Will we ever know exactly how the universe ballooned into existence?
By Paul Sutter - Astrophysicist 13 days ago
(Image credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)
Physicists have long been unable to crack the mystery of what happened in the moments when a vanishingly small seed ballooned into the universe. Now, one scientist thinks he knows why they can't come up with a physical description of this phenomenon called inflation: The universe won't let us.
Specifically, the scientist describes a new conjecture that states, regarding the young universe, "the observer should be shielded" from directly observing the smallest structures in the cosmos.
In other words, by definition physicists may never be able to build a model of inflation using the usual tools, and they will have to come up with a better way.
But why not? This new conjecture, which is an opinion or thought based on incomplete information, points the finger of blame at a particular feature of inflation models. These models take very, very small fluctuations in spacetime and make them bigger. But we don't have a complete physical theory of those small fluctuations, and so models of inflation that have that feature (which is almost all of them) will never work.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/why-physicists-cant-see-inflation-big-bang.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LST_Newsletter&utm_content=LST_Newsletter+&utm_term=3403514&m_i=Tkn48LLOkalp_p7rQhKmW7sMZRoXpA802NRmXl_DM6%2BIvBlcYwjV5LOKrwok5dlbvCqGrqd5SZODX_VQPwwgaGFo2D9%2B0Yi44yhuJpDTTK&lrh=d43f3ce40e3ceae0368b3520fbc367f28c0c5e819c08493f82fed375e81c28a1
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