Universe's Inflation Had Seven Phases of Acceleration and Deceleration

Astronomers found that the Universe has experienced seven phases of its inflation's acceleration and deceleration during its life of 13,8 billion years.

The process of cosmic inflation is occurring in the form of waves: sometimes the inflation accelerates, sometimes decelerates, which has happened seven times so far, astrophysicists reported in Astronomical Journal.

Back in 1929, American astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that the Universe is inflating, judging by the movement of remote galaxies. Some 50 years later scientists found out that the Universe is inflating with acceleration.

Modern astronomy does not challenge this fact, but scientists argue about the time when the inflation began.

In the first four-five billion years after the Big Bang the Universe was collapsing. Then the mysterious dark energy, whose properties are yet to be defined, caused space to inflate with a growing speed. 

Trying to determine a relatively exact time of the inflation's beginning, Lawrence R. Mead and Harry Ringermacher of the Southern Mississippi University observed the explosions of supernovae and the movement of dark matter in ancient galaxies. They found something surprising.

Mathematically, the graph of the cosmic inflation's acceleration was not a straight line, as they expected. It was a sine wave, which means that the inflation's acceleration decreased and increased several times, seven in total, and not once, as it was thought earlier.

The scientists hope to confirm their hypothesis with the data from the Planck telescope.