These are extremely good times for the inflationary cosmology. Its qualitative predictions have time and again provided the simplest interpretation of observational data, while historical rivals such as cosmic strings [22] have faded away. There is every prospect that upcoming observations will provide high-accuracy constraints on the models devised. The necessary theoretical ingredients all appear to be in place to allow predictions of the required sophistication to be made. We keenly await new observational data.
Acknowledgments
The author was supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust.