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Article: From soup to us: cosmic ripples test inflation. (theory on the evolution of the universe postulated by researcher Alan H. Guth)(Cover Story)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- June 7, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the economic heyday of the 1980s, frenzied traders vied for untold fortunes in the bull market. For cosmologists mining the riches of the early universe, the 1980s were also a time of wild speculation, when anything and everything seemed possible. Flush with success at decoding some of the mysteries of quantum field theory, theorists of all stripes eagerly tackled the cosmos' ultimate riddle.
To wit: If the universe began as a smooth, hot soup of elementary particles, how did it ever become the lumpy collection of individual galaxies, clusters, and superclusters that now stretch across the sky for millions of light-years?
The standard answer had ...