  We argue that the scale-free spectrum that is observed in the cosmic
microwave background is the result of a phase transition in the early universe.
The observed tilt of the spectrum, which has been measured to be 0.04, is shown
to be equal to the anomalous scaling dimension of the correlation function. The
phase transition replaces inflation as the mechanism that produces this
spectrum. The tilt further indicates that there is a fundamental small length
scale in nature that we have not yet observed in any other way.
