Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, did you have a good holiday break? Oh?
Speaker 1: I did, but you know, as usual, I ate too much.
Speaker 1: You mean you ate cosmically too much? Yeah, I totally
Speaker 1: overdid it. I'm like on the verge of becoming a
Speaker 1: black hole myself. Would you say your waistline is inflating,
Speaker 1: I'd say a few more bites and I'd be risking
Speaker 1: becoming my own personal big bang big Daniel. I'm talking
Speaker 1: dark matter here people. Oh no, let's cut to the
Speaker 1: theme song. Cut to the theme song. Hi am or
Speaker 1: handmade cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel,
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I am actually full of
Speaker 1: dark matter. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which
Speaker 1: we examine all things fascinating and amazing and bonkers about
Speaker 1: our universe and explain them to you in a way
Speaker 1: that you can actually understand. So it's a new decade here,
Speaker 1: and so, Daniel, what do we have to look forward
Speaker 1: to in physics? What do we have to look forward
Speaker 1: to in physics? Wow? So much? There are all sorts
Speaker 1: of new exciting telescopes coming online that will let us
Speaker 1: see further and further into the ancient past. The Large
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider is going to keep running and maybe discover
Speaker 1: some crazy new particles. But you know the best thing
Speaker 1: about looking forward in physics is that we have no
Speaker 1: idea what we're going to discover. There are always surprises
Speaker 1: out there waiting for us. There are surprises everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Yeah there might be Hey, a new kind
Speaker 1: of plantain or a strawberry flavored banana discovered by scientists somewhere.
Speaker 1: You never know science. It's what's for dinner, and so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good stuff to look forward to.
Speaker 1: I look forward to in looking back and thinking, Man,
Speaker 1: those folks in had no idea what was coming. Interesting.
Speaker 1: You look forward to the future so you can laugh
Speaker 1: at the past. Yeah, it's a wonderful feeling to think,
Speaker 1: look at what we know about the universe, and look
Speaker 1: at how the people before us, including ourselves ten years ago,
Speaker 1: really had no clue what was coming. And that's exciting
Speaker 1: to me because it makes me enthusiastic about the next
Speaker 1: ten years. You know, the mind blowing discoveries that physics
Speaker 1: and the rest of science will reveal. Man, you're making
Speaker 1: me feel bad about humans. They were so clueless, oh man,
Speaker 1: with their like new Facebook craze and they didn't even
Speaker 1: have TikTok or Instagram. No, but we learned a lot
Speaker 1: about the universe in the twenty tens. You know, we
Speaker 1: saw a whole bunch of new exo planets and discovered
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, and you are there really some pretty
Speaker 1: big shifts that our understanding of the universe in the
Speaker 1: last ten years. And since science is just accelerating exponentially,
Speaker 1: then I look forward to even more mind blowing stuff
Speaker 1: in the decade to come. Yeah, and technically we have
Speaker 1: more universe now than we had in Right, the universe
Speaker 1: is constantly expanding and getting bigger. There's new space being created,
Speaker 1: so we have also that to look forward to. Right
Speaker 1: in the future, there there will be even more space.
Speaker 1: That's right, in the future, you will occupy a smaller
Speaker 1: fraction of the universe because the universe is inflating. Oh no, wait,
Speaker 1: so you're saying that the people in were more significant
Speaker 1: than we are. Well, you know, what's the fraction of
Speaker 1: infinity is still zero so relatively speaking. But you know,
Speaker 1: I had a listener right in and make a really
Speaker 1: fascinating point about the expansion of the universe that I
Speaker 1: had never thought of before. Yeah, And they said, well,
Speaker 1: what about in time travel books, if you go back
Speaker 1: in time, then doesn't your body occupy a smaller space
Speaker 1: in the universe back then than it does now? And
Speaker 1: how do you account for that? And it's true, you know,
Speaker 1: the space that you occupied twenty years ago has expanded
Speaker 1: to a larger space, and so somehow you have to
Speaker 1: factor that into your time travel novel. WHOA like if
Speaker 1: you if you send your consciousness back, it has to
Speaker 1: somehow fit into a smaller package or something. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has to shrink exactly. You gotta squeeze your way back
Speaker 1: into the universe from ten years ago or twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, we are going to not look forward
Speaker 1: in time, but we're going to try to look backwards
Speaker 1: in time almost as much as you can look backwards. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right. We're gonna try to rewind all the way
Speaker 1: back to the very beginning. Because I've noticed that in
Speaker 1: conversations with listeners and just with folks around campus, that
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of misunderstandings about the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the universe. Right, because right now we have a
Speaker 1: lot of space, there's a lot of universe, but at
Speaker 1: some point in the past there was very little of
Speaker 1: the universe. I don't know. I mean, I think right
Speaker 1: now the universe is pretty dilute, but in the past,
Speaker 1: the universe was more dense. It could be that the
Speaker 1: universe has been infinite since its conception. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really make sense to talk about having less universe.
Speaker 1: It's just more compact, right, A denser infinity, yes, a
Speaker 1: denser infinity exactly, versus a water down infinity, which you know,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't taste as good. That's right. But I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people when you talk about the
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe and the Big Bang, they have
Speaker 1: sort of an old idea in their head of what
Speaker 1: the Big Bang was like this just this big explosion
Speaker 1: from a singularity, and that's not really the modern view. Wait,
Speaker 1: you're saying the name big bang doesn't actually describe the
Speaker 1: Big Bang. I think it was pretty big and it
Speaker 1: might have been a bang, so you know, from that
Speaker 1: point of view. But I think the ideas in people's
Speaker 1: heads need updating. I see, it's it's a kind of
Speaker 1: big bang, yes, exactly. Big Bang and compass is like
Speaker 1: a whole spectrum of ideas and physics has moved on,
Speaker 1: while popular conception is sort of stuck in the eighties version, right,
Speaker 1: And so this is a question that you said to me.
Speaker 1: A lot of listeners asked wrote in to ask about
Speaker 1: a lot of people are wondering and asking us to
Speaker 1: explain what this idea is. Yeah, and so, as usually,
Speaker 1: we want to cater to our listeners. We want to
Speaker 1: answer the questions that are in your minds, and we
Speaker 1: want to bring you to the forefront of science. We
Speaker 1: want you to understand what scientists out there, who are
Speaker 1: experts in this field, who know the most that any
Speaker 1: human is ever known about the beginning of the universe,
Speaker 1: what they are thinking about. We want to explain it
Speaker 1: to you in a way that makes sense. So that's
Speaker 1: our goal. So today on the episode, we'll be asking
Speaker 1: the question, what is cosmic inflation? Inflation? Inflation? That's right,
Speaker 1: it's not controlled by the Federal Reserve. It's not the
Speaker 1: reason why your bank account is emptying. Wait, you mean
Speaker 1: cosmic interest rate? Don't don't make a difference here. No,
Speaker 1: we can't borrow money from the other universe. Orything can
Speaker 1: my cosmic debt somehow bring it down? That's your karmic debt, actually,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing you can do about that. Then do
Speaker 1: good things for people, like explain the universe to them.
Speaker 1: I think that's definitely a positive on the karmic debt,
Speaker 1: right right, But today we're talking about cosmic inflation, and
Speaker 1: that kind of sounds simple. It just means that the
Speaker 1: cosmos is getting bigger or got bigger. But in this case,
Speaker 1: scientists use this phrase for something very specific, right, like
Speaker 1: a very specific moment in time right after the Big Bang.
Speaker 1: Sort Of, it's both a specific moment in time that's
Speaker 1: after the Big Bang, it's also sort of our modern
Speaker 1: view of what the Big Bang was, and and it's
Speaker 1: also connects the like primordial inflation, these first moments when
Speaker 1: the universe is expanding with the current inflation, and it
Speaker 1: says maybe these things are connected. So it's sort of
Speaker 1: like saying the Big Bang wasn't the moment of creation.
Speaker 1: It happened just afterwards. And it's saying maybe the Big
Speaker 1: Bang is still banging. We're still banging, yes, exactly, that's
Speaker 1: how big this bang is. Well, it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting and maybe there are a lot of
Speaker 1: subtle ideas here, so we'll get into all of that.
Speaker 1: But first, as usual, we were wondering how many people
Speaker 1: out there heard of the phrase cosmic inflation and if
Speaker 1: they knew what it was. That's right. And so since
Speaker 1: it was winter break and you see, Irvine was closed,
Speaker 1: I walked around coffee shops in Irvine and I asked
Speaker 1: random strangers who were amenable to being interrogated about physics
Speaker 1: topics while on their holiday break if they knew anything
Speaker 1: about cosmic inflation. Here's what they had to say. Oh,
Speaker 1: I feel like I've heard the term, but I do
Speaker 1: not know what it means. Um, cosmic inflation is that
Speaker 1: like the theory where everything in space is like constantly
Speaker 1: moving away from itself, like there's an explosion and everything's
Speaker 1: still expanding. Yeah, I have no idea. I think it
Speaker 1: means that just like crowding together, maybe like everything's coming together,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. The universe is expanding and getting
Speaker 1: bigger with each but as time passes, so something that's
Speaker 1: happening now or in the past, it's still happening from
Speaker 1: the universe. That's something that's happening now or in the
Speaker 1: beginning the universe, or it's always been happening. Yes, what
Speaker 1: is it? That's essentially the basis of the big bank theory? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: when did it happen fourteen point three billion years ago?
Speaker 1: We might have more more satellites of space, space stations
Speaker 1: or something. I have no idea. I mean it sounds
Speaker 1: like the expansion of space, cosmic inflation. No, alright, a
Speaker 1: lot of knows I feel, not a lot of inflated
Speaker 1: answers here. No, no, no, and confusion people thinking like
Speaker 1: space is getting smaller or the Earth is getting more crowded.
Speaker 1: That maybe they thought space was getting devalued. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: the there's the negative flip side to it that surprised.
Speaker 1: The market for space is sad oversaturated. So better spend
Speaker 1: your space now before it's worth nothing. Better use it up. Better,
Speaker 1: eat more so you can take up more space. That's
Speaker 1: that's my New Year's resolution. Eat more dark matter, take
Speaker 1: up more space, make more dark better. But there were
Speaker 1: some some core ideas here. You know, people have heard
Speaker 1: of some connection to the Big Bang or some ideas
Speaker 1: for things that happened in the early universe. So there's
Speaker 1: definitely some nuggets there Yeah. A lot of people said
Speaker 1: it related to the expansion of the universe, which is
Speaker 1: I guess not a big stretch, right. Inflation and expansion
Speaker 1: sort of sound the same. Yeah, And in fact I
Speaker 1: think they're right. It is related to the expansion of
Speaker 1: the universe as far as we know, which is not
Speaker 1: very much, it turns out, you know, and this is
Speaker 1: fascinating to me because it's something where we've made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress in the last twenty years coming up
Speaker 1: with new, crazy ideas about the universe, but something that
Speaker 1: we're also still puzzled over, Like there are huge unanswered
Speaker 1: questions about the Big Bang and cosmic inflation. There are
Speaker 1: things that scientists are arguing about. You know, the guy
Speaker 1: who came up with inflation, one of the architects of
Speaker 1: the theory, Paul Steinhardt, is now the guy arguing against
Speaker 1: the theory most Yeah, he's trying to deflate inflation, that's right.
Speaker 1: He's trying to pop the bubble of his own creation.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting I think is that, you know, if
Speaker 1: you had asked what is the Big Bang, a lot
Speaker 1: of people might have said, yes, it has had some
Speaker 1: ideas about that. It's about the beginning of the universe,
Speaker 1: but cosmic inflation, which is almost as important, doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same kind of market recognition. Yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to try to correct today on the podcast.
Speaker 1: We're gonna bring some panash to cosmic inflation. We're gonna
Speaker 1: show people how big bang is sort of the old
Speaker 1: busted theory and cosmic inflation is the new hotness. M
Speaker 1: it's a new bang. It's the new bang. That's right
Speaker 1: out with the old bang, in with it's climb. Are
Speaker 1: you still banging the old way? Man? What's wrong with you? Try?
Speaker 1: Are you physics bace banging? Yeah? I don't know what
Speaker 1: advertisers are going to go for that. Somebody out there
Speaker 1: has got a product that fits that. Alright, Diana, So
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Let's get into this idea of
Speaker 1: cosmic inflation. So, first of all, what is how would
Speaker 1: you define inflation in a physics way? Basically, inflation is
Speaker 1: the expansion of space. It's saying, let's take space and
Speaker 1: stretch it. Let's make space bigger and it it's important
Speaker 1: there to understand that it's not the moving of stuff
Speaker 1: through space. It's really the stretching of space itself. So
Speaker 1: are we stretching space or creating new space both both.
Speaker 1: That is how you stretch spaces and you create new space.
Speaker 1: I see, like there's more meters. It's not like the
Speaker 1: meter got bigger, so it's just more meters of space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are more meters of space. So stuff can be
Speaker 1: further apart without moving through space. Right. It's like if
Speaker 1: you take a ruler and you put a penny on
Speaker 1: the one meter and on the two m and then
Speaker 1: you stretch the ruler. The ruler itself is like may
Speaker 1: out of elastic, and you stretch the rulers to make
Speaker 1: it longer than the two pennies are further apart even
Speaker 1: though they haven't moved relative to the ruler. That's expansion
Speaker 1: of space. That's inflation of space. Right. But it's not
Speaker 1: just that the ruler expanded. It's like the wood of
Speaker 1: the ruler got bigger. You definitely add more to the ruler. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so that's different than kind of the old idea
Speaker 1: of how the Big Bank happened after the beginning of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's dig into that in that way. Let's like
Speaker 1: define what I think most people think the Big Bang
Speaker 1: was and the sort of old idea of what the
Speaker 1: universe was, and then let's contrast it with with sort
Speaker 1: of what they should replace in their heads with. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's the old thing. The old thing, I think
Speaker 1: is this idea that the universe started from a point
Speaker 1: like a singularity and infinitely dense dot primordial atom, which
Speaker 1: was a point in space. It was like somewhere and
Speaker 1: it was infinitely dense. And remember, like nobody has in
Speaker 1: the idea where this thing might have come from, what
Speaker 1: could have created it. But that's sort of just like
Speaker 1: swept under the rug, you know, the primordial rug, Like well,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know what came before, but let's
Speaker 1: just start from there. Right, it was like a little tiny,
Speaker 1: infinitely energetic package in sitting in space actually right like
Speaker 1: it was. People think it was like a grenade sitting there.
Speaker 1: It was really really small, exactly, And that's really key
Speaker 1: insight there that space was already created. You already had space,
Speaker 1: and you just had this dot in space. And then
Speaker 1: it exploded and that stuff then flew out and it
Speaker 1: spread out and slowly got more and more dilute, right
Speaker 1: less dense like an explosion would, and spread out to
Speaker 1: eventually form of the universe, and that's the stuff moving
Speaker 1: through space. And that's what we call in science the
Speaker 1: hot big Bang model. The hot big Bang is now
Speaker 1: the old Big Bang. It's right, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: your ex girlfriend and boyfriends. You still think they're hot,
Speaker 1: but it's not really for you anymore. Man. So that's
Speaker 1: probably the idea most people have in their heads when
Speaker 1: you say big bang or creation in the universe. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what I thought that the Big Bang was,
Speaker 1: you know, way before, when I was in high school
Speaker 1: or before I started hanging out with physicists, was that
Speaker 1: the Big Bang is really just like a bang, Like
Speaker 1: everything that we know about was in a small spot
Speaker 1: and then it just exploded. And now all the stars
Speaker 1: and galaxies and dust that was in that little bit
Speaker 1: doot are now flying through space outwards. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you started hanging out with physicists, basically the moment
Speaker 1: your universe was created. Everything else before that is like, oh,
Speaker 1: waste of time. I see you. You created my universe, Daniel,
Speaker 1: my universe started. There's nothing before I met you. There
Speaker 1: you're supposed to go with you complete my universe. You're
Speaker 1: saying you made my universe. Then that's even more romantic. Wow.
Speaker 1: Well all right, yeah, I think on the back pedal
Speaker 1: on that a little bit, But no, you're right, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what most people think um as sort
Speaker 1: of how the universe began, and you know, there's lots
Speaker 1: of questions there um. But one big problem with that
Speaker 1: conception is that it has a center, has a place
Speaker 1: where the Big Bang happened. And if you were looking
Speaker 1: at the explosion from any point of view, you would
Speaker 1: see stuff sort of flying sideways, unless you happen to
Speaker 1: be at the center, then everything would be flying in
Speaker 1: a certain direction, right, and you could tell maybe where
Speaker 1: the center of the universe was just by looking at
Speaker 1: where all the things were, and you're flying away from
Speaker 1: precisely and as a foreshadowing moment, that's not what we
Speaker 1: see when we look out into space. Yeah. So at
Speaker 1: some point a humanity physicist and scientists decided or started
Speaker 1: to realize that this old model of the big band
Speaker 1: was not the right one. Yeah. I mean it's a
Speaker 1: good first draft. Like we're thinking about the universe, is
Speaker 1: expanding what could have created it. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: want to criticize those scientists, is being dumb or something
Speaker 1: It's just sort of like science evolves, and this is
Speaker 1: how it evolves. You have an idea, you compare it
Speaker 1: to what you see. Doesn't quite work, so you improved
Speaker 1: the idea. Right, They did a bang up job. It
Speaker 1: was a big project. But but what I guess what
Speaker 1: I mean is it at what point did we start
Speaker 1: to sort of realize maybe this view was not the
Speaker 1: correct one. Well, there's been a lot of problems with
Speaker 1: the Big Bang basically since early on. You know when
Speaker 1: ed when Hubble looked out into the universe and realized
Speaker 1: it's like a hundred years ago that the universe was expanding,
Speaker 1: That's sort of what gave birth to this concept of
Speaker 1: a big Bang. He's the one who discovered that everything
Speaker 1: was moving away from us, and everything was moving away
Speaker 1: from us sort of the same speed in every direction
Speaker 1: you looked. So this is an outstanding problem for the
Speaker 1: Big Bang for a long time, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: this idea of inflation came along that it helped solve it.
Speaker 1: So the Big Bang was not like totally accepted for
Speaker 1: many many decades. And one problem what with it was,
Speaker 1: you know, are we at the center? Why does it
Speaker 1: look like we are at the center. Oh, I see.
Speaker 1: He tried to figure out where the center of the
Speaker 1: grenade was, and so he looked around and he found
Speaker 1: that the center was us, which is weird, which was like,
Speaker 1: too coincidental. It's too coincidental. Any time in science you
Speaker 1: appear to be at the center of the universe, you
Speaker 1: gotta wonder my biased or I'm just thinking about this wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to avoid coincidences. You want to
Speaker 1: avoid things that are really unlikely, or especially things that
Speaker 1: put humanity in the very important place in the cosmos.
Speaker 1: Because we've made that mistake before, right, Like before we thought,
Speaker 1: we like the Earth with decent was the center of
Speaker 1: the Solar system. More than that, we thought it was
Speaker 1: the center of the cosmos, right without everything was created
Speaker 1: around the Earth, Yeah, right, right, And then it turns
Speaker 1: out that the Sun, not even the Sun, is the
Speaker 1: center of the universe. It's like just one star in
Speaker 1: the rotating galaxy, which is part of something even bigger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we like to think more democratically now. We like
Speaker 1: to think that every point in space is equal, not
Speaker 1: because they're voting or anything, but just that you know,
Speaker 1: there should be no special locations because special locations require
Speaker 1: special explanations. It just makes the most sense if everywhere
Speaker 1: in space follows the same rules and is the same.
Speaker 1: And that's why I like the Big Bang is a
Speaker 1: point never really made sense to me, because then you
Speaker 1: can always ask, like, well, why they're why did the
Speaker 1: Big Bang start there and not like a meter over
Speaker 1: or over there or a light year in the other direction,
Speaker 1: why they're nowhere else? And so you avoid those questions
Speaker 1: if you say, everywhere in the universe is the same.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's the old bang, the old hot bang,
Speaker 1: and now let's talk about the new hotter bang, I guess,
Speaker 1: and in terms of trendiness um and why why we
Speaker 1: think it happened and why is it still a mystery?
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. Okay, So Danny
Speaker 1: telling me that the universe, the Big Bang is not
Speaker 1: like a grenade that exploded that was full stuff and
Speaker 1: then exploded, But the universe, the Big Bang is actually
Speaker 1: something different where new space is being created and space
Speaker 1: is being stretched. It's not an explosion, that's right. And
Speaker 1: we still have to reconcile the fact that we think
Speaker 1: the universe was more dense in the past than it
Speaker 1: is today, and that makes you want to go to
Speaker 1: the explosion explanation because you know, like, how else could
Speaker 1: it happen? Right, because the grenade was denser before the explosion,
Speaker 1: So you might be tempted to apply to our universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So another approach and a better way to think about
Speaker 1: it that it requires swallowing a really big idea, is
Speaker 1: that the Big Bang essentially happened everywhere all at once.
Speaker 1: That the universe wasn't created as a tiny singularity which
Speaker 1: then exploded, but that the entire uni verse, an infinite
Speaker 1: universe filled with an infinite amount of stuff, was created somehow,
Speaker 1: we don't know how, in a very dense state, and
Speaker 1: the Big Bang was the expansion of that state, the
Speaker 1: stretching of space itself to make that stuff more dilute.
Speaker 1: But that it was created everywhere and happened everywhere all
Speaker 1: at once. So like that's an infinitely big bang. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're saying that the universe was has always been infinite.
Speaker 1: It's not like it started as a point and became
Speaker 1: exploited into infinity. You're saying that the universe was always infinite,
Speaker 1: but that before it was like a dance and compact
Speaker 1: infinite infinity but now it's more of a bigger and
Speaker 1: more expanded infinity. Precisely, that's the idea. And of course
Speaker 1: we don't know the size of the universe, and we
Speaker 1: don't even know it's shape, but this is the idea.
Speaker 1: It explains what we see, an infinite universe created infinitely
Speaker 1: big and always filled with an infinite amount of stuff.
Speaker 1: There's no edge to the matter, and there's no edge
Speaker 1: to the universe, and just started out really hot and
Speaker 1: dense and then stretched out right, But that's only one possibility, right,
Speaker 1: that it's infinite. It could also be that the universe
Speaker 1: is finite as far as we know. Right, it could
Speaker 1: be right, but it at least has to be big
Speaker 1: enough to fill our observable universe with a homogeneous stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: If there is an edge to the stuff in the universe,
Speaker 1: we don't see that, and so it has to be
Speaker 1: really really big and and pretty uniform, at least in
Speaker 1: our neighborhood. So it's possible that there's an edge to
Speaker 1: the stuff in the universe. But it's sort of simpler somehow.
Speaker 1: It's weird. It's weird. It's simpler to imagine an infinite
Speaker 1: universe with infinite stuff because then you don't have to
Speaker 1: explain the edges. Even though I can't explain how you
Speaker 1: create an infinite universe with an infinite amount of stuff
Speaker 1: in it either, well, nobody can explain it finite universe either. Right,
Speaker 1: All this stuff defies explanation. But you know it's it's
Speaker 1: like pushing the rock further up the hill. You don't
Speaker 1: have to have the answer to every question. You just
Speaker 1: have to ask have the answer to this question in
Speaker 1: and then it gives you the next question. Like if
Speaker 1: you say, let's assume the universe started infinitely large, filled
Speaker 1: with an infinite amount of stuff, then what would have happened?
Speaker 1: And you can show that that's consistent with what we
Speaker 1: see so far, then you get to go back to
Speaker 1: that other question, say, okay, let's roll up our sleeves
Speaker 1: and figure out how it's possible to create an infinite universe. Um.
Speaker 1: So that is that your approach to teaching as well, Daniel,
Speaker 1: Just make it up as you go along, push all
Speaker 1: the problems off until tomorrow. That's my approach to life.
Speaker 1: Yes to my inbox as well. Yeah, and so the
Speaker 1: idea is you create an infinite universe filled with an
Speaker 1: infinite amount of stuff, but it's very hot and dense. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like a huge singularity essentially. Okay, so I think
Speaker 1: you're saying that the best way to think about the
Speaker 1: big band it's not as like a little point that exploded,
Speaker 1: but just as an infinity going from a really dense
Speaker 1: infinity to a bigger infinity. Yeah, And that's what cosmic
Speaker 1: inflation is, is taking that really dense um infinity and
Speaker 1: stretching it out to a much more dilute infinity, because
Speaker 1: that is what we see, that's what we have evidence for, right,
Speaker 1: Like we see that the universe is really sparse and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of empty now, and and we see that
Speaker 1: everything used to be much much denser. Yeah, we need
Speaker 1: to have inflation order to explain a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: that we see in the universe. And we can get
Speaker 1: into that in a few minutes if you like. But
Speaker 1: this explains why the universe looks the way that it does.
Speaker 1: And without inflation, the universe doesn't really make sense. Like
Speaker 1: if you just create the universe at this current density
Speaker 1: and said it expanding now um ten billion years ago,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't make sense. It doesn't explain what we see.
Speaker 1: So you need to have this inflationary period in order
Speaker 1: to get all the sort of the clumpiness and the
Speaker 1: structure that we see in the temperature of stuff all correct. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think that's another key concept about inflation, which
Speaker 1: is that it's not you know, the universe went from
Speaker 1: a as infinity to a wider infinity, but it didn't
Speaker 1: do it sort of evenly, right, like there were there
Speaker 1: was a period of time where it was really expanding
Speaker 1: really fast, and now it's expanding but not as fast.
Speaker 1: And so what do you call inflation? Is it that
Speaker 1: rapid expansion or is it the whole thing, or is
Speaker 1: it that's still kind of undecided. That's a little bit fuzzy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if you talk to most cosmologists, they would
Speaker 1: think about inflation as this very narrow period from tend
Speaker 1: to the minus thirty six seconds after somehow the universe
Speaker 1: was created, to tend to the minus thirty two seconds
Speaker 1: after the universe was created, in which you had this
Speaker 1: enormous expansion in the universe. It seems like a factor
Speaker 1: of ten to the twenty six. That's what they would
Speaker 1: think of as inflation. But I'd also like to think
Speaker 1: about what, you know, what expansion is still happening, and
Speaker 1: so maybe this is still really part of inflation. But
Speaker 1: that was the most dramatic moment, and so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if you talk about inflation, that's the moment
Speaker 1: that people are thinking about. Oh, I see, like we're
Speaker 1: maybe it's just at the air party of the inflation,
Speaker 1: but you could technically maybe still call it inflation night,
Speaker 1: you know, like the Oscar's Night. That's right, is the
Speaker 1: celebration after the super Bowl part of the super Bowl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's nothing like yeah, like the tailgating
Speaker 1: counts as part of the event, surely, yeah, exactly. The
Speaker 1: tailgating created the whole thing. It's only because the fans
Speaker 1: and you can even have a super Bowl. So there
Speaker 1: you go. And one of my favorite things about inflation
Speaker 1: is just sort of the mind boggling numbers. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a really brief amount of time. Tend to the
Speaker 1: minus thirty two seconds. It's like impossible to think about.
Speaker 1: We talked recently on a podcast about how long particles live,
Speaker 1: and I said that they last like ten to the
Speaker 1: minus twenty three seconds, which seems impossibly short, but you know,
Speaker 1: compared to tend to the minus thirty six. That's a
Speaker 1: huge amount of time. The ideas that the universe went
Speaker 1: from almost or actually infinitely dense and infinitely dense infinity
Speaker 1: to a less infinite lead dance infinity in a matter
Speaker 1: of seconds or fractions of fractions of a second. And
Speaker 1: the expansion also is incredible. I mean ten to the
Speaker 1: twenty six expansion is hard to get your mind around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would take one meter and expanded to ten billion
Speaker 1: light years. That's what happened at the beginning of time.
Speaker 1: Is that a meter, Like suddenly a meter became ten
Speaker 1: billion light years. Yeah, so the stuff that's in a
Speaker 1: meter of space got stretched out and spread out over
Speaker 1: ten billion light years in a matter of ten to
Speaker 1: minus thirty two seconds. Yeah, one pachinko second or whatever
Speaker 1: that unit is second. You know, if you're a cosmology is,
Speaker 1: you get to make up whatever terms like because you're
Speaker 1: this is uncharted territory in terms of scientific prefixes. Right,
Speaker 1: I think I think you should claim it right now,
Speaker 1: go online to chink that's the sound of me claiming
Speaker 1: pachinko second and then gaining royalties from it. Then you
Speaker 1: get to change seconds and the other thing to wrap
Speaker 1: your mind around is that this is stuff that's happening
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light. You know, light can't
Speaker 1: travel ten billion light years in ten to the minus
Speaker 1: thirty two seconds, obviously, right, it would take ten billion
Speaker 1: light years years to cross that distance. That's right, even
Speaker 1: Han Solo would take twelve par Sex to get that far.
Speaker 1: Which hand Solo though? That do you want here? The
Speaker 1: old of course, the old one, the original? And I
Speaker 1: want to get a shout out to all those fans
Speaker 1: out there who wrote in and gave me an explanation
Speaker 1: for why Han Solo quoted his Kessel run time in
Speaker 1: par Sex because he found a shortcut. He wasn't using
Speaker 1: it as a measure of time. He was referring to
Speaker 1: the fact that he took a trip near some gravitational well,
Speaker 1: which basically shortened his trip through space. So thank you
Speaker 1: to all those fans who educated me on the physics
Speaker 1: of Star Wars. Sounds like a whole episode we should do,
Speaker 1: We should, certainly. But the idea here is that space
Speaker 1: expanded faster than the speed of light. And so for
Speaker 1: those of you physics afficionados who are thinking, what nothing
Speaker 1: can go fast in the speed of light, you're night
Speaker 1: that nothing can go faster than the speed of light
Speaker 1: through space. But there's no limit to how fast space
Speaker 1: can expand really no limit. You think you think space
Speaker 1: can expand infinitely. Well, it made a pretty impressive expansion
Speaker 1: in the first few moments of the universe. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm impressed we are not aware of a limit. I
Speaker 1: mean there could be a limit, but you know, we
Speaker 1: have evidence that this expansion happened in a mind boggling speed.
Speaker 1: So things that used to be close by, they used
Speaker 1: to be like a meter apart, where all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: cosmically separated. They were in their own essentially observable universes.
Speaker 1: You know, they could no longer see each other or
Speaker 1: communicate with each other. That's a little sad. You know,
Speaker 1: something tore them apart. Yeah, something tore them apart. And
Speaker 1: that's actually an important clue as to why we think
Speaker 1: inflation happened. And you know, this kind of expansion is
Speaker 1: the same kind of expansion that we're talking about now
Speaker 1: that we're talking about for dark energy. You know, people
Speaker 1: in the interviews who said, huh, in space expanding now
Speaker 1: is cosmic inflation talking about the current expansion of the universe. Maybe, right,
Speaker 1: that there's no difference in the kind of expansion we're
Speaker 1: seeing now that's driven by dark energy and the kind
Speaker 1: of expansion that we're talking about for cosmic inflation. They're
Speaker 1: the same expansion of space, right, And so so this was,
Speaker 1: um what we that short, super crazy period happened near
Speaker 1: the beginning of time, and it happened really fast, but
Speaker 1: we don't know kind of why it happened, right, We
Speaker 1: don't know what happened, and we don't know why it
Speaker 1: stopped happening and sort of cool off for a while,
Speaker 1: and then we don't know why it started happening a
Speaker 1: little bit again five billion years ago when dark energy
Speaker 1: sort of started taking over the universe. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't understand the mechanism of it at all, right, but
Speaker 1: it is pretty crazy, and maybe that is that kind
Speaker 1: of where the idea of a big band came from,
Speaker 1: Like from this crazy expansion. It's almost like an explosion
Speaker 1: of space, right, you might call it or a bang
Speaker 1: of space, or I think the original name big Bang
Speaker 1: came as a sort of a joke trying to mock
Speaker 1: somebody else's scientific theory, and that was thinking of the
Speaker 1: universe is starting from a point and an explosion through space.
Speaker 1: And people were like, what are you suggesting as a
Speaker 1: theory of the whole universe? Something as whimsical as that
Speaker 1: Big Bang? You know, I think probably said with a
Speaker 1: snotty British accident, you know exactly what the sneer, right,
Speaker 1: the curled lip, but it caught on it like the
Speaker 1: Big mag like the Big mag. It was catchy precisely,
Speaker 1: and you know it has its own special sauce. And
Speaker 1: but it is sort of it is sort incredible that
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of like if you were alive
Speaker 1: back then, it would you would not survive that, right,
Speaker 1: It would feel like an explosion. It would feel like
Speaker 1: this crazy violent, uh you know, sudden thing that it
Speaker 1: just happened suddenly. Yeah, if you're two ms high, then
Speaker 1: you would suddenly become a twenty billion light year long
Speaker 1: staying on the universe. Right, I feel like I'm a
Speaker 1: staying in the universe now that yeah, but you're localized,
Speaker 1: like infinitely stayed. Do you want to be a cosmic
Speaker 1: smear in the universe? You know? And if you are
Speaker 1: reading that time travel device, be careful don't go back
Speaker 1: to far because you do not want to experience cosmic inflation, right,
Speaker 1: but you know it's it's space and time are tied together.
Speaker 1: So is this was time also moving slower or was
Speaker 1: time moving? Is this all measured at the same time scale?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a great question and a deep one,
Speaker 1: and we don't really understand. But we're measuring these things
Speaker 1: according to our time, so our proper time. You know
Speaker 1: what when you have experienced in terms of time, if
Speaker 1: you're living through that period, I don't know. And we
Speaker 1: don't really have a mechanism for explaining how this happened.
Speaker 1: We just sort of sort of describing that it did.
Speaker 1: And so we don't understand, like, is this part of
Speaker 1: general relativity, there's some term you can add to the
Speaker 1: equations of general realtivity that create this expansion, or is
Speaker 1: it some totally different than it is stretching space? And
Speaker 1: so the answer to how it affects time depends a
Speaker 1: little bit on the details of what's doing it, whether
Speaker 1: it's part of general relativity or not. I think time
Speaker 1: itself cost inflation about that? Is that a new idea?
Speaker 1: Lame Craig lame credit to that high fi novel. That's right,
Speaker 1: that is officially your idea. And look forward to seeing
Speaker 1: the paper you're writing on it. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: into why we think costmic inflation even happened in the
Speaker 1: first place, and let's get into what is still a
Speaker 1: big mystery about it. But first let's take another break. Okay,
Speaker 1: Daniel Lid we're talking about cosmic inflation, which is the
Speaker 1: new Big Bang? Should we just call it the big
Speaker 1: inflationary Bang, the Biggest Bang? Maybe the bangie inflation. But
Speaker 1: so that's a crazy idea, that this idea that the
Speaker 1: universe went from an infinitely dense infinity to a less
Speaker 1: infinitely dense infinity in less than ten to the twenty
Speaker 1: six seconds. That's crazy. It's crazy. But you know, the
Speaker 1: universe and reality are no stranger to absurdity, right, They
Speaker 1: don't care what your definition of crazy is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: crazy stuff has happened. And that's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things about physics is learning that the universe is bonkers,
Speaker 1: bonkers beyond our imagination sometimes so it stretches our concept
Speaker 1: of reality completely. I guess my question to you is
Speaker 1: why do scientists think that so much happen is such
Speaker 1: a short amount of time? You know, basically, why do
Speaker 1: we think that the Big Bang or the inflation happened
Speaker 1: in the first place. Yeah, well, it solves some problems.
Speaker 1: It explains some of the things that we see that
Speaker 1: we can't otherwise resolve. I mean, you might come up
Speaker 1: with another theory that explains what we see out there,
Speaker 1: but it has to explain all the stuff that we
Speaker 1: see and tie up all the loose ends. And one
Speaker 1: of the things is what we mentioned earlier on is
Speaker 1: that we seem to be at the center of the
Speaker 1: universe and that doesn't make sense. And the the hot Big
Speaker 1: Bang model we have a point that explodes out, but
Speaker 1: it does explain what we see if the whole universe
Speaker 1: was infinite and expanded out everywhere at once, because then
Speaker 1: everywhere looks like it's at the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: It's like you're in the middle of a loaf of
Speaker 1: bread and all the reasons as it's baking, all the
Speaker 1: reasons are moving away from you. That's true, no matter
Speaker 1: where you are in this infinite loaf of bread. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like being in a rubber sheet. Right when you
Speaker 1: stretch it out wherever you stand, it looks like everything's
Speaker 1: blooming away from you. Yeah, exactly, And and that's pretty compelling.
Speaker 1: But then you might ask, all right, well, that just
Speaker 1: requires that the universe is infinite and it is filled
Speaker 1: with an infor amount of stuff. Why do you think
Speaker 1: it had this crazy expansion? And part of that comes
Speaker 1: with what we see out there in the universe is
Speaker 1: that the universe is pretty smooth. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: clumps and galaxies and solar systems. Will get into that
Speaker 1: in a moment, but if you average out over it,
Speaker 1: it looks pretty smooth. And most specifically, if you look
Speaker 1: at this cosmic microwave background radiation, this light we've talked
Speaker 1: about that comes from like three hundred thousand years after
Speaker 1: the Big Bang, when the universe was a hot plasma.
Speaker 1: We see that light and we use that light to
Speaker 1: measure it's sort of the temperature of the universe by
Speaker 1: the frequency of the light. And it's really really, really smooth.
Speaker 1: Like it looks like the universe was basically the same
Speaker 1: temperature everywhere. And that's weird. It's it's very even, right,
Speaker 1: It's like it it all, it all looks the same
Speaker 1: almost from every direction. Yeah, it looks like a smooth bath,
Speaker 1: you know. It looks like the temperature varies by one
Speaker 1: part in a hundred thousand or one part in ten
Speaker 1: thousand from here to there to the other place. And
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, well, what what's weird about that? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's weird from the point of view that those things
Speaker 1: are cosmically far upon heart. If you look at light
Speaker 1: that's coming to us from one direction in the cosmic
Speaker 1: micro background radiation, it's been traveling the whole history of
Speaker 1: the universe, just got here. If you look from the
Speaker 1: other direction, life coming from the other direction has also
Speaker 1: been traveling the whole history universe and just got here.
Speaker 1: So it's the first time they ever met, right from
Speaker 1: different ends of the universe. Right, one of them came
Speaker 1: from the left edge of the universe and the other
Speaker 1: one came from the right edge of the right. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: even if there aren't any edges, they came from totally
Speaker 1: separated spots, spots that have not had time to talk
Speaker 1: to each other or communicate in any way since the
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe. Right, that's weird. That's weird because
Speaker 1: they're the same temperature, and the only way you can
Speaker 1: get stuff to be the same temperature is to let
Speaker 1: it mix, Right, Like if you put an ice cube
Speaker 1: into hot water, then you have a cold spot in
Speaker 1: your water, and you have to wait for things to mix,
Speaker 1: for the temperature to get so even. And so it
Speaker 1: looks like the universe had a chance to mix. It
Speaker 1: looks like the temperature smoothed out. But how did that happen?
Speaker 1: Because these things have never had a chance to talk
Speaker 1: to each other before. Why what? What if it touch
Speaker 1: is how the universe was before? Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of these problems are sort of aesthetic.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, I don't really get it. I don't
Speaker 1: like that assumption. And so you could say, well, the
Speaker 1: universe were just created like perfectly smooth. Yeah, just came
Speaker 1: off the factory floor, nice and nice and toasty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nice and toasty. It's not exactly smooth. We see little
Speaker 1: clumps in there, and the distribution of those clumps is
Speaker 1: another thing that's explained by inflation. But you're right, this,
Speaker 1: you know, by itself, this smoothness problem is not completely bulletproof. Right.
Speaker 1: You could say, maybe the universe was just created almost
Speaker 1: perfectly smooth, like maybe when photons are creative at the beginning,
Speaker 1: they all have the same temperature. There would be another
Speaker 1: way to explain it. There would be another way to
Speaker 1: explain it. But the explanation that comes from inflation and
Speaker 1: is that these things did once have a chance to mix.
Speaker 1: That you know, before inflation, these photons, which were ten
Speaker 1: billion light years apart, were only a meter apart. And
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of time in this early plasma
Speaker 1: for stuff to slash around and for things to get
Speaker 1: smoothed out and for the universe to get to an
Speaker 1: even temperature before things got inflated. Right, And so I
Speaker 1: think I remember this that the the the way that
Speaker 1: this explains it. It is that you need this kind
Speaker 1: of rapid and violent expansion of space to basically take
Speaker 1: the left edge photon and the right edge photon far
Speaker 1: enough apart where it makes sense now. Yeah, so these
Speaker 1: two have had to been inside the same sort of
Speaker 1: cosmic horizon before, and now they're outside the cosmic horizon.
Speaker 1: Cosmic horizon is something that is so far away that
Speaker 1: you have not seen it because light from it has
Speaker 1: never reached you in the history of the universe. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a no way they could have talked before, And
Speaker 1: yet it seems like they had have talked before. And
Speaker 1: the expansion of space faster than the speed of light
Speaker 1: is the thing that can do that. It can take
Speaker 1: things that were inside the same cosmic horizon, right, that
Speaker 1: are close enough to interact and talk to each other,
Speaker 1: and smooth them become the same temperature, and push them
Speaker 1: apart into their own separate cosmic horizons so that they
Speaker 1: can no longer interact. And so that's what we think
Speaker 1: we see now is that light from this from two
Speaker 1: directions in the universe is now the same temperature, even
Speaker 1: though without cosmic inflation, we don't think that they could
Speaker 1: ever have met, right, It's like it's like a crazy
Speaker 1: thing you've see in the universe that can only be
Speaker 1: explained apparently by this crazy idea of inflation. Yeah, precisely.
Speaker 1: That's one reason why we like inflation. It explains that.
Speaker 1: And more specifically, the universe is not all the same temperature.
Speaker 1: If you look at the cosmic microwave background radiation, this
Speaker 1: light from the early universe, we said, it's like the
Speaker 1: same too, within one in ten thousand, one in a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Those wiggles are actually important. Those those deviations
Speaker 1: from being exactly the same temperature are really important, and
Speaker 1: we study those really carefully because those are the seeds
Speaker 1: of the rest of the universe, right, that they're the
Speaker 1: wrinkles that came from basically this giant stretching of the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those those wrinkles came from the giant stretching. And you
Speaker 1: might wonder, like, all right, say the universe was created
Speaker 1: perfectly smoothly, like you were saying earlier, Right, why couldn't
Speaker 1: just come off the factory floor, like totally homogeneous. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have a universe like that, then you never
Speaker 1: get any sort of clumping. You don't get anything like
Speaker 1: solar systems and hamsters and galaxies and stuff, because everything
Speaker 1: is perfectly smooth and there's no place where things start
Speaker 1: to clump together. To get any sort of clumping or structure,
Speaker 1: you need something and that's not homogeneous, right, And so
Speaker 1: you're saying, inflation is our only explanation for why the
Speaker 1: universe is smooth and clumpy just the right amount that
Speaker 1: we see it right now. That's right, because in physics
Speaker 1: we have only one way to introduce random clumpiness, and
Speaker 1: that's quantum mechanics. So the idea is the universe was
Speaker 1: really really dense and perfectly smooth, and then quantum fluctuations
Speaker 1: just like created a few particles here and a few
Speaker 1: particles there. Now, normally, when that happens, and it's happening
Speaker 1: all the time, it's not a big deal because there
Speaker 1: are the quantum level so you don't see them. But
Speaker 1: what if just when you're making those fluctuations, the universe
Speaker 1: decides I'm gonna blow this up to ten billion light years?
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden, tiny little quantum fluctuations become
Speaker 1: really big cosmic fluctuations, right, they become spread out over
Speaker 1: the whole cosmos. Then they're big enough to seed gravity,
Speaker 1: to get things moving, to clump stuff together. Right and
Speaker 1: if so, so, if an inflation was not as dramatic,
Speaker 1: then we wouldn't see those quantum fluctuations, right, because let's
Speaker 1: say that inflation had actually taken longer than you wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know, it wouldn't stretch those quantum fluctuations because things
Speaker 1: would even out before you stretch out to the to
Speaker 1: what we see now. Yeah, And that's why you need
Speaker 1: to have inflation happened at the scale that had happened
Speaker 1: like so dramatically and so quickly. You've got to catch
Speaker 1: those quantum fluctuations with their pants down. Otherwise it doesn't
Speaker 1: explain the universe were in. That's right, Their cosmic embarrassment
Speaker 1: is the reason why we are here. Yeah, that's sort
Speaker 1: of basically right, right, Like, it's like you needed to
Speaker 1: catch the universe just the right time with this crazy
Speaker 1: expansion like this photograph in order to explain what we
Speaker 1: see now. Yeah, And we talked on the podcast recently
Speaker 1: about another possibility, another different idea, which was cosmic strings.
Speaker 1: People thought, maybe cosmic strings are the reason why we
Speaker 1: see this sort of distribution of stuff in the universe,
Speaker 1: but people look at them more carefully and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: You don't get this sort of the right kind of wiggles,
Speaker 1: you don't get the right distribution of stuff here and
Speaker 1: stuff there. But inflation gets it just right. Inflation says,
Speaker 1: if you had that really dense plasma and then you
Speaker 1: blew it up really quickly, you would expect to get
Speaker 1: just the right density of stuff to form the kind
Speaker 1: of structure that we see today, And there's no other
Speaker 1: way to explain it in such fine detail that we know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are some other crazier ideas, but none
Speaker 1: of them work as well as inflation, right, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if inflation at lasts it tended to the negative thirty
Speaker 1: one seconds instead of tend to negative thirty two seconds,
Speaker 1: then you and I wouldn't be here. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be some other podcasts which would be not nearly as funny.
Speaker 1: It would probably be over quicker. But there's a there's
Speaker 1: some something else there. There's a real randomness right, Like
Speaker 1: it tells you that the structure to universe, Like why
Speaker 1: does a galaxy here comes from some like electron fluctuating
Speaker 1: out of the vacuum fourteen billion years ago, And if
Speaker 1: it had fluctuated in a different direction, we'd have a
Speaker 1: different galaxy somewhere else. Like those tiny little quantum rolls
Speaker 1: of the dye determine the specific structure of our universe today.
Speaker 1: It mind boggling to think about. And they're super sensitive, right,
Speaker 1: and totally random, super sensitive and totally random. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1: So we we are lucky to have the universe we
Speaker 1: have right now, and you listeners are lucky to have us, frankly,
Speaker 1: and we are lucky to have you. We are very
Speaker 1: glad that you fluctuated into existence. We are all lucky
Speaker 1: to have each other. I think is the new theme
Speaker 1: for Okay cool. I feel like I really understand there's
Speaker 1: a little bit more, you know. It's it's like this
Speaker 1: idea of an infinite infinity going less dense is and
Speaker 1: very quickly in order to explain what we have now.
Speaker 1: So does that mean, Daniel, that we know everything about
Speaker 1: inflation and what happened at the beginning of time? Or
Speaker 1: are there still things we don't know? There's not an
Speaker 1: infinite amount of stuff that we don't know about inflation,
Speaker 1: infinitely amount of stuff we don't know about an infinite
Speaker 1: lead dance infinity that gets less infinite. Yeah, as our
Speaker 1: knowledge grows, it feels like our ignorance is also growing,
Speaker 1: or like our knowledge of our ignorance is inflating as well,
Speaker 1: you know. But that's the fun part about science. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest mystery about inflation is like what caused it?
Speaker 1: What made it happen? What could possibly expand space at
Speaker 1: this crazy rate? Right? Like why didn't the universe just
Speaker 1: stay the way it was before? Why did it have
Speaker 1: to have this crazy expansion? Yeah, and why did the
Speaker 1: expansion stop? And so as usual, we don't have any idea,
Speaker 1: but we've already given it a name, and of course yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've called it the infloton not a joke. I
Speaker 1: know it sounds like I'm making that up. But created
Speaker 1: this field called the infloton field, which would have an
Speaker 1: infloton particle, and the ideas that this field causes this
Speaker 1: crazy expansion. It sort of just puts off the question like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, what creates the inflotton field and what
Speaker 1: controls it? Well, we have no idea, but it's just
Speaker 1: sort of like a place to put our ideas. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So we owe our existence and our universe to the
Speaker 1: infloton Yeah, and the infloton The idea there is like
Speaker 1: the universe is filled with this infloton field, which expands
Speaker 1: space and sort of decays into ordinary matter. And that's
Speaker 1: how you get ordinary matter. You have in photon field,
Speaker 1: which then turns into corks and electrons and other kinds
Speaker 1: of fields. Um. And we don't know like what would
Speaker 1: cause that decay, Like that's when inflation stops, is when
Speaker 1: it turns into normal matter. But we don't know like
Speaker 1: why would it stopped and or why was it there
Speaker 1: in the first place? Yeah, what was there first place?
Speaker 1: And also did it stop? Like there might be it
Speaker 1: might be that inflation sort of stopped in our part
Speaker 1: of the universe, but it's still going on in other
Speaker 1: parts of the universe. Could be the rest of the universe.
Speaker 1: We're like in a little bubble, a pocket universe, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe is still inflating. And imagine
Speaker 1: how far If it got that far in ten of
Speaker 1: the minus thirty two seconds, imagine what it could do
Speaker 1: in fourteen billion years. Wow. So you're saying that maybe
Speaker 1: we are even more insignificant than we had previously imagined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's this idea. It's called eternal inflation. That the universe
Speaker 1: is continuously inflating, and occasionally the inflation sort of decays
Speaker 1: into normal matter, and then you get the kind of
Speaker 1: universe we're familiar with, but that most of the universe
Speaker 1: is just this massively expanding infloton field. Wait, are you saying, Daniel,
Speaker 1: that the infloton works in mysterious ways? I'm saying exactly that,
Speaker 1: mostly because we don't understand it at all, And so
Speaker 1: can I start a new religion based on the infloton?
Speaker 1: Are you the high priest of the inflation here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I am both the high priest and the parishioner
Speaker 1: of my church of the Inflaton. Yes, please donate to
Speaker 1: the Church of the Inflaton. I think we just replaced
Speaker 1: the spagetti master. Yeah, and so of course this feels
Speaker 1: like a big place holder because it is we don't know,
Speaker 1: and so it's just a way to say, if inflation happened,
Speaker 1: what's a possible way it might have happened. And then
Speaker 1: let's start to get to work on, you know, figuring
Speaker 1: out how that theory has to look. Step one, give
Speaker 1: it a science names and then figure it out. Step
Speaker 1: to get ridiculed by Jorge. Step three, get to work alright. Cool,
Speaker 1: It sounds like there's still lots of answers to be
Speaker 1: found in this and these are important answers, right, I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're about the beginning of the universe and
Speaker 1: why are things the way they are? And are things
Speaker 1: going to change in the future. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think in ten years or in twenty years, people will
Speaker 1: look back at these ideas and think, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 1: how absurd. I can't believe they really believe that stuff.
Speaker 1: Because we're going to learn things about inflation, and we're
Speaker 1: going to learn things about the history of the universe
Speaker 1: and its current expansion that are going to give us
Speaker 1: better ideas, even crazier ideas that are going to be
Speaker 1: even more correct. And so this is the perfect example
Speaker 1: of how our knowledge of the universe is constantly expanding.
Speaker 1: We look back and think, wow, how silly. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know they say twenties smart physicists are twenty thirties ignoratons.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, I have twenty twenty vision, which means
Speaker 1: I look back at ten and think one a bunch
Speaker 1: of ideas. Well, I can't wait to have visions. That's
Speaker 1: what happens in our old age, right, we all get
Speaker 1: reading to us is all right? Well, maybe we'll get
Speaker 1: into these mysteries a little bit deeper in the future podcast,
Speaker 1: but for now, thanks for joining us. We hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that. We hope we inflated your mind and took
Speaker 1: you on a tour of the early universe. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Before you still have a question after listening
Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I heart Radio. For
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