Inflation Definition and 415 Threads

Hi, I am trying to understand inflation from a pedagogical perspective and would like to ask if anyone has any lucid insights into the nature of the scalar inflation field and how/why the expansion/supercooling occurs. Any clear explanations extremely appreciated.

What caused inflation in the big bang theory? I've read a few things that seem pure speculation designed to give a cause for something thought to necessarily have happened such as an antigravity force that faded at the end of the inflationary period. It seems too contrived to me.

Just as the thermal equilibrium between two relatively receding (c<v<2c) cosmological horizons is justified by inflation, such a Higgs phase transition could account locally for correlations violating the Bell inequality through superluminal (c<v<2c) "signaling."

What's the best model of inflation? Give me your vote, please My vote goes for hybrid inflation :smile:

Alan Guth and Stephen Hawking on "Eternal Inflation" It is an interesting topic and Alan Guth had two papers discussing it in 2003, also Hawking had one I found in 2003. might be interesting to check out their recent words on the subject Hawking defined it as follows and then proceded to...

How could "Nothingness", before the dawn of the quantum inflation, becoem unstable by the quantum mechanics principal of uncertainty?

Does anyone know if VSL theories are being seriously researched, studied, and pursued? -Glenn

"Quantum Gravity and Inflation"---a new paper The following paper appeared today in arxiv preprints Stephon Alexander et al "Quantum Gravity and Inflation" http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0309045 The paper could be important. By way of detail, it has been submitted to Physical Review Series D...

http://bubba.ucdavis.edu/~infl03/Anthony_Aguirre/infl_infl.pdf" http://arxiv.org/ps/gr-qc/0301042 COMMENT: I tried the links myself, and you can download them using "right-mouse/save as" at the link, and the files (first: PDF, second: PS) will be stored to disk. Note: the PS file...

Here is a good paper that is quite neat makes a good case for evolving extensions to Inflation models. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0307/0307179.pdf

Ashtekar "Mathematical Structure of Loop Quantum Cosmology" http://www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0304074 It's with co-authors Martin Bojowald and Jerzy Lewandowski and the date is June 9, 2003 and its 29 pages with references Ashtekar and company have an ongoing program to quantize the geometry...

when a price of $56.795 is rounded to $56.80 money is created... would you say this has a negligable impact upon our economy?

Leaving for the beach today so I won't be contributing any thoughts but posters named Nacho and Rudi wrote some things recently that started me wondering why (in standard cosmology, not "astro.alt"!) people find inflation scenarios compelling the usual answer is, even tho we don't know...

I've had a nagging question about the nature of inflation of the universe for some time, something that to me seems intuitive but which I've never seen asked or answered. I recognize the danger of intuitive thinking in modern physics, but hopefully some of the experts here can help straighten...

As anlternative to some other pre-Big Bang theories (like the Hawking-Turok Instanton pea model) there is a model of Eternal, Chaotic or Open inflation, in which Inflation reproduces itself eternally. The merit of this model of inflation is that there is no requirement for a "beginning of...