Our Universe 3: CMB, Inflation & Dark Matter

This book continues our exploration of cosmology, the science of the universe as a whole.

Here we examine four critical and somewhat mysterious phenomena that have shaped our universe and the science of cosmology: Inflation, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, Dark Matter, and the Cosmological Principle.

Inflation was an extremely brief period of extremely rapid expansion, occurring just after the Big Bang. While not derived from any fundamental principle, Inflation ha…