Talk:Cosmic inflation

Singularity?

@Mokurai: A recent edit removed a reference to the initial singularity with a comment mentioning Quantum Mechanics. I believe that the literature describe the big bang from a classical General Relativity perspective, especially in the early days, and that no definitive answer will be available until there is a viable Quantum Gravity theory. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:45, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 21 July 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) The Night Watch (talk) 21:03, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

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Inflation (cosmology) → Cosmic inflation – Reasoning:

• Natural disambiguation is generally preferred over parenthetical disambiguation
• "Cosmic inflation" is natural, with widespread use in both reliable sources and popular sources, especially in titles and first mention
• "Cosmic inflation" is more concise
• "Cosmic inflation" beats "Cosmological inflation" in all measures of popularity (book ngrams, search trends, unpiped links)

Previous move discussion (2008–2009)

— Jruderman (talk) 12:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support: per reasoning and WP:NATURAL.--ReyHahn (talk) 11:45, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support I was going to complain that "cosmological inflation" is more precise, but TIL that depends on what you view this kind of "inflation" to be "of or relating to" per Commonly Confused Suffixes: -ic vs. -ical
  • inflation of or relating to "cosmos" -> cosmic inflation
  • inflation of or relating to "cosmology" -> cosmological inflation.

Since the topic is the inflation of the cosmos, "cosmic inflation". Johnjbarton (talk) 15:02, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"after the Big Bang" ?

This article states that cosmic inflation happened after the Big Bang, but the Big Bang Wikipedia article states that inflation was part of the Big Bang and happened at the initial moments of the Big Bang. I think this contradiction arose because scientists use "Big Bang" to mean the expansion of the universe from the initial moments until now, or at least until long after inflation, but the general public conflates "Big Bang" with "inflation", or thinks "Big Bang" refers to the very first moment in time of the universe. I think it's best to stick to the scientific definition and I have changed the article accordingly. It's jarring to a reader to read "inflation happened after the Big Bang" in this article and then get curious and click on the Big Bang link which takes them to the associated Wikipedia article which then tells them that inflation was the initial part of the Big Bang. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.110.37.194 (talk) 04:01, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Well it seems that sources do not agree with your claim:

• https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-technology-views-birth-of-the-universe
  • "Our universe burst into existence in an event known as the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago."
• Kragh, Helge (1996). Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02623-7. LCCN 96005612. OCLC 906709898.
  • "The idea of the universe originating in a singular event some finite time ago, that is, the big-bang idea..."

I think scientists refer to the 'idea' as the Big Bang theory and go on to discuss its implications, including inflation. But a finite timeline has a start and that start is called the Big Bang. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:47, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Usage of "Big Bang" in cosmology is terribly inconsistent. Sometimes Big Bang means the initial singularity, sometimes it means the very early universe (e.g. Big Bang nucleosynthesis), and sometimes it means the Big Bang cosmological model (e.g. Big_Bang#Timeline), which describes the expansion history of the universe until now. Often it refers specifically to a cosmological model without inflation. This is usually the case when extrapolating back to define a zero time coordinate, so that we talk about time "after the Big Bang" even when describing models that don't have an initial singularity. I have heard scientific talks refer to inflation as happening "before the Big Bang" as well as "after the Big Bang" depending on which sense is meant. See [1] for some related discussion. It's often possible to reduce the ambiguity by using "Big Bang model" and "Big Bang singularity", but sometimes it's best just to avoid the term "Big Bang". --Amble (talk) 15:32, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

• If the Big Bang article actually says inflation is part of the Big Bang, then it is wrong, so that article should be fixed. Where does it say inflation is part of the Big Bang, though? (This might be better on that article's talk page, as well.) Banedon (talk) 02:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)