The inflationary epoch that caused our universe to rapidly expand in its earliest moments may be connected to the modern era of dark energy, thanks to a phantom component of the cosmos that changes the strength of gravity as the universe evolves, a physicist proposes in a new paper.
The traditional approach to understanding gravity involves Einstein’s famous theory of general relativity. For such a powerful idea, which can explain everything from the orbit of the moon to the evolution of the entire universe, it’s a pretty simple concept. In general relativity, there is just space-time and the contents inside it. The contents of the cosmos cause space-time to bend and warp, and the bending and warping of space-time dictate how the contents should move.