RIPPLES in the faint afterglow of the big bang do not seem to be scattered as randomly as expected. This casts doubt on the theory of inflation, a cornerstone of modern cosmology.
According to the theory, space expanded violently a split second after the big bang. That ought to mean that the properties of hot and cold spots in the microwave background left over from the big bang should follow a Gaussian distribution, because the spots would have started off as random quantum fluctuations.
But when David Larson and Benjamin Wandelt of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at…
