Inflationary Cosmology Revisited: An Ove: An Overview of Contemporary Scientific Cosmology After the Inflationary Proposal

Scientific Cosmology is clearly one of the most active physics research fields at present, and likely to remain so in the near future. Shortly after the pioneering cosmological work of Einstein, Georges Lemaitre proposed a model which some years later to be known as the big-bang model. In the early fifties an alternative proposal, the so called steady-state (expansion at constant density) model, became the fashionable model in prominent academic circles. The discovery of the cosmic background microwave radiation (Penzias & Wilson, 1965) made the steady-state model almost untenable. A quarter of a century later the inflationary model was proposed, becoming extraordinarily popular almost immediately. For some it seemed to combine attractive features of both the steady-state and the big-bang models, by postulating a very early violent (constant density) expansion during a very tiny fraction of a second. The book makes use of the best and most recent observational data, from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE, 1992) to the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP, 2003), to discuss the merits and demerits of inflationary cosmology for a general readership acquainted with the basic facts of scientific cosmology. A complete Glossary and a detailed Index help the reader to follow controversial topics, such as dark matter, dark energy, cosmic flatness and accelerated expansion. Foreword 10 Prologue 12 Contents 14 Chapter 1 Steady State versus Big Bang Cosmology 16 Chapter 2 The Microwave CBR 23 Chapter 3 The Birth of Inflationary Cosmology 30 Chapter 4 The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) 39 Chapter 5 Dark Matter, Cosmic Flatness & Accelerated Expansion 49 Chapter 6 The Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) 58 Chapter 7 On the Monopole, Flatness and Horizon Problems 67 Chapter 8 An Alternative to Inflation? 72 Do quarks really exist? 74 Count on experiments 76 Cultivate skepticism 77 Cosmic troubles 80 Mystery deepens 82 Inflation or Steadly Driven Expansion? 83 Fundamental equations 84 Equations of state 85 The time dependent cosmic scale factor R(t) 87 Cosmic background temperature (T+) at reionization 88 Steadily driven expansion (SDE) 89 Inflationary expansion (IE) 91 Comparison of cosmic numbers using SDE and IE 92 Conclusion 96 Appendix How close are the cosmic times for matter/radiation equality and for atom formation? 98 1. Introduction 99 2. Radiation/matter equality temperature 100 3. Atom formation 104 4. Concluding remarks 106 References 107 A Brief Glossary 108 Index 116