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Inflation Timeline

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Title text: Depending what corners of the internet you hang out on, 'regular' may at times awkwardly coexist with 'sexy.'

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Explanation

This is incomplete: This page was created by an INFLATIONARY BOT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Cosmic inflation is the theory that the very early universe briefly expanded at an enormous rate. This explains the "clumpiness" of the early universe, which is necessary to explain the formation of large-scale structures (e.g., galaxies, galaxy clusters, galaxy filaments, etc.) as the universe evolved. "Regular" inflation refers to the economic process in which the average price of goods and services increases over time. This is usually gradual, but can be very rapid during times of economic distress.

The comic puts both of these on the same timeline of the universe. Cosmic inflation occurred very shortly (~10^-34 s) after the Big Bang. Regular inflation occurs only during the time of human society after money started being used, perhaps 7,000 years ago. Because of the logarithmic scale of the graph, the cosmic inflation period, which is only a tiny fraction of a second, looks much larger than regular inflation, which has existed for at least a few thousand years. This misinterpretation is likely Randall's intention in the comic, along with conflating two wildly different kinds of "inflation".

The title text refers to a third meaning, that of body inflation as a sexual fetish or kink, which has no direct relationship to cosmology or economics.^{[citation needed]} Randall points out that body inflation happens at the same time as economic inflation, presumably because both arise from human activities. The suggestion that this coexistence may be "awkward" perhaps implies that people are paying to indulge in the fetish, and that those prices are subject to economic inflation. The "inflation" might also refer to something akin to a blow-up doll.

Another comic illustrating cosmic inflation is 2240.

Trivia

Assuming regular inflation started with the first use of money 7,000 years ago, the "regular inflation" bar, if accurately displayed, would go from 10^17.63856460 to 10^17.63856482 seconds, with a difference in the exponents of 0.00000022. Depending on your display resolution, this would make the graph's "regular" bar on the order of a millionth of a pixel wide.

Given that there are only seven secondary tick marks between the primary (labeled) tick marks, these denote not increments of 1 order of magnitude but 1.125 orders of magnitude.

Transcript

[Caption:] Timeline of Inflation

[A log-scale timeline labeled "Age of the Universe (seconds)" ranging from 10^-40 to about 10²⁵, with labeled tick marks at 10^-40, 10^-30, ..., 10²⁰ s. A bar labeled "Cosmic" begins off-panel to the left and continues up to roughly 10^-33 seconds. A second, much thinner bar labeled "Regular" covers another period between roughly 10^16.9 and 10^17.3 seconds.]

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Discussion

Make changes, try things out, or just have fun with the wiki here! Just leave everything above the line alone, please.

---

This is a test. PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]} 20:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

This is not. —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | Google search | current time: 22:56) 18:38, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

A foreign student asked me to help fight against his math teacher. That was unusual. He was in that class for just a couple of weeks. The teacher's phone number was sent to me. The student asked me to spam-call the teacher. 172.71.155.55 22:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

here i'm just messing around in html, ignore this

^furhhfghure _{guyrburgryhuyvfr} "rvhru"

interesting way of writing quotations xd

hmmm this one of putting "<p>" in a line break will come in handy for when i want it to start at the same place than the first line

Please beware that <p> on mediawiki also disables automatic paragraph breaks, so you need a closing </p> or you'll break automatic paragraph formatting for the rest of the page. Zmatt (talk) 22:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

edit: da hek did that "</div>" come from An user who has no account yet (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

hi uh its hard to get here. is this a reference to undocumented feature??? hmm... this is interesting.
108.162.241.216 02:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

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yum yum [citation needed]

Hiuiedeixgeyceiyedhcdiedcve {{trout}}

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<a href=" [AT THE JULY 28TH MEETING][tab] "Cancel the meeting! Our cover is blown."> More testing: hello ​ does​this​work (yes​it​does) This isn't a good name (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

‮hi 164.58.172.158 14:21, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

What is this?????????????????????? King Pando (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2026 (UTC)‭
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  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

Make changes, try things out, or just have fun with the wiki here! Just leave everything above the line alone, please.

---

This is a test. PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]} 20:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

This is not. —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | Google search | current time: 22:56) 18:38, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

A foreign student asked me to help fight against his math teacher. That was unusual. He was in that class for just a couple of weeks. The teacher's phone number was sent to me. The student asked me to spam-call the teacher. 172.71.155.55 22:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

here i'm just messing around in html, ignore this

^furhhfghure _{guyrburgryhuyvfr} "rvhru"

interesting way of writing quotations xd

hmmm this one of putting "<p>" in a line break will come in handy for when i want it to start at the same place than the first line

Please beware that <p> on mediawiki also disables automatic paragraph breaks, so you need a closing </p> or you'll break automatic paragraph formatting for the rest of the page. Zmatt (talk) 22:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

edit: da hek did that "</div>" come from An user who has no account yet (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

hi uh its hard to get here. is this a reference to undocumented feature??? hmm... this is interesting.
108.162.241.216 02:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

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45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

yum yum [citation needed]

Hiuiedeixgeyceiyedhcdiedcve {{trout}}

This is the leaderboard:

Last 7 days (Top 50)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 26 26 26 Victoria 2 16 9 21 GSLikesCats307 3 16 13 15 TheusafBOT 4 12 4 19 DollarStoreBa'al 5 11 8 11 Maxwell Jackson 6 9 5 9 August Fuller 7 8 2 11 Fephisto 8 6 3 6 WikipedianPolitician 9 5 2 5 Barry Margolin 10 5 3 4 Aprilfoolsupdate! 11 5 2 4 DKMell 12 4 1 4 Mirror Spock 13 4 1 4 Cy1110 14 4 4 4 Ukrpickaxe 15 4 2 3 BunsenH 16 4 1 3 管委会篝火无法解放军“赐额“你去呢管理哦法？ 17 4 1 3 Kynde 18 3 1 2 Minecraftip 19 3 1 2 Tibbs 20 3 1 2 William 21 3 3 3 1234231587678 22 3 3 3 SacrifycedStoat 23 2 2 2 GreatWyrmGold 24 2 2 2 Logalex8369 25 2 2 2 Graham87 26 1 1 1 Chronotix 27 1 1 1 User 8496351 28 1 1 1 Elektrizikekswerk 29 1 1 1 Bucky Edgett 30 1 1 1 Ambersant 31 1 1 1 R128 32 1 1 1 Trimutius 33 1 1 1 Jim Prescott 34 1 1 1 Qwertyuiopfromdefly 35 1 1 1 Sameldacamel34 36 1 1 1 Chris 37 1 1 1 DiamondNether90 38 1 1 1 John Early 39 1 1 1 Mtcv 40 1 1 1 PDesbeginner 41 1 1 1 Jonas Langlotz 42 1 1 1 Pere López 43 1 1 1 Broseph 44 1 1 1 Erika lovelace 45 1 1 1 ShadowPenguin 46 1 1 1 Flicky 47 1 1 1 Treeplate 48 1 1 1 Orgu 49 1 1 1 These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For 50 1 1 1 Galadhremmin

<a href=" [AT THE JULY 28TH MEETING][tab] "Cancel the meeting! Our cover is blown."> More testing: hello ​ does​this​work (yes​it​does) This isn't a good name (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

‮hi 164.58.172.158 14:21, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

What is this?????????????????????? King Pando (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2026 (UTC)‭
        Add comment