He was specially influential in his contributions to “cosmic inflation”—a theory that many believe describes the ultra-early phases of our expanding universe.

These issues were eventually resolved by cosmic inflation in the 1980s.

The uniformity of this early near-equilibrium state has been explained by the theory of cosmic inflation.

These measurements were able to rule out cosmic strings as the leading theory of cosmic structure formation, and suggested cosmic inflation was the right theory.

During the early universe, a period of cosmic inflation occurred, where space expanded very rapidly (in a false vacuum state dominated by an inflationary field).