Last night I watched Europa occultation at Jupiter, observing 1745-1900 EST using my 10-inch Newtonian telescope at 133x with a green filter to enhance views of the many cloud bands visible on Jupiter. Europa slowly moved closer and closer to Jupiter's limb and disappeared behind Jupiter about 1856 EST or 2356 UT (my cell phone time), accurately predicted in the tables of the November Sky & Telescope magazine on page 51.
Is inflation theory as reliable as what I observed last night in our solar system?
Consider the starting size of the Universe when inflation takes place. In 1997, Alan Guth said this about the Universe size when inflation takes place.
https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Guth/Guth3.html, "3. THE INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE...Once a patch of the early Universe is in the false vacuum state, the repulsive gravitational effect drives the patch into an inflationary period of exponential expansion. To produce a universe with the special features of the Big Bang discussed above, the expansion factor must be at least about 10^25. There is no upper limit to the amount of expansion. Eventually the false vacuum decays, and the energy that had been locked in it is released. This energy produces a hot, uniform, soup of particles, which is exactly the assumed starting point of the traditional Big Bang theory. At this point the inflationary theory joins onto the older theory, maintaining all the successes for which the Big Bang theory is believed. In the inflationary theory the Universe begins incredibly small, perhaps as small as 10^-24 cm, a hundred billion times smaller than a proton. The expansion takes place while the false vacuum maintains a nearly constant energy density, which means that the total energy increases by the cube of the linear expansion factor, or at least a factor of 10^75. Although this sounds like a blatant violation of energy conservation, it is in fact consistent with physics as we know it...", WAS COSMIC INFLATION THE 'BANG' OF THE BIG BANG?,
https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Guth/Guth_contents.html
In 2013, Alan Guth indicates inflation takes place in a Universe, smaller it seems. Inflation size universe could be 10^-53 m at the start of inflation period and the universe size maps 10^-53 m to 1 m size today. This is 18 order of magnitudes smaller than the Planck length. In the 1997 Alan Guth report, the Universe size starts at about 10^-24 cm. Now in 2013 we have 10^-51 cm size for the inflation beginning to explain the Universe we see today.
How was the universe created?,
created.59247/
Edit, good URL here
https://forums.space.com/threads/how-was-the-universe-created.59247/
Inflation requires that the inflaton exist in nature, perhaps as the creator of everything
Last night I could see Europa disappear behind Jupiter as predicted (and viewed numerous times since Galileo days). Currently I have not seen the inflaton in nature using my telescopes.