Ripples in the CMB finally show the effect of the cosmic inflation, a holy grail of cosmology and one achievement for the scientists involved.
In a double score it also give further support for the idea of inflation and gravity waves in the first moment after the big bang.

New Daily story

Cool!

(Now they just need to actually get one of the gravitational wave detectors to register one...)

So this cosmic inflation thing... never been too clear on it... this is something that happened immediately after the Big Bang, rather than an alternative to Big Bang theory, right?

One news article I saw about this was going on about multiverse stuff... is that related to inflation at all?

My recollection from having read Alan Guth's great book, "The Inflationary Universe," is that the idea for inflation was spurred by the fact that the universe we see could not have arisen from the Big Bang as originally proposed. Inflation was needed to explain differences in the composition and distribution of matter in our current universe as well as its apparent size.

Edit: Another great book by George Smoot, "Wrinkles in time," describes events paving the way for the pioneering (COBE) mission to map the cosmic microwave background.

As far as I know, inflation as used in the Big Bang theory for the creation of our universe does not automatically imply the creation of multiple universes, but can imply that our own universe is much much larger than we can ever hope to see.

Disclaimer: I have no in depth knowledge in this area.

Inflation is mainly needed to explain the flatness of space-time, and the evenness of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), with only sublte features.

If the universe started (almost) from a singularity, it should have expanded like a surface of a ball (but one dimension higher, called a 3-sphere). Such a surface should be curved. But the curvature of the observable universe is below the limits of measurement, meaning it's almost flat. Hence we can observe only a tiny fraction of the universe; most of the universe is and has been receding faster than light, hence is not observable. A phase of fast expansion (inflation) in the very early universe is a possible explanation.

A slowly expanding universe should contract locally by gravity, and hence show clear large-scale heterogeneities, including features of the CMB, but it doesn't. This can be explained by inflation.

But these two arguments are just plausibilities. Gravitational waves, caused by the acceleration of mass/energy, and recorded in the CMB, provide direct evidence for cosmic inflation.

Multiverse theories are not feasible to evidence by observation; they refere to hypothetical universes outside our space-time, and try to work around an answer why our universe has exactly the properties (constants, laws of nature) it has; hence multiverse theories are off-topic in this forum.

Yes inflation is a bit of add-on to the Big bang theory, and not one alternative, one can view it as a refinement of the original theory.

One way of viewing the inflation phase is to imagine that the natural laws as we know them today still not had settled with the values we're use to have during that extremely short moment.
In fact, more than one research group have been looking for changes in these laws at very distant objects, but found none.

So whatever it was that happened in that very short timespan, 10 -32 second it appear to be limited that that very brief time. (Tried to use <sup> formatting but did not work in preview)

The speculation of what might happen if the natural laws were just a bit different comes as a consequence of that yet that has led to quite some fuzzy thinking with disputable logic.
So as Gerald pointed out this is not a matter that fit within the scope for this forum. Rather one for speculative Science fiction!

OK, thank you!

So there is still thought to have been a Big Bang immediately before the inflationary epoch, rather than the inflation being a new model for the Big Bang itself? Is that correct?

In the strict sense, yes.

The sequence of the first 10 seconds after the Big Bang is thought to have been about as follows:

• 0 - 10e-43 s: Planck epoch, causality needed to come into existence, all four forces of the standard model of particle physics unified,
• 10e-43 s - 10e-36 s: grand unified (GUT) epoch, separation (symmetrie breaking) of gravity from the three remaining forces still unified (strong/weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism),
• 10e-36 s - 10e-32 s: inflation, exponentially accelerating expansion of the universe,
• 10e-36 s / 10e-32 s - 10e-12 s: electroweak epoch, separation of the strong interaction, leaving weak interaction and electromagnetism unified to the electroweak interaction,
• 10e-12 s - 10e-6 s: quark epoch, quark-gluon plasma, all four fundamental forces separated
• 10e-6 s - 1 s: hadron epoch, quarks (bound by gluons) form hadrons, e.g. protons and neutrons, hadron - anti-hadron formation and -annihilation,
• 1 s - 10 s: lepton epoch, lepton - anti-lepton formation and -annihilation, electrons are leptons.

This is followed by a few minutes of nucleosyntheses, then 380,000 years plasma of atomic nuclei (mostly protons, some helium nuclei, few lithium), electrons, photons (photon epoch). After this the universe has cooled down to allow atoms to form, and to become transparent; the radiation of the end of the photon epoch is now redshifted to the CMB by ongoing expansion of the universe.

Ah - thank you again!

@Vultur Yes and no, the original Big bang theory dealt with the idea of something like a primordial seed that went unstable and exploded.

Our current thinking rather deals with the idea of a giant quantum event.

Perhaps you know that a pair consisting of a particle and one antiparticle can spawn into existence seemingly from nothing.
Only to immediately annihilate each other.
This is something that often happen quietly right under our noses without us even noticing, but the most violent stellar explosions called pair-instability supernova are thought to be powered by the creation of electron-anti electron pairs.

The Big bang as we think of it now is somewhat like the same kind of event creating a pair of particles, one normal and the other the anti-particle, only scaled up to one immense scale.

That's the reason there's been a number of studies looking for anti matter both in our own galaxy as well as in the very distance cosmos.
When none were found there's been many papers written dealing with this matter antimatter asymmetry.
And the creation and study of anti hydrogen also deals with this to some part.
Some are attempting to see if it might be just a little bit different, which would explain the event would be lopsided favouring matter over antimatter.

As one amateur only trying to keep up with the discussion on these matters, I have a feeling that we have not heard the last word yet on this.

How to say this correctly, here...

One of the things that really fascinates me about cosmology is how we have a somewhat self-consistent mathematical model for the Big Bang which postulates "the fabric of spacetime" inflating at speeds far faster than C, and how it can be flat or curved, locally bent, even completely ingested into gravitational point sources. And yet we have no description or model, really, of exactly what the "fabric of spacetime" actually is, the mechanisms by which it can inflate, be distorted by mass, etc. We have macro- and micro-models of "reality" that don't mesh, either conceptually or mathematically, and the abyss that lies between must be where these mechanisms are hiding from our view.

Physics, as far as it has progressed in the past century or so, is now to the point where it can ask basic, cogent questions. But it's not yet to the point where they can be answered.

An exciting time to be alive, eh?

-the other Doug

If you have to ask that question - why are you posting it?

It is an interesting conundrum, Doug. I am no cosmologist, but one thought exercise I use to try to imagine inflation is simply working my way through the unfolding of a point into a line, into a plane, into a cube, and finally into a tessaract. In the final event, volume increases 8 times in a single unfolding, the process of which has no sequence or flow--it's just there. At this point, adding one more dimension gets me from point to vast volume in a single conceptual leap.

Although this is only an imperfect analog, it helps me get away from the explosion viewpoint (matter being flung out from a "center of everything") to inflation perspective (physics coming into existence as dimensions unfold). At least it gives me a sensible springboard to think about foam, strings, and branes (of which I have so few--I'm just a little bear).

The genius of Salvador Dali's painting, Corpus Hypercubus, is that it depicts this human perspective of transcendent physics in common memes. And yet it is but a Cargo Cult representation of the technology that we do not comprehend behind the growing manifestations of this universe that has visited us.

I agree we live in a really exciting time.

But I have to say that we've made some inroads into understanding parts of this 'fabric of spacetime even in understanding it mathematically, the Casimir effect for example were predicted already in 1947, but it took many decades before it could be directly proven.

So I do have the impression that we have even been given some answers, even though I agree that a comprehensible theory seem to be quite distant.

And MarsInMyLifetime did provide a concept for us amateurs on how we could envision inflation also. 'The bottom line for the cause might be that Aristotle were right: Nature abhors a vacuum.

So, looking at the image: http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/03/17/gravity_waves.jpg

Is it just me, or does that look kinda like an interference pattern?


Doug M.

...Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation offers a possible solution to observable quantum effects, however.

Andy

If we're going to talk multiverse and many worlds, we might as well start a UFO thread as well.

LET'S NOT - ADMIN

My job here is done.

Some doubts about all this ...
Physical Review Letters - BICEP2 researcher agree more studies needed.

Let's wait for the corresponding Planck papers later this year.

A Joint Analysis of BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck Data

IGW = inflationary gravitational waves

Yes this looked very good and solid when they published, but comparing with Planck data revealed that some of the result were caused by dust.
It was on a channel of TV here not so long ago with interviews with both teams, their equipment and how they had arrived at the result. And that was treating the US team nicely since it have turned out that they in their rush to publish had used one image of the distribution of dust taken from a power point presentation.
Yes I started this thread, and honestly thought those people had a better foundation for their claims when publishing.

Many involved (myself included) were sceptical from the start, and what BICEP actually wrote in the paper was quite measured. Unfortunately, the BICEP team appears to not have controlled the message put out in their institution's press release material, which probably gave the impression of a solid result. So you're not to blame!

Incredible, but true. But sensibly, that part had to be removed from BICEP's paper before it could be published.

Yes. A year ago BICEP said they saw a total signal of gravity waves + dust at about 20% (compared to ordinary matter fluctuations). BICEP thought it most likely (based in part on that presentation image!) that only a few of that 20% was dust, leaving something like 17% for gravity waves. Now with Planck we see that possibly all of the 20% is dust. But there are uncertainties here, and as much as about 8% could still be gravity waves. We'll have to wait for better telescopes to narrow that down better.

Thank you for your nice reply fredk. =)

A carefully phrased paper actually do give me a sense of credence for what is published even if it is a subject I have no good insight in.
The facts I knew was that it was based on a long study which should have given numerous datapoints, and the time spent for analyse the data made it seem good.

You are rather kind with them also, whereas I personally now view this matter on par with certain papers on cloning and stemcells.
"Incredible" is almost an understatement after the Nobel price class claims, though I am not the only one who come with a red face in this matter, there should be some tomato impersonators among their reviewers also. =)

That's right, they did a very good job of measuring the total, 20%. Where they failed was in what they did and said about how much of that might be dust. And in controlling the public release.
This is true: there were some overly optimistic statements from experts in the field who should've known better, and from some non-experts who should've said nothing!

ADMIN: This topic has run afoul of forum rule 2.6 and at the risk of attracting further '20/20 hindsight' comments, has been closed.