Sabine Hossenfelder: Cosmic inflation is overblown

In her article Sabine Hossenfelder states,

Inflation: Status Update - Sabine Hossenfelder - March 08, 2019 Excerpt: The currently most popular theory for the early universe is called “inflation”. According to inflation, the universe once underwent a phase in which volumes of space increased exponentially in time. This rapid expansion then stopped in an event called “reheating,” at which the particles of the standard model were produced. After this, particle physics continues the familiar way. Inflation was originally invented to solve several finetuning problems.,,, ( 1. The Monopole Problem 2. The Flatness Problem 3. The Horizon Problem) ,,, Yall know that I think finetuning arguments are a waste of time, so naturally I think these motivations for inflations are no good. However, just because the original reason for the idea of inflation doesn’t make sense doesn’t mean the theory is wrong. Ever since the results of the Planck in 2013 it hasn’t looked good for inflation. After the results appeared, Anna Ijjas, Paul Steinhardt, and Avi Loeb argued in a series of papers that the models of inflation which are compatible with the data themselves require finetuning, and therefore bring back the problem they were meant to solve. They popularized their argument in a 2017 article in Scientific American, provocatively titled “Pop Goes the Universe.” The current models of inflation work not simply by assuming that the universe did undergo a phase of exponential inflation, but they moreover introduce a new field – the “inflaton” – that supposedly caused this rapid expansion. For this to work, it is not sufficient to just postulate the existence of this field, the field also must have a suitable potential. This potential is basically a function (of the field) and typically requires several parameters to be specified. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/10/is-inflationary-universe-scientific.html

Here is the “Pop Goes the Universe” that she cited:

Pop Goes The Universe - Scientific American - January 2017 - Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt and Abraham Loeb Excerpt: “If anything, the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory, providing new reasons to consider competing ideas about the origin and evolution of the universe… (i)n the years since, more precise data gathered by the Planck satellite and other instruments have made the case only stronger……The Planck satellite results—a combination of an unexpectedly small (few percent) deviation from perfect scale invariance in the pattern of hot and colds spots in the CMB and the failure to detect cosmic gravitational waves—are stunning. For the first time in more than 30 years, the simplest inflationary models, including those described in standard textbooks, are strongly disfavored by observations.” “Two improbable criteria have to be satisfied for inflation to start. First, shortly after the big bang, there has to be a patch of space where the quantum fluctuations of spacetime have died down and the space is well described by Einstein’s classical equations of general relativity; second, the patch of space must be flat enough and have a smooth enough distribution of energy that the inflation energy can grow to dominate all other forms of energy. Several theoretical estimates of the probability of finding a patch with these characteristics just after the big bang suggest that it is more difficult than finding a snowy mountain equipped with a ski lift and well-maintained ski slopes in the middle of a desert.” “More important, if it were easy to find a patch emerging from the big bang that is flat and smooth enough to start inflation, then inflation would not be needed in the first place. Recall that the entire motivation for introducing it was to explain how the visible universe came to have these properties; if starting inflation requires those same properties, with the only difference being that a smaller patch of space is needed, that is hardly progress.” “…inflation continues eternally, generating an infinite number of patches where inflation has ended, each creating a universe unto itself…(t)he worrisome implication is that the cosmological properties of each patch differ because of the inherent randomizing effect of quantum fluctuations…The result is what cosmologists call the multiverse. Because every patch can have any physically conceivable properties, the multiverse does not explain why our universe has the very special conditions that we observe—they are purely accidental features of our particular patch.” “We would like to suggest “multimess” as a more apt term to describe the unresolved outcome of eternal inflation, whether it consists of an infinite multitude of patches with randomly distributed properties or a quantum mess. From our perspective, it makes no difference which description is correct. Either way, the multimess does not predict the properties of our observable universe to be the likely outcome. A good scientific theory is supposed to explain why what we observe happens instead of something else. The multimess fails this fundamental test.” https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/sciam3.pdf

So basically, due to CMB observations, we a still back at square one in terms of physicists ever explaining the beginning of the universe or why the universe is as flat and smooth as it is. It is interesting to note what the discovers of the CMB themselves had to say about the implications of the CMB:

“My argument,” Dr. Penzias concluded, “is that the best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics – co-discoverer Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – as stated to the New York Times on March 12, 1978 INTERVIEW WITH ARNO PENZIAS AND ROBERT WILSON “Certainly there was something that set it all off,,, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match Genesis” Robert Wilson – Nobel laureate – co-discoverer Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - Fred Heeren, Show Me God (Wheeling, Ill.: Daystar, 2000),

A few more quotes along that line:

"The question of 'the beginning' is as inescapable for cosmologists as it is for theologians...there is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing" George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time, 1993, p.189. - George Smoot is a Nobel laureate in 2006 for his work on COBE "Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." Robert Jastrow – Founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute – ‘God and the Astronomers’ - Pg.15 - 2000

Moreover, whereas inflation cosmologists will apparently forever be stymied in their quest to explain why the universe is as flat and smooth as it is,,,

Yes, the world (universe) really is flat - December 8, 2016 Excerpt: The universe has all sorts of deformations in space-time where it varies from the perfectly flat. Any place where there’s mass or energy, there’s a corresponding bending of space-time — that’s General Relativity 101. So a couple light beams would naturally collide inside a wandering black hole, or bend along weird angles after encountering a galaxy or two. But average all those small-scale effects out and look at the big picture. When we examine very old light — say, the cosmic microwave background — that has been traveling the universe for more than 13.8 billion years, we get a true sense of the universe’s shape. And the answer, as far as we can tell, to within an incredibly small margin of uncertainty, is that the universe is flat.,,, ,,, but there are also no laws of physics that predict or restrict the topology. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/yes-the-world-really-is-flat/ Space is all the same temperature. Coincidence? Distant patches of the universe should never have come into contact. So how come they’re all just as hot as each other? - 26 October 2016 Excerpt: THE temperature of the cosmic microwave background – the radiation bathing all of space – is remarkably uniform. It varies by less than 0.001 degrees from a chilly 2.725 kelvin. But while that might seem natural enough, this consistency is a real puzzle. For two widely separated areas of the cosmos to reach thermal equilibrium, heat needs enough time to travel from one to the other. Even if this happens at the speed of light, the universe is just too young for this to have happened. Cosmologists try to explain this uniformity using the hypothesis known as inflation. It replaces the simple idea of a big bang with one in which there was also a moment of exponential expansion. This sudden, faster-than-light increase in the size of the universe allows it to have started off smaller than an atom, when it would have had plenty of time to equalise its temperature. “On the face of it, inflation is a totally bonkers idea – it replaces a coincidence with a completely nonsensical vision of what the early universe was like,” says Andrew Pontzen at University College London. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230970-900-cosmic-coincidences-everythings-at-the-same-temperature/

,,Moreover, whereas inflation cosmologists will aparently forever be stymied in their quest to explain why the universe is as flat and smooth as it is, the Bible predicted, thousands of years before modern science came along, that the universe would be exceptionally flat and smooth (or more precisely, why it is so exceptionally flat and round):

Job 38:4-5 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? Proverbs 8:26-27 While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primeval dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, Job 26:10 He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.

Moreover, as was mentioned the other day, these anomalous “tiny temperature variations” in the CMBR, (from the large scale structures in the universe, to the earth and solar system themselves), reveal teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan), that specifically included the earth from the start. ,,, The earth, from what our best science can now tell us, is not some random cosmic fluke as atheists presuppose. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/uses-and-misuses-of-the-anthropic-principle/#comment-674228 Bottom line, the Christian theist is sitting in a much better position today in regards to what the CMB has now revealed to us for God creating the universe with the earth in Mind than when it was initially discovered by Penzias and Wilson and they themselves noted the obvious Theistic implications of the CMB

“My argument,” Dr. Penzias concluded, “is that the best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics – co-discoverer Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – as stated to the New York Times on March 12, 1978 INTERVIEW WITH ARNO PENZIAS AND ROBERT WILSON “Certainly there was something that set it all off,,, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match Genesis” Robert Wilson – Nobel laureate – co-discoverer Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - Fred Heeren, Show Me God (Wheeling, Ill.: Daystar, 2000),

Verse:

Genesis !:1-3 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

bornagain77

March 14, 2019

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