The Cosmic Microwave Background

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Dark matter is collision-less, it just keeps going along its merry way. The prediction of the dark matter model is that the gravitational field should be where the galaxies are. And so here's what happens. A region of the early universe that is slightly over dense will start to contract. So in the early universe, there are deviations in density from place to place. Maybe they came from inflation, maybe they came from somewhere else, but somewhere early in the universe we don't know.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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