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 330–458.Google Scholar

Turner, M. (1990), “Toward the Inflationary Paradigm: Lectures on inflationary Cosmology”, in Audouze, J. and Melchiorri, F. (eds.), Confrontation between Theories and Observation in Cosmology: Present Status and Future Programs. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 43–110.Google Scholar

Turner, M. (1996), “Cosmology: Standard and Inflationary”, in Chen, J. and Porcel, L. De (eds.), Proceedings of the Summer Institute of Particle Physics. Stanford: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 1–40.Google Scholar

VandenBerg, D., Bolte, M., and Stetson, P. (1996), “The age of the galactic globular cluster system”, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 34: 461–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Wald, R. M. (1983), “Asymptotic behavior of homogeneous cosmological models in the presence of a positive cosmological constant”, Physical Review D 28: 2118–2110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Weinberg, S. (1989), “The cosmological constant problem”, Reviews of Modern Physics 61: 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Zel'dovich, Y. and Khlopov, M. (1978), “On the concentration of relic magnetic monopoles in the universe”, Physics Letters B 79: 239–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar