5 hours ago
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/...sm-success
KEY POINTS: The hot Big Bang wasn’t the very beginning, it only arose in the aftermath of a period of cosmic inflation: which stretched the Universe flat, seeded it with quantum fluctuations, and led to a below-Planck scale reheating temperature. Yet despite these overwhelming successes — successes that we weren’t certain would be borne out observationally when inflation was first concocted — modern physicists often criticize inflation on two fronts: for the measure problem and the fact that “it could predict anything.” However, neither of these arguments is particularly strong. The measure problem is undermined by the science of statistics, and the ability to “predict anything” is how we learn what type of inflation occurred. Here’s how... (MORE - details)
KEY POINTS: The hot Big Bang wasn’t the very beginning, it only arose in the aftermath of a period of cosmic inflation: which stretched the Universe flat, seeded it with quantum fluctuations, and led to a below-Planck scale reheating temperature. Yet despite these overwhelming successes — successes that we weren’t certain would be borne out observationally when inflation was first concocted — modern physicists often criticize inflation on two fronts: for the measure problem and the fact that “it could predict anything.” However, neither of these arguments is particularly strong. The measure problem is undermined by the science of statistics, and the ability to “predict anything” is how we learn what type of inflation occurred. Here’s how... (MORE - details)