I know that inflation is the rapid acceration of space some time after the big bang, but are there theories that explain what cause inflation to happen?
I know that inflation is the rapid acceration of space some time after the big bang, but are there theories that explain what cause inflation to happen?
Inflation is usually thought to be caused by one or more scalar fields, which in turn correspond to one or more particles. The one that drove the accelerated expansion is referred to as the inflaton. At the moment, these are only theoretical constructs -- we have not identified any scalar particles in the laboratory -- and there are a lot of inflationary theories that can't be ruled out by observation. For more details, see here: