- #1
slatts
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I need some help from people who can read the math in papers by such physicists as Linde. In his 2014 paper (on the web) "Inflationary Cosmology after Planck 2013", he says,
"False vacuum is a metastable state without any fields or particles but with large energy density. Imagine a universe filled with such 'heavy nothing'. When the universe expands, empty space remains empty, so its energy density does not change".
First, I'm hoping to confirm that Linde is referring only to the density of potential energy, AKA the potential for energy (whose potential I figure to always have some density vis-a-vis volume, at least in any regions of generic space that our remotest descendants might eventually reach). I've formulated this guess partly because Linde is pretty down-to-earth in his use of English, and partly because he seems to be talking about a time before the fluctuations in the inflaton had reached those regions of "heavy nothing", when the Unruh effect could not yet have set any jet-packing space cadet's hair on fire.
Second, since I myself have brainlessly breezed through the non-mathematical parts of Ali & Das' 2014 "Cosmology from Quantum Potential" (-also on the web, and very ably discussed in a couple of long PF threads) and want to prepare myself for the possibility that they might even be right about the universe already having an "infinite age", I'd like to know whether an "open" universe is generally considered to be "open" because the aforementioned gravitational field is already infinite spatially, or only because the parts of the inflaton that have already blasted through OUR region WILL reach all of the spatial regions already reached by that gravitational field LONG before we or any of our descendants ever could (-even by riding the inertial expansion of our own bubble, whose expansion is of course the fastest thing in these parts).
Thanks.
"False vacuum is a metastable state without any fields or particles but with large energy density. Imagine a universe filled with such 'heavy nothing'. When the universe expands, empty space remains empty, so its energy density does not change".
First, I'm hoping to confirm that Linde is referring only to the density of potential energy, AKA the potential for energy (whose potential I figure to always have some density vis-a-vis volume, at least in any regions of generic space that our remotest descendants might eventually reach). I've formulated this guess partly because Linde is pretty down-to-earth in his use of English, and partly because he seems to be talking about a time before the fluctuations in the inflaton had reached those regions of "heavy nothing", when the Unruh effect could not yet have set any jet-packing space cadet's hair on fire.
Second, since I myself have brainlessly breezed through the non-mathematical parts of Ali & Das' 2014 "Cosmology from Quantum Potential" (-also on the web, and very ably discussed in a couple of long PF threads) and want to prepare myself for the possibility that they might even be right about the universe already having an "infinite age", I'd like to know whether an "open" universe is generally considered to be "open" because the aforementioned gravitational field is already infinite spatially, or only because the parts of the inflaton that have already blasted through OUR region WILL reach all of the spatial regions already reached by that gravitational field LONG before we or any of our descendants ever could (-even by riding the inertial expansion of our own bubble, whose expansion is of course the fastest thing in these parts).
Thanks.