Cosmic Inflation
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In 1964, scientists discovered a faint radio hiss coming from the heavens and realized that the hiss wasn’t just noise. It was a message from eons ago; specifically the remnants of the primordial fireball, cooled to about 3 degrees above absolute zero. Subsequent research revealed that the radio hiss was the same in every direction. The temperature of the early universe was uniform to at better than a part in a hundred thousand. And this was weird. According to the prevailing theory, the two sides of the universe have never been in contact. So how could two places that had never been in contact be so similar? One possible explanation was proposed in 1979. Called inflation, the theory required that early in the history of the universe, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Confused? Watch this video as Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln makes sense of this mind-bending idea.
Comments
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Great and vital information!!!
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non physics major here, I though that the inflation field remained in a high potential energy state as space expanded really really fast and then "fell down" resulting in the conversion of energy into radiation/matter and stopped the massive cosmic expansion? so how could the inflation stop if matter existed before the expansion ?
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if everything started as a single uniform point that expanded for some reason I would think it would be uniform. Like blowing up a pumpkin from the inside. Not like dropping food coloring in water. I still don't get why this is a problem. If it started out uniformly I'd just assume it would expand uniformly as it is doing now.
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2:42 Is it not possible that gravity 14 billion years ago, and Gravitational Lensing at this distance has caused all light to turn back on itself. So any direction you look in you're seeing generally the same field of view. Check to see if any parts overlay match. Thank you and I'am a fan of Inflation, but need to chew on it a while...
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Energy = m * c^2 ... is he saying mass can be negative when he said gravity has negative energy. From what I learned energy is a scalar quantity not a vector quantity. If energy can be negative, then there is a direction to energy.
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Except if the universe started out uniform. Why would it not, why do you assume that different parts should look different at first?
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"..believe it or not". In science we don't 'believe' things - we 'accept' things. Carry on.
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Great analysis, Don. As I understand it, finding gravitational waves would be the smoking gun Inflation advocates are waiting for. But as you know, there are other models (besides Inflation) that will explain (1) homogeneity and isotropy, (2) Flatness, where Omega = 1, and (3) the small nonuniformities (10 ppm) owing to quantum fluctuations. The model advanced by Steinhardt and Turok explains what we've observed equally well, but without the fine-tuning Inflation requires. Their model of the cyclic universe (M-theory cosmology or ekpyrotic universe) is an attractive alternative to Inflation.
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Thanks, this really helped explain something that I just couldn't figure out -- how energy increased when space expanded.
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An interesting topic it is … but, what about the original singularity … hmm, if everything was @ one point then what about … ???
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It's only hard to understand how the universe can be uniform in all directions if you assume that the original condition was not uniform. Why do people think this was the case? Maybe everything was uniform to begin with, since all that existed in the beginning - to my knowledge - was energy, and later quarks and so on. If this was the case, then the analogy of dropping two different colours of liquid in the water is wrong, since the beginning condition was uniform. Why do people assume that the condition of the universe in the beginning was not uniform?
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ALAN JOHNSON!!!!!!!!! :D
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The video actually cleared up a lot what expansion tries to explains to me, but I always come away with plenty of unresolved questions. One of the problems I always can’t get past is when someone says something like the universe was the “size of a marble.” Since the Big Bang is the expansion of space itself, saying the universe has a particular size implies you are either outside measuring it, or inside it with a ruler measuring from one side to the other. I’ll watch the Big Bang video next.
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I thought you were Ellen Degeneres from the thumbnail of the video. :'D
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there a thing thats disturbing me quite a lot , i mean only 4000 round views and even on other more popular science channels view aren't as much on that Gangnam Style crap.
i feel humanity is doomed -
CMB emitted locally be Dark “Stars”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpuidyXxqWY
Our Solar System really travels thru cosmic scale Uranium Dioxide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkQxxcszGE -
I don't understand. The term inflation implies a border, such the rubber border of a party balloon growing in size upon inflating. But then what is the "balloon" of space growing into? There must be something beyond the border. You cannot call that space because you've said that the laws of relativity do not apply to the expansion rate of the universe to the size of a marble. It follows that we cannot devise an experiment to test the expansion of space since any experiment will always occur inside relativistic space. And please expand on the difference between inflation to the size of a marble and "ordinary big bang" expansion.
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Amazing video. You guys are getting better with each video :-)
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man, these are always cool ☺️
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Fascinating. Thanks!
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