The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe

[forests]

Someone recently told me they have some evidence against the Big Bang and sent me this paper http://www.stanford.edu/~alinde/1032226.pdf The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe by Andrei Linde. The paper however seems to be from 1994 so perhaps there is nothing new here.

 

I am afraid I do not understand this model so someone can explain it to me please. It appears to be a version of Eternal inflation but I do not see how this would contradict the Big Bang, just it is an extension? Is this model obsolete or still has support? Opinions needed. Thanks.

Edited July 20, 2012 by forests

[CraigD]

Someone recently told me they have some evidence against the Big Bang and sent me this paper http://www.stanford.edu/~alinde/1032226.pdf The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe by Andrei Linde.

I wouldn’t describe this, Linde’s 1994 Scientific American article, nor his work in general, as “evidence against the Big Bang model”. Most science readers rightly associate Linde with an important feature of the model, inflation, and if they know his work in more detail, would characterize it as proposing a “many Big Bang” rather than a “no Big Bang” model, though its best know as “eternal inflation”, “chaotic inflation” (chaotic due to the idea that small volumes of space are similar to large ones, that is, have a fractal nature), or some combination of these terms (as you mention eternal inflation, forest, I assume you’ve heard of it, though may not have explored it as deeply as needed for a good understanding)

 

Linde is also primarily a theorist, not an experimentalist or astronomer, so, for the most part, his and similar work isn’t “evidence”, but theory in need of evidence to support or falsify it.

 

The paper however seems to be from 1994 so perhaps there is nothing new here.

Linde’s work isn’t new, but it was important, and influential, more among string theorists than cosmologists, because, if correct, it is impossible for it to be confirmed by astrometric observation, because it hypotheses that the universes created by its many Big Bangs are eternally causally disconnected – that is, no light or gravity from one can ever reach another.

 

Lee Smolin’s 2006 book The Trouble With Physics has a good discussion of Linde’s importance to string theory, and the Eternal Inflation model.

 

Is this [eternal inflation] model obsolete or still has support? Opinions needed. Thanks.

Worse than being supported or falsified, the problem with eternal inflation is that, to the best of my understanding, and that of many people who understand it far better than I, it may be impossible to confirm of falsify, as I explained briefly above.

 

I am afraid I do not understand this model so someone can explain it to me please. It appears to be a version of Eternal inflation but I do not see how this would contradict the Big Bang, just it is an extension?

For all its problems, eternal inflation is, IMHO, a beautiful, elegant model, and an easy one to visualize.

 

Picture a bizarre, effectively infinite “outer super-universe” consisting of a quantum false vacuum, which is in a constant state of metric expansion in which every measurable volume is receding from its neighbors at the speed of light. Rather than, as in the usual Big Bang model, our universe starting such a metric expansion, then suddenly starting, it was once part of the eternally expanding outerverse, then suddenly slowed, then nearly stopped expanding, becoming as it did disconnected from the outerverse, ever other part of which continues to recede at the speed of light. Our universe, one of many that cannot every interact, is commonly called a “bubble”, though I think the term “droplet”, like a droplet of water condensing out of an expanding volume of superheated steam, is more apt.

 

My apologies if I’m explaining something you already understand, forests. Despite having been acquainted with it more than half my adult life, I still enjoy describing the eternal inflation model. :)

[Pincho Paxton]

It's the sort of model that I use. A stationary spacetime of bubbles, with multiple singularities. I've been programming it into my computer for a few years to create a Universe Generator. A home PC however isn't really powerful enough. The fractal is best seen here on Earth where we have diversity. We are in the perfect location to analyse the fractal, and program it. You can then create a self replicating computer program that builds the universe from scratch without much in the way of help. And that's what I intend to create.