This kind of expansion is known as a 'metric' expansion. However, for many years it was not clear why or how the universe might be expanding, or what it might signify.Д«ased on a huge amount of experimental observation and theoretical work, it is now believed that the reason for the observation is that space itself is expanding, and that it expanded very rapidly within the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Many other observations agree, and also lead to the same conclusion. It is now understood that the universe is expanding, carrying the galaxies with it, and causing this observation. If Earth is not in some special, privileged, central position in the universe, then it would mean all galaxies are moving apart, and the further away, the faster they are moving away. This was quickly interpreted as meaning galaxies were receding from Earth.

Main articles: Expansion of the universe and InflatonДЄround 1930, Edwin Hubble discovered that light from remote galaxies was redshifted the more remote, the more shifted. In 2012 Guth and Linde were awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their invention and development of inflationary cosmology.

In 2002 three of the original architects of the theory were recognized for their major contributions physicists Alan Guth of M.I.T., Andrei Linde of Stanford, and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton shared the prestigious Dirac Prize 'for development of the concept of inflation in cosmology'. The hypothetical field thought to be responsible for inflation is called the inflaton. However, a substantial minority of scientists dissent from this position. The basic inflationary paradigm is accepted by most physicists, as a number of inflation model predictions have been confirmed by observation

The detailed particle physics mechanism responsible for inflation is unknown. Many physicists also believe that inflation explains why the universe appears to be the same in all directions ( isotropic), why the cosmic microwave background radiation is distributed evenly, why the universe is flat, and why no magnetic monopoles have been observed. Quantum fluctuations in the microscopic inflationary region, magnified to cosmic size, become the seeds for the growth of structure in the Universe (see galaxy formation and evolution and structure formation). It explains the origin of the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Alexei Starobinsky, Alan Guth, and Andrei Linde won the 2014 Kavli Prize 'for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation.' It was developed further in the early 1980s. Inflation theory was developed in the late 1970s and early 80s, with notable contributions by several theoretical physicists, including Alexei Starobinsky at Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Alan Guth at Cornell University, and Andrei Linde at Lebedev Physical Institute. The acceleration of this expansion due to dark energy began after the universe was already over 7.7В billion years old (5.4В billion years ago). Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10 в€’36В seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to some time between 10 в€’33 and 10 в€’32В seconds after the singularity. In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe.

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