Why the IRS doesn't like me

You will have to forgive my sudden absence. It would appear that the IRS dislikes my birth date and I was summoned to ‘correct’ the ‘mistake.’ Even with my unyielding insistence on the truth of the date, they said I needed to change it or I would be sent to court. So I changed it. According to the government I was born in 1944 and am 65. It was quite an unpleasant weekend, but I made it through. And I have decided on something. I’m going to get help from an actual cosmologist on this inflation issue I am actually going to ask someone who knows what they are talking about it. Hopefully this will lend me a bit more information as to how and why inflation actually happened. And when I figure out the answer to those questions I will be sure to let you know. Until then I think it would be fruitful to move on to something else. I was thinking that we could explore the timeline of things a little better. We brushed over it to get a context for inflation but I think it merits a better exploration so this is what I shall be proceeding with. And for your viewing pleasure I have included a lol cat. Have a pleasant Sunday.

Inflation 7

Ok today we tackle the flatness problem, which is also solved by inflation (supposedly). It’s actually really, really simple when you take all the math out of it. Ed’s text has a considerable amount of math in it but I don’t know where it was derived from so I’m not gonna go there. But there is a simple explanation, and here it is. Inflation just stretches out the universe to its current flat state. It’s like if you have a balloon that got stuck behind the TV after the birthday party a month ago; ya know how it’s all wrinkly and bunchy. Well, if you take that balloon and somehow manage to untie it and blow it up some all the wrinkles will come out of it. This is what happened with the early universe. It may have been all wrinkly at the begging but then it got stretched in inflation and became flat again. That’s all there is to it (ok not really, there’s a lot of math but…we can worry about that later…maybe).

Inflation 6

So where were we with the inflation thing? Oh yes, so I in the last entry I explained how inflations fixes the horizon problem. And now we have an explanation for why it fixes the monopole problem. Oh I should explain where I am getting my information from, shouldn’t I? Well, right now, on inflation, I’m mainly pulling from two sources, the Wikipedia article on inflation, and a text book on cosmology by some guy named Edward Harrison. But anyway, back to the monopole problem. So, apparently, according to Edward, the monopoles do exist they are just really rare and hard to find. In fact, there should be about one of them or less per galaxy! But the way inflation fixes the problem is not settling well with me. I think I need to more fully understand the math associated with it, but here’s what I got so far. Ok so we have a bit super cooled vacuum right before inflation. And there are a lot of monopoles. A LOT of monopoles. But then inflation starts and the universe expands really fast and it shoots these monopoles really far apart. So they are a lot more dilute then they were. That’s about it. Yeah…it is still very unsettling to me that this would be the answer. If there were a lot of them then there would still be a lot of them they would just be spread out. I don’t get it. But if any of you do please enlighten us! Or even if you don’t understand please comment, just to say hi! Please! I’m begging you! PLEASE COMMENT!

God's Aside 2

So… say there is this God who created everything, implying he is responsible for the big bang. So he invented space, time, physics, energy, and all that stuff in one big shebang. As far as we can tell, there is a whole lot of structure and precision involved in this creation. And math! There is a lot of math. A lot of really complicated, beautiful math. And he invented it all. And human life…well, perhaps I shouldn’t get into that. Save that for another day. Yeah. Another day. But he made it all so that we could understand it. Or maybe not, maybe we don’t understand any of it. Perhaps all of physics is just flawed. I was reading a book a while back in which the author, Joao Magueijo, commented, "For all we know the universe is not homogeneous at all, but is a fractal. If this is true, burn this book, forget about Big Bang cosmology, and start crying convulsively." Well perhaps that is it. Perhaps this God is eons above our ability to comprehend and we are just grasping at all the wrong things. Perhaps. But perhaps not.

Inflation 5

So, to continue where we left off yesterday what happened with inflation was kind of strange. So at the beginning right before inflation began, let’s say the whole universe is the size of Wal-mart. When our universe begins we have someone in the food section, you are in the men’s wear, someone else in the garden section and someone in hardware. So like I explained yesterday we have this horizon that you can’t see outside of like in the first picture. Inside your view are 2 of the 3 other people. Then inflation starts and the universe start expanding. Space-time carries the people outside of your horizon when Wal-Mart is expanding like in picture 2 (you can't see the difference unless you click on the pictures). Then in picture 3 we see the people come back into view as the horizon expands. If you will recall this was the issue with the horizon and homogeneity problems. Our question before was, how come things that never had contact can have the same properties. Well the answer that arises from inflation is that they were in contact at one point in time, before inflation. Then after inflation the things that were in contact suddenly weren’t, and as the horizon expands those areas come back into view and like magic they have the same properties. Ha ha there’s no magic! It’s physics! But I still have some questions. The horizon is made by light and in inflation the universe has expands beyond the horizons that means the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, which is totally against the laws of special relativity. But i don’t really know. Perhaps we shall see tomorrow??

Inflation 4

For all who care the skiing trip was wonderful. There was enough snow to hold me off till the end of November. Anyway, back to trying to understand inflation. Ok, so I think in order to understand why inflation works (no I still don’t know how it works), we need to take a moment to talk about the way the universe expands. So… you have space (which is a 3 dimensional lattice with stuff sitting in it, like in the 1st picture), and as it expands it sort-of stretches and pull the space time continuum along with it. And that’s why everything moves away from us. It’s not that we are at the center of the universe and everything is moving away from us. It’s just that we have everything being pulled away from us in all directions; the whole thing is being stretched. Now there is this thing about horizons and (if I have this all straight in my head) it goes like the picture illustrates. The red line represents our horizon, the part we can’t see outside of (look at the second picture). If the universe were to expand and our horizon didn’t then our field of vision would actually look smaller (like in third picture), and I think this is what happens in expansion. But I’m not sure how this helps. Perhaps I shall figure this out tomorrow.

Inflation 3

So where did we leave off? Oh yes, the grand unification epoch. I’m not really sure what this period does. I know there is a further splitting of the forces and there is a much better understanding of what should be happening during this period because we have theories of it. Here gravity and quantum mechanics separate so we can to the theoretical analysis of this period. It last from the between 10^-43 seconds and 10^-36 seconds after the big bang. Next we have the electroweak epoch which last from around 10^-36 seconds and 10^-12 seconds after the big bang and the inflationary epoch from 10^-36 seconds and 10^-32 seconds. The inflationary epoch is nested inside the electroweak epoch and only last for part of that time. Here we have more separation of forces and a continued cooling. The strong force separates from the others so now we have 3 forces; gravity, strong and the electroweak (hence the name). The inflationary part I already described (to the best of my ability). Latter in this phase, again part of inflation, partials form and mass is born into the universe. So yes, this is an extremely rough outline of the birth of the universe. And there will be more inflation to come! Also I highly doubt I will be posting tomorrow, do you remember that ski I wanted to go on, well, I got it! So I will be gone tomorrow and will most likely be very tired when I return so I shall see you all on Sunday.