paper

Singularities in Inflationary Cosmology: A Review

arXiv:gr-qc/9612036 · doi:10.1142/S0218271896000497

Abstract

We review here some recent results that show that inflationary cosmological models must contain initial singularities. We also present a new singularity theorem. The question of the initial singularity re-emerges in inflationary cosmology because inflation is known to be generically future-eternal. It is natural to ask, therefore, if inflationary models can be continued into the infinite past in a non-singular way. The results that we discuss show that the answer to the question is ``no.'' This means that we cannot use inflation as a way of avoiding the question of the birth of the Universe. We also argue that our new theorem suggests - in a sense that we explain in the paper - that the Universe cannot be infinitely old.

Plain TeX. Twelve pages, five figures (that will automatically appear if you use "dvips" to print the file)

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