The Inflation Theory proposes that the universe experienced a period of extremely rapid (exponential) expansion in its early beginnings. It was created about 1980 to explain a number of issues with the traditional Big Bang theory, which states that the cosmos expands slowly over time.
Inflation theory explains what?
The Inflation Theory proposes that the universe experienced a period of extremely rapid (exponential) expansion in its early beginnings. It was created around 1980 to explain a number of puzzles with the standard Big Bang theory, which states that the universe expands slowly over time.
What is the inflation theory of Alan Guth?
Scientists stated earlier this week that a telescope studying tiny echoes of the so-called “The discovery of evidence of the universe’s virtually instantaneous expansion from a single dot to a dense ball holding more than 1090 particles was dubbed “Big Bang.” The BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole was used to make this discovery, which provides the first convincing evidence of “Cosmic inflation” describes the expansion of our universe billions of times over at its inception.
Alan Guth, presently the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at MIT, first presented the hypothesis of cosmic inflation in 1980. With MIT News, he explained the relevance of the recent BICEP2 findings.
Q: Could you describe the cosmic inflation idea that you proposed in 1980?
A: I typically refer to inflation as an economic theory “The “big bang” of the Big Bang explains the propelling mechanism that accelerated the expansion of the cosmos into the period known as the Big Bang. The Big Bang theory was never a theory of the bang in its original form. It didn’t say what went off, why it went off, or what transpired before it went off.
The initial Big Bang theory was actually a notion about what happened after the explosion. The cosmos was already extremely hot and dense, and it was expanding at a breakneck speed. The idea explained how the expansion of the cosmos cooled it and how the attracting force of gravity slowed it.
Inflation theorizes that a repulsive kind of gravity drove the universe’s expansion. Gravity is a solely attractive force according to Newton, however this altered with Einstein’s discovery of general relativity. Gravity is described as a deformation of spacetime in general relativity, which allows for repulsive gravity.
Modern particle theories strongly suggest that there should be types of matter that cause repelling gravity at very high energies. Inflation, on the other hand, suggests that this repulsive-gravity substance filled at least a small portion of the early cosmos. The first patch could have been as small as 10-24 centimeter, or 100 billion times smaller than a single proton. Under the effect of repulsive gravity, the little patch would then begin to rapidly spread, doubling in size every 10-37 seconds. To adequately describe our observable universe, the region would have to double in size by at least 80 times, resulting in a size of around 1 centimeter. It might have gone through a lot more doublings, but this is the minimum that is required.
Any conventional substance would thin down during exponential expansion, with the density dropping to nearly nothing. In this scenario, however, the behavior is quite different: the repulsive-gravity material keeps a constant density as it expands, regardless of how much it expands! While this may appear to be a flagrant breach of the conservation of energy principle, it is actually entirely consistent.
This flaw is based on a strange characteristic of gravity: a gravitational field’s energy is negative. More energy, in the form of matter, is created as the patch extends at a constant density. However, when the gravitational field that is filling the region expands, more and more negative energy appears. As a result, the total energy remains constant, as it must, and remains very little.
It’s possible that the total energy of the cosmos is exactly zero, with matter’s positive energy totally cancelled out by gravity’s negative energy. I often joke that the universe is the ultimate free lunch, because it takes no energy to create one.
Because the repulsive-gravity material becomes metastable, inflation eventually comes to a stop. The repulsive-gravity material decays into regular particles, resulting in a very hot soup of particles that serves as the traditional Big Bang’s beginning point. The repellent gravity cuts off at this moment, but the region continues to spread in a coasting pattern for billions of years. Inflation is thus a precursor to the epoch cosmologists refer to as the Big Bang, despite the fact that it occurred after the Big Bang, which is generally referred to as the Big Bang.
Q: What is the significance of the new result announced this week, and how does it corroborate your theory?
A: The stretching effect of inflation’s amazing expansion tends to smooth things out, which is good for cosmology because a regular explosion would have left the universe splotchy and uneven. The early cosmos was very uniform, as evidenced by the afterglow of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, with a mass density that was constant to one part in 100,000.
Gravity magnified the few nonuniformities that did exist: in regions where the mass density was slightly greater than normal, a stronger-than-average gravitational field was formed, which drew in even more matter, resulting in an even stronger gravitational field. However, tiny nonuniformities at the end of inflation were required for structure to form at all.
These nonuniformities, which later produce stars, galaxies, and the entire structure of the cosmos, are attributed to quantum theory in inflationary models. Everything is in a constant state of agitation on very low distance scales, according to quantum field theory. If we looked at empty space with a hypothetical, strong magnifying glass, we’d notice crazy oscillations in the electric and magnetic fields, with even electrons and positrons coming out of the vacuum and disappearing quickly. With its amazing expansion, inflation has the effect of stretching these quantum oscillations to macroscopic dimensions.
The COBE spacecraft observed the temperature nonuniformities in the cosmic microwave background for the first time in 1992, and a lengthy and spectacular sequence of ground-based, balloon-based, and satellite investigations have subsequently studied them with greater and greater precision. They show a high level of agreement with inflation forecasts. These findings, however, have not been widely accepted as proof of inflation, in part because it is unclear whether inflation is the sole plausible explanation of these variations.
Inflation’s stretching effect, on the other hand, affects the geometry of space itself, which is flexible according to general relativity. Space can be twisted, crushed, or extended. Due to the mechanics of quantum theory, the geometry of space fluctuates on microscopic scales, and inflation stretches these fluctuations, producing gravity waves in the early cosmos.
The current result, by John Kovac and the BICEP2 collaboration, is a very high-confidence detection of these gravity waves. They don’t observe the gravity waves directly; instead, they’ve built a highly precise map of the CMB’s polarization in a patch of sky. They noticed a whirling pattern in the polarization (which they dubbed “Only gravity waves in the early universe or the gravitational lensing effect of matter in the late universe may produce B modes.
The primordial gravity waves, on the other hand, can be distinguished since they occur on greater angular scales, and the BICEP2 team has successfully isolated their contribution. This is the first time that any quantum properties of gravity have been directly observed, as well as the first time that even a hint of these primordial gravity waves has been detected.
Q: How would you explain the significance of these new discoveries, as well as your reaction to them?
A: These new findings have significant ramifications. First and foremost, they greatly assist in confirming the inflation picture. As far as we know, the only thing that may cause these gravity waves is inflation. Second, it enlightens us on many aspects of inflation that we were previously unaware of. It determines, in particular, the energy density of the cosmos at the time of inflation, which had previously been subject to a wide variety of possibilities.
The new conclusion tells us a lot about which detailed versions of inflation are still viable and which are no longer viable by measuring the energy density of the cosmos at the time of inflation. The current conclusion is not definitive in and of itself, but it does hint in the direction of the most basic inflationary models that can be built.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the new result is more akin to the opening of a new window than the conclusion of the story. The BICEP2 consortium, as well as many other groups, will continue to research these B modes now that they have been discovered. They provide a novel instrument for studying the early universe’s dynamics, particularly the inflationary process.
When I (and others) began researching the impacts of quantum fluctuations in the early 1980s, I never imagined that these effects would ever be measured. To me, it was merely a game to see if my coworkers and I could agree on how the fluctuations should theoretically seem. As a result, I’m blown away by astronomers’ success in measuring these minute impacts, notably the BICEP2 team’s latest result. We should wait for confirmation from other groups before accepting it as reality, but the group appears to have been very careful, and the result is pretty clean, so I believe it will stand up.
What exactly is the flaw in the inflation theory?
Is the hypothesis of cosmic inflation true in the early universe, and if so, what are the features of this epoch? What is the scalar field of hypothesized inflatons that caused cosmic inflation? Is inflation, if it occurred once, self-sustaining through the inflation of quantum-mechanical fluctuations, and so continuing at some faraway location?
Because there was no one-time Big Bang, the one-time cosmic inflation theory is incorrect. There would be no one-time cosmic inflation if there was no one-time Big Bang. We need to rethink inflation and how it works in our steady-state universe.
Guth attributed his inflation to a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence and process (but not one place). NPQG envisions a continuous stream of asynchronous processes that run in parallel. In hindsight, it will be clear that both cosmic inflation and the Big Bang theories were anthropocentric. As if the universe was made only for us!
In essence, Guth came very close to being correct, and I’m not sure if he still believes in the ‘one time’ interpretation. Guth’s inflationary hypothesis, in any event, fits in nicely with NPQG and the immutable point charge universe. The negative pressure vortex event during an inflationary mini-bang, as I see it. The point charges in a Planck core are packed at roughly 10-35 meters center to center, and it’s possible that frame dragging effects are drawing lower-energy aether into close proximity to the core.
According to Dr. Paul Sutter, inflation is attempting to solve a real problem. “Ask a Spaceman, The Ultimate Guide to Cosmic Inflation (Parts 1-4)” is available to view. While Paul claims that one-time cosmic inflation theory lends itself to a set of predictions, he also claims that it has some flaws. Let’s look at these topics and see how NPQG does.
Problems Solved By Inflation
Inflation is presented as a possible explanation for the cosmos’ large-scale structure. In particular, inflation provides a causal link for the cosmic microwave background’s isotropy (CMB). Scientists believe “the CMB is the flash of the Big Bang, cooled down by the expansion of the cosmos,” according to Sir Roger Penrose. Quantum fluctuations during early inflation, according to scientists, lead to large-scale structure in the universe.
Predictions Made By Inflation
According to inflation, the structures seen in the Universe today resulted from the gravitational collapse of perturbations that originated as quantum mechanical fluctuations during the inflationary period.
The observed perturbations should be in thermal equilibrium with each other, according to inflation. The Planck spacecraft, WMAP spacecraft, and other cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, as well as galaxy surveys, have all confirmed this structure for the perturbations.
Except if the Planck satellite observations in our steady-state universe were of typical radiation at that distance. That is correct.
The Weaknesses And Failures of the One Time Inflationary Big Bang.
If you look at the ideas below, you’ll notice that they were once flaws in the big bang hypothesis that have now been transformed into inflationary achievements. Given how off-kilter both hypotheses are, it’s rather strange!
The Horizon Problem According to the Big Bang theory, cosmic microwave background is leftover light from the early cosmos that has been redshifted by a factor of z = 1090 on its journey to our observatories. The cosmic microwave background is isotropic (the same) to 1 part in 100000, according to sky surveys. How can we account for this isotropy in parts of the universe that aren’t in causal contact? This is referred to as the “The answer to the “horizon problem” has been presented as inflation prior to the Big Bang.
In NPQG, where the variance in the cosmic microwave background is 1 part in 100000, there is no requirement for a causal connection of the universe. We have a Planck limits size process, governed by the same physics, throughout the universe, with galaxy-local mini-bangs and galaxy-local inflation. Isotropy is a natural expectation in NPQG.
The Flatness Problem Because Einstein’s spacetime geometry is curvy, it raises the question of how the universe’s curvature changes over time. Why is the cosmos’ curvature so close to zero now? According to Dr. Sutter, the cosmos had to be extraordinarily flat at the moment of the Big Bang if you work backwards. Who placed the order for that? What is the significance of zero?
Because NPQG is based on a 3D Euclidean space and time, which is perfectly geometrically flat, there is no such flatness issue. Because flatness is the nature of space, there is nothing to explain using NPQG. In NPQG, it is the spacetime thother that implements curvature owing to changing energy density, i.e., gravity, and we may now resume our scientific investigation into local, regional expansion or contraction or fluctuations.
The Monopole Problem Dr. Sutter discusses how exotic the universe must be, given that it arises with extraordinarily high temperature and density in less than 10-35 seconds. By exotic, he means temperatures and densities that are several orders of magnitude higher than anything we can achieve in our most high-energy experiments. Sutter believes it’s in a plasma of oppositely charged particles, namely protons and electrons. He’s close, but the plasma is made up of electrino and positrino point charges.
Aside: I’m curious as to why no one has ever linked the concept of black hole singularity to the Big Bang. Isn’t it self-evident in hindsight? It’s as if scientists have collectively rejected this obvious link, rather than recognizing it and saying something about it “Hold on,” says the driver, “this is an indication that we’ve taken a bad turn!” The scientific approach has another another shortcoming. Self-corrections of the magnitude required in particle physics and cosmology are difficult to achieve via the scientific method. p.s. I believe Penrose comes the closest to making the connection with his conformal cyclic cosmology, but when considering CCC at the scale of the entire universe, he is completely lost in scale.
What natural forces are present at the Planck scale? When discussing Planck particles in a Planck core, it’s important to note that the internal Planck particles aren’t involved in much. They’ve used up all of their energy, and so have their neighbors. Interior Planck particles are devoid of the weak, strong, and gravitational forces. What about Planck particles on the surface? They have complete freedom to react and expend energy. They are affected by gravity as well as electromagnetic and kinetic forces.
Emergence from a Planck core is a common occurrence in NPQG. Jets or ruptures of Planck plasma cause galaxy-local mini-bangs. How much more exotic are you looking for? The electrino:positrino dipole on the Planck scale is the ultimate structure that could exist. Planck energy point charges are the source of all standard matter-energy, including the other. It’s fascinating to consider which structures develop at Planck energy per point charge or close to it. The most primal emergent structure is undoubtedly the basic dipole, which consists of an electrino and positrino orbiting each other. What about Planck photons of generation III? Is there such a thing? It’s feasible that single electrinos and positrinos could be produced. These are not, however, magnetic monopoles. Magnetism is an emergent force in NPQG that is caused by moving charge. Without motion, there is no magnetism.
The Inflaton Field Problem It’s evident to me that physicists are obsessed with fields. It appears that physicists believe that any problem can be solved by creating a new field! Inflaton is significantly better defined with the mathematics of the dipoles that form Noether energy conservation cores.
The Seeding of Galaxies If there was ever a wacky Schrdinger’s cat’s litter claim, this is it. Seriously? How can the Big Bang / Inflation Theory claim to be the source of galaxies? In NPQG, galaxy-local processes are combined with common natural processes to shape the cosmos. At their scale, galaxies are the main process, and neither a Big Bang nor a one-time inflation are required. Also, while the cosmos appears to be unknowable from observation, NPQG makes no precise statements regarding whether it is infinite. The NPQG leaves the topic of the universe’s size and shape open for further scientific investigation. The NPQG model does not define the cosmos, unlike the Big Bang Inflation model is based on the geometry of a single inflating spacetime bubble. This is a crucial distinction because a theory with more degrees of freedom is also more frugal.
Quiz about inflationary theory.
What is inflationary theory, and how does it work? The hypothesis that there was a period in the early cosmos when the expansion was larger than at any other moment in the universe’s existence.
Who was the first to suggest the inflation theory?
The theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe is known as cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or simply inflation in physical cosmology. From 1036 seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to somewhere between 1033 and 1032 seconds following the singularity, the inflationary epoch lasted. The cosmos continued to grow after the inflationary epoch, but at a lesser rate. After the universe was already over 7.7 billion years old, dark energy began to accelerate its expansion (5.4 billion years ago).
Several theoretical physicists, including Alexei Starobinsky at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Alan Guth at Cornell University, and Andrei Linde at the Lebedev Physical Institute, contributed to the development of inflation theory in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 2014 Kavli Prize was awarded to Alexei Starobinsky, Alan Guth, and Andrei Linde “for pioneering the hypothesis of cosmic inflation.” It was further improved in the early 1980s. It describes how the universe’ large-scale structure came to be. The seeds for the growth of structure in the Universe are quantum fluctuations in the microscopic inflationary region, magnified to cosmic scale (see galaxy formation and evolution and structure formation). Inflation, according to many physicists, explains why the world appears to be the same in all directions (isotropic), why the cosmic microwave background radiation is dispersed uniformly, why the cosmos is flat, and why no magnetic monopoles have been found.
The precise particle physics mechanism that causes inflation remains unclear. Most physicists accept the basic inflationary paradigm since a number of inflation model predictions have been confirmed by observation; nonetheless, a significant minority of experts disagree. The inflaton is a hypothetical field that is supposed to be responsible for inflation.
In 2002, M.I.T. physicist Alan Guth, Stanford physicist Andrei Linde, and Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt shared the prestigious Dirac Prize “for development of the concept of inflation in cosmology.” For their discovery and development of inflationary cosmology, Guth and Linde were awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012.
What is Alan Guth and Andrei Linde’s theory?
Profile of a Laureate The 2004 Cosmology Prize was awarded to Andrei Linde and Alan Guth for their contributions to the development and refinement of the theory of cosmic inflation. As a junior particle physicist at Stanford University, Alan Guth came up with the concept of cosmic inflation.
What was Alan Guth’s method for discovering cosmic inflation?
Alan Guth is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist best known for his work on elementary particle theory and how particle theory can be applied to the early universe, and in particular for his concept of cosmic inflation and the inflationary universe, which he developed around 1980. Cosmic inflation is the idea that the nascent universe went through a phase of exponential expansion soon after the Big Bang, driven by a positive vacuum energy density.
Alan Harvey Guth was born on February 27, 1947, in the small town of New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Hyman and Elaine Guth, owners of a small grocery store and a dry-cleaning business. His early years were uneventful, however he displayed a significant knack for mathematics. He skipped his senior year to enroll in a five-year program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), mainly to avoid being recruited into the Vietnam War, which he passionately opposed. In 1969, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as well as a doctorate in 1972.
He married Susan Tisch, his high school sweetheart, in 1971, and the couple had two children: Lawrence (1977) and Jennifer (1979). (1983). Guth struggled to find a permanent job after graduation, partly due to intense competition for university professor positions due to the baby boom, and he spent nine years traveling across the country pursuing temporary post-doctoral jobs in physics, including stints at Princeton (19711974), Columbia (19741977), Cornell (19771979), and Stanford’s Linear Accelerator Center (1979 to 1980).
At Princeton, he focused on particle physics, specifically the study of quarks, the fundamental particles that make up protons and neutrons. However, his work was rendered obsolete by the invention of the quantum chromodynamics theory, which gave quarks a new distinctive property known as color, which was produced ironically right there at Princeton, unbeknownst to Guth.
Guth shifted his focus to cosmology and cosmogenesis at Columbia in 1974, focusing on magnetic monopoles (magnets with just one pole that had been predicted in principle by James Clerk Maxwell’s equations but had yet to be seen in the real world). Guth argued that the electroweak theory of Steven Weinberg may yield very small discontinuities with magnetic monopole characteristics as a result of spontaneous symmetry-breaking in the early cosmos.
He began developing his theory of cosmic inflation while at Cornell in 1978, when he was looking for solutions to the Big Bang model’s flatness problem, as well as a problem he had observed, the apparent lack of magnetic monopoles. He drew on earlier work by Steve Weinberg, specifically his Grand Unified Theory (an attempt to unify the electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces).
Guth proposed a solution to these issues that entailed a brief but quick period of supercooling during a delayed phase transition, resulting in a “false vacuum” (an unstable, temporary state of the lowest possible density of energy). The false vacuum would eventually decay into a low-energy true vacuum as a result of quantum tunneling, and Guth discovered that the decay of the false vacuum at the beginning of the universe could produce some amazing results, including a rapid expansion at ever-increasing rates, which he dubbed cosmic inflation.
Both Robert Dicke’s flatness problem and Guth’s own monopole problem were solved by the very large expansion of the cosmos induced by inflation. It did, however, resolve the horizon problem of the Big Bang theory (the recent observation that the cosmic microwave background radiation appeared to be extremely uniform thoughout the universe, with almost no variance, which was paradoxical because there should not have been enough time at the time of the creation of the cosmic background radiation for one end of the cosmos to have been in communication with the other end). However, according to Guth’s inflation theory, the cosmos expanded so swiftly that the essential homogeneity was not destroyed, and the universe after inflation would have been relatively uniform, even though the pieces were no longer in contact with one another.
Guth’s theories on cosmic inflation were initially presented in a conference at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in early 1980, and he went from being concerned about his career prospects to being inundated with offers almost immediately. In 1980, he returned to MIT and was promoted to professor of physics in 1986.
However, for a long time, Einstein couldn’t figure out how to stop inflation (so that stars and galaxies might form), an issue known as the “graceful exit” dilemma, and he regarded his own theory a failure as a result. However, after reading a paper by Russian physicist Andrei Linde (who had been working on the problem independently) and other work by Paul Steinhardt (who had also been working on the graceful exit problem) in late 1981, he began exchanging papers with these other theorists, assisting each other in the development of inflation theory, and there have been many other refinements and revisions since Guth’s original model.
Guth has lately revealed his conviction that our universe is merely one of several multiverse worlds that came into being among many others. This theory claims that cosmic inflation never stops, but rather continues to grow at an exponential rate, with new universes constantly being formed as “bubbles” within the inflation process (similar to Fred Hoyle’s discredited steady-state theory). He believes that quantum fluctuations from nothingness generated the entire cosmos (which he claims is completely consistent with the Law of Conservation of Energy because the overall energy value remains zero), and has been cited as saying that “the universe is the greatest free lunch.”
Guth continues to lecture at MIT and has published over 60 technical publications on the effects of cosmic inflation and its links with particle physics. He has received numerous accolades and decorations, including the Eddington Medal and the Medal of the International Center for Theoretical Physics. The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins, published in 1998, became a best-seller.
What exactly does Alan Guth research?
Alan Guth, an MIT professor, explores the origins of the universe. He studies inflation, including the prospect of igniting inflation in a hypothetical laboratory to create a new universe and if inflation is everlasting that is, whether it occurs everywhere in the universe at the same time.
Is the speed of light faster than inflation?
Cosmic inflation is a faster-than-light expansion of the universe that gave birth to a slew of new universes.
Inflation was created to explain a few aspects of the universe that would be difficult to explain otherwise. The first is that matter, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, bends space and time, so you’d expect a universe like ours, which has mass, to be overall curved in some way, either inward like a ball (“positive”) or outward like a saddle (“negative”).
In fact, it’s almost completely flat. Furthermore, even sections of it far apart in various directions as seen from Earth have nearly the same temperature, despite the fact that in an expanding cosmos, there wouldn’t have been enough time for heat to move between them to smooth things out. That appears to be a direct challenge to the rules of thermodynamics.
Cosmic inflation solves all of these issues at once. The universe grew faster than light in its early moments (light’s speed restriction only applies to things within the cosmos). That smoothed out the wrinkles in its early chaotic state and ensured that even now, far-flung areas could exchange heat because they were formerly in close proximity.