On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 7:54 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: *> If you accept Inflation, the universe is many orders of magnitude larger > than what we can observe. How much larger depends on the model of Inflation > one applies. However, AFAIK, there's no persuasive theory that claims its > extent in space or time is INFINITE.*
During inflation the expansion of the universe was exponential which means it had a fixed doubling time, in this case every 10^-37 seconds the diameter of the universe doubled. In 10^-35 seconds it doubled a hundred times and it probably continued doubling for much longer than 10^-35 seconds.But why did it ever end? According to Andrei Linde inflation never did end. Alan Guth, the inventor of inflation, postulated an inflation field that decayed away in a process somewhat analogous to radioactive half life, and after the decay the universe expanded at a much much much more leisurely pace. But then Linde proved that for Guth's idea to work the inflation field had to expand faster than it decayed, Linde called it "Eternal Inflation". Linde showed that for every volume in which the inflation field decays away 2 other volumes don't decay. So one universe becomes 3, the field decays in one universe but not in the other 2, then both of those two universes splits in 3 again and the inflation field decays away in two of them but doesn't decay in the other 4. And it goes on like this forever creating a multiverse. *>I haven't delved deeply into this issue. I tend to the position that > the universe MIGHT be infinite in space and time, but NOT our local bubble, > which I believe is finite. AG* Our observable universe is not only finite its getting smaller due to the accelerating expansion of space. In a trillion years or so it will consist of Milkdromeda (the combined Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy) and that's it because everything else will be moving away from us faster than light and thus be unobservable . John K Clark -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
