Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed

CITYBOY1000 said:
You know your onions Damocles so can you simply things a little more for me ?

How did the space get there before the "super rapid expansion" took place ? Who put it there and what purpose was it serving ?
Click to expand...

You need to visualise the difference between space (a fabric that makes the Universe) and matter (stuff that's in the Universe).

The Big Bang only tries to describe where the matter in our little bit of the Universe comes from. The super rapid expansion explains why matter in two parts of space very far away from each other can be at the same temperature (because this mean they must have been close to each other at one point).

Nobody knows where space comes from, only that it expanded very quickly about 13.8 billion years ago. We have reason to believe that space might be infinite in all directions.
The purpose of something isn't really a question that science can answer, only the way things work. Philosophy has the responsibilities of explaining why things are the way they are, we can only really explain how it happened.
 
How much did the universe expand in that period of super rapid expansion? Am I correct that it lasted only 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds (10e-36)?
 
Nearly, it started at 10[super]-36[/super] seconds after the Big Bang event and was thought to have finished at 10[super]-32[/super] seconds.

During this time it is thought too have expanded in terms of volume by a factor of 10[super]78[/super].

So it lasted a hundredth thousandths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second and the Universe grew by a factor of a hundred thousand billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion.

I've just added:

Code: 
[super]number[/super]

as a hidden BB code by the way
 
Damocles said:
I am. I watched the first episode and found it a bit bombastic for my tastes.

You have to remember that the beauty of the original Cosmos was that it explained the connections between science and humanity on a small and intricate level which enabled you to realise the vast majesty of it all. The new series seems to try and show you the vast majesty directly which isn't the same. Cosmos the original made you feel like you were peeking behind the curtain of life, the new one is like throwing back the curtain and having it perform a vaudeville show.

I'll watch the next two episodes and hope that it gets better.
Click to expand...

I never watched the original, but my first thoughts were that it wasn't nearly as good as Brian Cox's shows. But I shall watch it anyway because there is far too little stuff like this on TV at the moment!
 
Damocles said:
Nearly, it started at 10[super]-36[/super] seconds after the Big Bang event and was thought to have finished at 10[super]-32[/super] seconds.

During this time it is thought too have expanded in terms of volume by a factor of 10[super]78[/super].

So it lasted a hundredth thousandths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second and the Universe grew by a factor of a hundred thousand billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion.

I've just added:

Code: 
[super]number[/super]

as a hidden BB code by the way
Click to expand...
Thanks for that.

I read somewhere that the universe was about the the size of a grapefruit after super rapid expansion, which suggests it was expanding at an average of about 10[super]31[/super] metres per second from its centre. This is about 10 billion trillion times faster than the speed of light. Is that correct within an order of magnitude or two?
 
west didsblue said:
Damocles said:
Nearly, it started at 10[super]-36[/super] seconds after the Big Bang event and was thought to have finished at 10[super]-32[/super] seconds.

During this time it is thought too have expanded in terms of volume by a factor of 10[super]78[/super].

So it lasted a hundredth thousandths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second and the Universe grew by a factor of a hundred thousand billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion.

I've just added:

Code: 
[super]number[/super]

as a hidden BB code by the way
Click to expand...
Thanks for that.

I read somewhere that the universe was about the the size of a grapefruit after super rapid expansion, which suggests it was expanding at an average of about 10[super]31[/super] metres per second from its centre. This is about 10 billion trillion times faster than the speed of light. Is that correct within an order of magnitude or two?
Click to expand...

"10 billion trillion times faster than the speed of light", now that just makes my head hurt.
Wouldnt that go agaisnt the laws of the very universe that was expanding!?
 
CTID1988 said:
"10 billion trillion times faster than the speed of light", now that just makes my head hurt.
Wouldnt that go agaisnt the laws of the very universe that was expanding!?
Click to expand...
Nothing was actually travelling faster than light. It was just that spacetime itself was expanding at that rate. In fact, at that stage, there was no such thing as light. Photons only started to appear about 10 seconds after the big bang. Before that there various elementary particles such leptons and gluons. I'm sure Damo will correct me if I'm wrong.
 
An update on a previous topic.

During the verification process, 2 papers released have offered an alternative explanation for the effects seen concerning how dust moves in the Milky Way

This is actually the root of all science and it rather exciting. We now have two explanations for an effect and it's a race to the evidence to decide which one is the correct one, we could throw this whole result and its knock on to the idea of inflation right out of the window
 
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