New theory of secondary inflation expands options for avoiding an excess of dark matter

Standard cosmology—that is, the Big Bang Theory with its early period of exponential growth known as inflation—is the prevailing scientific model for our universe, in which the entirety of space and time ballooned out from a very hot, very dense point into a homogeneous and ever-expanding vastness. This theory accounts for many of the physical phenomena we observe. But what if that's not all there was to it?