Observations taken over many years seem to confirm that something like inflation did occur in the early universe. Studies of the cosmic microwave background with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and the Planck mission, and of vast numbers of galaxies with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), show large-scale patterns in the distribution of matter and energy in the universe that are consistent with an inflationary universe. Much more research needs to be done, however, before inflation is definitively confirmed.