If cosmic inflation is indeed occurring, doe this apply to all space/time? What about the space between an electron and the nucleus? Seems to me if that space is also expanding, atoms should cease to exist. Or are quantum spaces somehow exempt from inflation?
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Cosmic inflation is a popular but disputed theory of the exponential expansion of space in the first tiny fraction of a second after the presumed Big Bang singularity. No atoms existed at this time, as the universe was far too hot - in fact, there weren't even hadrons (such as protons).
This inflationary epoch was followed by the quark epoch, when the universe was filled with a dense, hot quark–gluon plasma. It was only several epochs later, in the photon epoch (about 10 seconds after the Big Bang) that atomic nuclei were created.
Inflation is different to the metric expansion of space, which is the increase in the distance between two distant parts of the universe over time. This metric expansion is ongoing and is currently accelerating.
If this acceleration continues, the Big Rip cosmological model proposes that in the very far future atoms will indeed be torn apart and cease to exist.
