https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_cosmo_infl.html
Astronomers are still trying to wade through this avalanche of data from the WMAP. As it sweeps away older conceptions of the universe, a new cosmological picture is emerging. "We have laid the cornerstone of a unified coherent theory of the cosmos," declares Charles L. Bennett, who led an international team that helped to build and analyze the WMAP satellite. So far, the leading theory is the "inflationary universe theory," a major refinement of the big bang theory, first proposed by physicist Alan Guth of MIT. In the inflationary scenario, in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second, a mysterious antigravity force caused the universe to expand much faster than originally thought. The inflationary period was unimaginably explosive, with the universe expanding much faster than the speed of light. (This does not violate Einstein's dictum that nothing can travel faster than light, because it is empty space that is expanding. For material objects, the light barrier cannot be broken.) Within a fraction of a
second, the universe expanded by an unimaginable factor of 1050. (Michio Kaku, 2004)
