> On 6 Jun 2014, at 7:41 pm, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 6 June 2014 19:39, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote: >>> On 6 Jun 2014, at 7:15 am, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> On 5 June 2014 22:09, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> > On 5 Jun 2014, at 12:28 pm, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> > >>>> > Anyway, the Standard Model of cosmology says it got so big due to >>>> > inflation followed by the big bang. >>>> >>>> Ummmm......following the big bang >>> That depends if you take the big bang to mean the initial hypothetical >>> singularity (which doesn't occur in eternal inflation) or the fireball that >>> starts when inflation ends and ends when "recombination" occurs. I >>> generally take the BB to include at least "the first 3 minutes", which puts >>> it (or 99.9999999999999999999999...% of it) post-inflation. >> OK - thank you for that amazing clarification. I don't know what I take the >> big bang to mean. I think I probably deep down agree with Fred Hoyle who >> invented the term for sarcastic reasons in the first place. Why do we "need" >> a big bang at all? Why can't inflation account for the entire process? > I'm not sure if you're being sacastic or not, but if you're going to nitpick, > I feel that I have to at least attempt to clarify why I said what I said. > Yes, I admit that I have taken the Big Bang to mean the quark soup / plasma > that followed inflation, and I even thought that was what most people thought > of as the BB. So sue me.
Why do you feel I am being sarcastic? I thought what you wrote was amazing so I said so. Is it actually possible to deliver someone an honest compliment around here or is having a siege mentality mandatory? > > Anyway, assuming you're being serious, yes, it looks like Sir Fred was right, > a fact that gives me great satisfaction because I am a big fan of his less > loopy moments (e.g. "The Black Cloud" and "October the First"). If the BICEP > result holds up then the indications are that inflation occurred, and like so > many scientific theories it's the gift that keeps on giving. You explain one > little cosmological discrepancy, or maybe a couple, and "kablooey!" (to quote > Calvin and Hobbes) --- in exchange, you get an infinity of universes. Not a > bad rate of exchange. Like Quantum theory giving us the multiverse, inflation > gives us something even grander, maybe an omniverse or something - infinite, > eternal, and including all possible variants on whatever the real laws of > physics are, assuming variants are allowed. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
