osmologist atStanford, told times in 2001.

    t about tself but about he bang.

    Not long after, mind you. By doing a lot of matc goes on inparticle accelerators, scientists believe to 10-43seconds after t ofcreation,  you . e mustn’t sraordinary number t comes before us, but it isperco one from time to time just to be reminded of trillion trillion trillionths of a second.

    **A ific notation: Since very large numbers are cumbersome to e and nearly impossible to read, scientistsuse a siples) of ten in ten 1010 and 6,500,000becomes 6.5 x 106. tiples of ten: 10 x 10 (or 100) becomes 102; 10 x 10 x 10 (or1,000) is 103; and so on, obviously and indefinitely. ttle superscript number signifies tive notations provide latter in print (especially essentially a mirror image,  number indicating to t of t (so 10-4 means 0.0001). tet remains an amazement to me t anyone seeing quot;1.4 x 109 km3’  once t t signifies 1.4Most of  ts of to an idea called inflation t propounded in 1979 by a junior particlep, t Stanford, no MIt, named Alan Guty-t t o attend a lecture on t Dicke. ture inspired Guto take an interest in cosmology, andin particular in the universe.

    tual result ion t a fraction of a moment aftertion, t a sudden dramatic expansion. It inflated—ineffect ran aself, doubling in size every 10-34seconds. ted no more t’s one million million million million milliont it cosomet least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger. Inflation t make our universe possible.