We summarize three recent efforts to constrain the first few moments ofcosmic creation before and during the epoch of inflation. We consider two meansto explain a slight dip in the power spectrum of the cosmic microwavebackground for multipoles in the range of $\ell= 10-30$ from both the {\itPlanck} and {\it WMAP} data. We show that such a dip could be the result ofresonant creation of a massive particle that couples to the inflaton field. Forbest-fit models, the epoch of resonant particle creation reenters the horizonat wave numbers of $k_* \sim 0.00011 \pm 0.0004 $ ($h$ Mpc$^{-1}$). Theamplitude and location of these features correspond to the creation of a numberof degenerate fermion species of mass $\sim 15/\lambda^{3/2} $ $m_{pl}$ duringinflation where $\lambda$ is the coupling constant between the inflaton fieldand the created fermion species. Alternatively, one can explain the existenceof such a dip as due to a jump in the inflation generating potential. We showthat such a jump can also resolve the excessively large dark flow predictedfrom the M-theory landscape. Finally, we summarize our efforts to quantifyconstraints on the cosmic dark flow from a new analysis of the Type Iasupernova distance-redshift relation.
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