All that has an impact on the kinds of theories of the universe
which are viable. In 1980, I developed the idea of the
inflationary universe. It was a new theory of how the big bang
might have begun. It's a theory consistent with the standard
big- bang picture, which is one of the reasons it's become as
well accepted as it has. It doesn't require people to throw out
what was believed previously about cosmology. But it adds a lot.
It adds a whole story about what happened during the first
fraction of a second of the universe, a time period that had not
been explored before. It answers a number of questions left open
by the standard big-bang model. The inflationary universe is a
theory about reality. I, and probably most physicists, regard
reality as a genuine physical reality, a reality influenced by
people only insofar as we can reach and move things and so on.
Reality exists independent of people. The goal of the physicist
is to understand that reality. One of the most amazing features
of the inflationary- u