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to run the film back to less than a billionth of a second ATB in order for these regions to be within one foot of each other, they still
cannot influence each other since there is just not enough time since the bang for light to have traveled the 12 inches between them.
This shows that just because two points in the universe get closer and closer as we head back to the bang, it is not necessarily the
case that they can have had the thermal contact—like that between soup and air—necessary to bring them to the same temperature.

Physicists have shown that precisely this problem arises in the standard big bang model. Detailed calculations show that there is no
way for regions of space that are currently widely separated to have had the exchange of heat energy that would explain their
having the same temperature. As the word horizon refers to how far we can see—how far light can travel, so to speak—physicists
call the unexplained uniformity of temperature throughout the vast expanse of the cosmos the "horizon problem." The puzzle does
not mean the standard cosmological theory is wrong. But the uniformity of temperature does strongly suggest that we are missing
an important part of the cosmological story. In 1979, the physicist Alan Guth, now of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
wrote the missing chapter.

Inflation

The root of the horizon problem is that in order to get two widely separated regions of the universe close together, we have to run
the cosmic film way back toward the beginning of time. So far back, in fact, that there is not enough time for any physical
influence to have traveled from one region to the other. The difficulty, therefore, is that as we run the cosmological film backward
and approach the big bang, the universe does not shrink at a fast enough rate.

Well, that's the rough idea, but it's worthwhile sharpening the description a bit. The horizon problem stems from the fact that like a
ball tossed upward, the dragging pull of gravity causes the expansion rate of the universe to slow down. This means that, for
example, to halve the separation between two locations in the cosmos we must run the film back more than halfway toward its
beginning. In turn, we see that to halve the separation we must more than halve the time since the big bang. Less time since the
bang—proportionally speaking—means it is harder for the two regions to communicate, even though they get closer.

Guth's resolution of the horizon problem is now simple to state. He found another solution to Einstein's equations in which the very
early universe undergoes a brief period of enormously fast expansion—a period during which, in fact, it "inflates" in size at an
unheralded exponential expansion rate. Unlike the case of a ball that slows down after being tossed upward, exponential expansion
gets faster as it proceeds. When we run the cosmic film in reverse, rapid accelerating expansion turns into rapid decelerating
contraction. This means that to halve the separation between two locations in the cosmos (during the exponential epoch) we need
run the film back less than halfway—much less, in fact. Running the film back less implies that the two regions will have had more
time to communicate thermally and, like hot soup and air, they will have had ample time to come to the same temperature.

Through Guth's discovery and later important refinements made by André Linde, now of Stanford University, Paul Steinhardt and
Andreas Albrecht, then of the University of Pennsylvania, and many others, the standard cosmological model was revamped into
the inflationary cosmological model. In this framework, the standard cosmological model is modified during a tiny window of
time—around 10-36 to 10-34 seconds ATB—in which the universe expanded by a colossal factor of at least 1030, compared with a
factor of about a hundred during the same time interval in the standard scenario. This means that in a brief flicker of time, about a
trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second ATB, the size of the universe increased by a greater percentage than it has in the
15 billion years since. Before this expansion, matter that is now in far-flung regions of the cosmos was much closer together than
in the standard cosmological model, making it possible for a common temperature to be easily established. Then, through Guth's
momentary burst of cosmological inflation—followed by the more usual expansion of the standard cosmological model—these
regions of space were able to become separated by the vast distances we witness currently. And so, the brief but profound
inflationary modification of the standard cosmological model solves the horizon problem (as well as a number of other important
problems we have not discussed) and has gained wide acceptance among cosmologists.129

We summarize the history of the universe from just after the Planck time to the present, according to the current theory, in Figure
14.1.

Cosmology and Superstring Theory

There remains a sliver of Figure 14.1, between the big bang and the Planck time, that we have not yet discussed. By blindly
applying the equations of general relativity to that region, physicists have found that the universe continues to get ever smaller,

129
For a detailed and lively discussion of the discovery of the inflationary cosmological model and the problems it resolves, see Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe (Reading, Mass:
Addison-Wesley, 1997).