Is There a Past Hypothesis That the Early Universe Was Smooth?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Without the past hypothesis, the early universe is overwhelmingly likely to be very high entropy. But it's less unlikely than that there really was a low entropy state in the early universe, just by accident. And therefore, you can use ordinary scientific reconstruction to understand that the pictures we take in our telescope really are evidence that the early universe was smooth.

Welcome to the May 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questions asked by Patreons, whittle them down to a more manageable size — based primarily on whether I have anything interesting to say about them, not whether the questions themselves are good — and sometimes group them together if they are about a similar topic. Enjoy!

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.