Is Modern Cosmology on the Right Road?
06/18/2003 Many science news sources have been giving the impression that inflationary cosmology is all wrapped up now, and we can all go home except for mopping up a few details. Steven Gratton and Paul Steinhardt, writing in the June 19 issue of Nature, seem to share that assessment, yet raise some caveats that do not seem trivial in their News and Views article, Cosmology: Beyond the inflationary border. Some excerpts (emphasis added in all quotes): • The standard model is less a solid edifice than a scaffolding with many gaps, resting on uncertain foundations. • The story has become familiar, but consider its foundations. Is there really a beginning to the Universe? What events led to the onset of inflation? And does the Universe even contain the ingredients necessary for inflation (in particular, the inflaton field that purportedly drives inflation and then decays into hot matter and radiation)? Without answers to these questions, the model is incomplete. Most cosmologists have se
