Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, who helped
develop inflationary theory but is now a scathing critic of it, says that while the new study may be a blow for the theory, it pales in significance compared with inflation's other problems.
Andrei Linde, a cosmologist at Stanford University in California who
developed one of the most theoretically successful models of inflation, agrees: «If these results are right,
inflationary theory has passed its most difficult test ever.»