Yes, the accelerating inflation is a problem the magnitude of which I don’t think is really grasped by most yet.
Acceleration requires a force, since F=MA, and conversely, A=F/M. If the matter is expanding, there must be a force to account for it, and it sure isn’t gravity, the weak force, or the strong force, so what is it? I doubt it’s electromagnetism, but what else is left?
It seems to me either science must admit a 5th fundamental force or find a way that EM could cause the accelerated expansion.
there must be a force to account for it, and it sure isn’t gravity, the weak force, or the strong force, so what is it?
It's not an "accelerating inflation". Inflation supposedly occurred in the very earliest stages of the BB, the first ridiculously tiny fraction of a second. It was something that was later added to explain away the flaws with the standard Big Bang model (see below). However, Inflation itself has serious flaws. Many cosmologists say it's too contrived.
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The standard cosmological model is the "big bang", and while the evidence supporting that model is enormous, it is not without problems. Trefil in The Moment of Creation does a nice job of pointing out those problems.
| 1. The Antimatter Problem |
| 2. The Galaxy Formation Problem |
| 3. The Horizon Problem |
| 4. The Flatness Problem |
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Triggered by the symmetry breaking that separates off the strong force, models suggest an extraordinary inflationary phase in the era 10-36 seconds to 10-32 seconds. More expansion is presumed to have occurred in this instant than in the entire period ( 14 billion years?) since. The inflationary epoch may have expanded the universe by 1020 or 1030 in this incredibly brief time. The inflationary hypothesis offers a way to deal with the horizon problem and the flatness problem of cosmological models. |
Lemonick and Nash in a popular article for Time describe inflation as an "amendment to the original Big Bang" as follows: "when the universe was less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second old, it briefly went through a period of superchanged expansion, ballooning from the size of a proton to the size of a grapegruit (and thus expanding at many, many times the speed of light). Then the expansion slowed to a much more stately pace. Improbable as the theory sounds, it has held up in every observation astronomers have managed to make."
| Inflationary theory |
| Early universe chronology |
| Inflationary implications of WMAP [The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe] |