Abstract

This paper presents a critical review of an article appearing in "The New Physics" edited by Paul Davies in 1989. It is entitled "The Inflationary Universe" and was written by Alan Guth who originated inflation theory. On the third of its 23 pages he has a diagram that tracks the spacial development through time of the standard Big Bang and inflationary models of the universe. The time lines start when the universe was 10⁴⁵ seconds old and extend out to the present time some 10¹⁷ seconds later. This paper focuses mainly on the first four pages of the article where I point out several scientifically unsound statements and erroneous conclusions still being used by Guth even after his theory had been around 26 years! For instance he says that because of inflation all matter and energy in the universe could have been created out of nothing and that the huge burst of energy it took to inflate the universe came from a phase change. Then he traps himself into an argument which leads to the erroneous conclusion that all the energy in the universe except that coming from gravity is repulsive. In this paper I spell out why these as well as some other statements made by Guth are wrong.