A Mysterious Inflation
The beginning of the universe is the ultimate origin story. In the standard cosmological model, the narrative begins with the Hot Big Bang—a moment when the entire cosmos was compressed into an incredibly hot and dense state, which then rapidly expanded.
However, this picture is incomplete. The Big Bang theory describes what happened immediately after the beginning, but not the beginning itself. It also fails to explain the astonishing uniformity of the early universe. To solve this, physicists proposed "Inflation"—a brief period of exponential expansion that occurred in the first fraction of a second, smoothing out the cosmos.
While Inflation solves many problems, it introduces a new one: what caused it? The standard model requires an entirely new, hypothetical entity—the "inflaton field"—which has never been observed.
What if the Big Bang and Inflation were not two separate events driven by exotic forces, but a single, inevitable consequence of the fundamental laws of reality? Timeflow Gravity offers a unified explanation, suggesting that the universe burst into existence and inflated precisely because it had no other choice.
Fig. 1: Classical scheme of the inflationary Universe. In the standard model, everything began from a singularity and expanded through a mysterious inflaton field.Credits: Nature, University of Notre Dame and Wikipedia
Explosion of Time
In Timeflow Gravity, spacetime is not a passive backdrop. It is a dynamic quantum medium—the Timeflow Field. So the universe didn’t begin from “nothing.” It began from perfect symmetry — a state of homogeneous Timeflow, where every point oscillated at the same frequency, with no gradients, no mass, no structure.
In this primordial vacuum, time flowed everywhere at once with perfect uniformity. No motion, no change, no differentiation — only pure temporal energy.
While this might seem stable, quantum physics dictates that such perfect symmetry is inherently unstable. Quantum fluctuations constantly ripple through the vacuum. Inevitably, a fluctuation occurs, disrupting the perfect stillness. This is the moment time begins.
Like a perfectly still pond, it cannot remain motionless forever; a single fluctuation — a quantum disturbance in the frequency of time — can ripple outward, breaking the symmetry.
This disturbance didn’t happen in time — it created time as we experience it.
It introduced a gradient in the flow of time, and with it, the foundation of all dynamics, causality, and evolution.
Seeking for Entropy Equilibrium
Once the first fluctuation occurred — a spark in the deep stillness of the vacuum — the newborn universe had to obey the fundamental law of the Timeflow Gravity: the Law of Entropy Equilibrium, which demands that the universe maintain a perfect balance between the Drive for Chaos and the Drive for Order.
When we apply this rule to the very beginning — a state with no matter, no light, no particles — the equations give us only two possible outcomes:
- Stillness — an unstable, perfectly flat vacuum that can’t last.
- Constant expansion — a universe that grows exponentially, maintaining balance through motion.
The instant the stillness broke, the universe had no choice. It had to expand. This runaway growth is what cosmologists call inflation — an early phase of exponential expansion. In the Timeflow picture, inflation isn’t driven by a mysterious “inflaton field”. It’s simply the vacuum doing what the laws of existence require: finding a stable rhythm for time and energy to flow.
The universe didn’t explode in space — it was space itself exploding, stretching outward because that was the only self-consistent way time could begin to move.
The Birth of Matter
If inflation is the self-consistent state of the vacuum, why did it stop?Before the hot Big Bang, before any atom or vacuum existed, there was only the Primordial Light — the pure oscillation of Timeflow itself. In this phase, no space yet existed. Space is not an independent container; it is a relative dimension, emerging from the differences in the rate of time between regions. Without particles to define separation, distance had no meaning — every point of existence was superposed in a timeless, spaceless medium of pure temporal energy.
As the universe began to expand, the balance between order and chaos — the Law of Entropy Equilibrium — came into play. In the first moments, expansion released vast amounts of chaotic energy — pure, unstructured vibration of the Timeflow Field. But according to the law, the total entropy must remain in perfect balance.
To preserve this equilibrium, part of the chaotic vibration had to synchronize — forming stable, coherent patterns within the sea of turbulence. These synchronized regions were the birth of order in motion — the first standing waves of stability within the Timeflow Field.
Those standing waves are what we now call particles. Matter was not created by chance or collision, but by synchronization — the moment when chaos found rhythm, when the vibrations of the vacuum locked into stable harmony.
From that instant, the universe contained both sides of the cosmic balance:
- Chaos, driving expansion and entropy.
- Order, crystallized as matter and structure.
Together, they form the ongoing dance that defines the evolution of the cosmos — a universe built not from randomness, but from equilibrium.