Cosmic Inflation and the Origin of the Universe

Jason Kendall
Jason Kendall
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Published 2024-04-01
The Inflationary Epoch happened or something nearly exactly like it, happened when the universe was extremely young. During the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) Era, the universe became the nearly flat, critical-density Cosmos we see today. In order to understand it, we have to bring in an incomplete theory: Quantum Gravity. We use this to approximate the wild phase transitions that must have occurred in order to force the expansion of space at speeds exponentially greater than light! From an early quantum foam, arose a false-vaccuum that contained all the energy of the cosmos. Oddly enough, this epoch can be observed as effects of gravitational waves on CMB. The Inflationary Epoch solves a number of problems associated with the Standard Big Bang model. It also raises some wild questions about the nature of the origin of the cosmos. This is part of my complete intro Astronomy class that I taught at Willam Paterson University and CUNY Hunter.

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The basics: simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)
Inflationary epoch: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflationary_epoch
Cosmological Inflation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)
Critical Density: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations#Density_…
Grand Unified Theory (GUT): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory
Quantum Gravity: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_gravity
Phase Transition: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_transition
BICEP2 attempt to see effects of gravitational waves on CMB: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BICEP_and_Keck_Array
False Vacuum: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum
Quantum Foam: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam
All Comments (12)
  • @robynsnest8668
    Thank you for all these lectures. Some over my head, have questions on some things, just love all of it. Thanks for all the work! Have seen just about all of them by now.
  • @TheFeltbegone
    Seems like a lot of work just so you can make apple pie
  • Thank you for another amazing video! Portugal <3
  • @davidhand9721
    I can never understand why homogeneity is such a problem for so many physicists and cosmologists. To me, a difference is information, and it demands an explanation. That things are uniform is the null hypothesis; no differences across space at early epochs is exactly what we should expect. What would have caused deviations? Put another way, the state of any volume of space is a function of the conditions in its past light cone. If the big bang follows relativity to the letter, the past light cones of every point in space time are almost entirely congruent, and at some point, they converge to a point. How much difference should we expect between these volumes when they are all causally derived from the very same domain? If the big bang truly had a singularity, then all points of space were causally connected to each other from the beginning. To me, it's strange that we see any difference across space until the fundamental forces have a chance to draw matter together. I'm absolutely baffled as to why this presents a surprise, much less a serious problem for the model. When were the differences supposed to appear? What was supposed to cause them?
  • @Thengloz
    How can the early universe be hot if there is no particles to vibrate and the forces are undefined properties while doing symmetry breaking
  • @davidhand9721
    Magnetic monopoles aren't possible according to Maxwell's equations. All magnetic field lines are cyclic, they do not terminate. If monopoles exist, then they must be infinitely far away. I think this has to be a math error.
  • @davidhand9721
    The weak interaction is not mediated by neutrinos as far as I know...
  • @74wrighty
    Gravity is not a force. It's the curvature of space time.