What Happened Before the Big Bang? | An Infinity of Worlds - Will Kinney (#224)

Will Kinney is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, where he has been on faculty since 2003. Dr. Kinney's research focuses on the physics of the very early universe, including inflationary cosmology, the Cosmic Microwave Background, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy. He has authored more than seventy published research articles and received the SUNY Chancellor's award for excellence in teaching in 2014.

In his new book, An Infinity of Worlds, physicist Will Kinney explains the theory that may hold the answers to these questions such as Why is the universe so big? Why is it so old? What is the origin of structure in the cosmos? It may even explain the ultimate origins of the universe. The theory of cosmic inflation, before the primordial fire of the Big Bang.

Kinney argues that cosmic inflation is a transformational idea in cosmology, changing our picture of the basic structure of the cosmos and raising unavoidable questions about what we mean by a scientific theory. He explains that inflation is a remarkable unification of inner space and outer space, in which the physics of the very large (the cosmos) meets the physics of the very small (elementary particles and fields), closing in a full circle at the first moment of time. With quantum uncertainty its fundamental feature, this new picture of cosmic origins introduces the possibility that the origin of the universe was of a quantum nature. 

Kinney considers the consequences of eternal cosmic inflation. Can we come to terms with the possibility that our entire observable universe is one of infinitely many, forever hidden from our view?

Get the book: https://amzn.to/3JLi7ng

twitter.com/WKCosmo

Topics discussed include:

• What does inflationary theory say about cosmogenesis?
• Does inflation require a singularity?
• Alternative theories to cosmic inflation
• Is inflationary theory "dangerous"!? Why Paul Steinhardt is wrong!
• There is no single theory of inflation so how do you classify and think of it as a concept?
• What evidence would cause you to doubt inflationary theory? For example the topology of the Universe?
• What other tools can prove or refute the multiverse? Consistency Relations and primordial gravitation waves.

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