First Direct Evidence of Cosmic Inflation (and First Images of Gravitational Waves)

[dakhun]

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-05Read more... )

Comments

[whitetail]

I really wish I could talk cosmology and astrophysics with you in person someday.

[dakhun]

I would certainly discuss these topics with you. :-)

[rcking]

Yes, this is quite awesome and so very hard to explain to the general public.

Cosmology has always looked like the "crazy uncle" of the physical sciences, so many evolving contradictory theories hyped by popular science magazines... ( especially future theories: big crunch, big rip, big whimper, etc) and so much depending on theories so difficult to support with solid evidence.

Cosmology finally got a break. Theoretical predictions matched by data. Sweet.

By the way - where did you get the value 10^78 ?

[dakhun]

1078 is just the amount of linear expansion during inflation, 1026, cubed to give the amount of volume expansion. That was too hasty and simplistic on my part, so allow me to correct that:

During the interval in which inflation occurred, the universe would have expanded by a factor of about 103 anyway in the Inflationary model if somehow inflation didn't occur. Note that in the Inflationary model the universe initially expands much slower than in the Standard model. Also, the horizon of the observable universe has crept outward since the end of inflation.

Taking everything together, the actual ratio of linear size of the entire universe to the observable universe is currently more like 3x1023, which cubed gives the ratio of volume to be 2.7×1070.

[rcking]

Thanks for elaborating!