https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=blSTTFS8Uco
How Cosmic Inflation Flattened the Universe | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
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cosmic inflation describes a period of

insane exponential expansion right after

the instant of the Big Bang it calls

into question a very understanding of

what the beginning of the universe even

means the Big Bang Theory describes the

earliest epochs of our universe

amazingly well and has made predictions

that have been verified beyond

reasonable doubt but two significant

problems with the simple model tell us

that something strange must have

happened in early times an insane growth

spurt that we call inflation today I'll

explain what inflation is why we need it

and why essentially all cosmologists

believe that it really happened the

observable universe is impossibly huge

and I'm not exaggerating the situation

here it's so huge 93 billion light years

from one edge to the other that those

most distant points should never have

had time to communicate with each other

and yet at some point in the distant

past they must have been in contact the

cosmic microwave background tells us

that they'll once close enough together

to become perfectly smoothly mixed this

smoothness of the CMB is called The

Horizon problem and we talked about it

in the last video the horizon problem

isn't the only troubling feature of the

CMB

we can use the apparent size of the very

subtle fluctuations in the CMB to

measure the flatness of the fabric of

the universe of space-time and the

answer we get is very strange

let me explain a flat sheet of paper is

flat duh draw any triangle on one and

add up the angles it's always 180

degrees draw the same triangle on the

surface of a sphere which has what we

call positive curvature and the angles

add up to more than 180 on a negative

curvature hyperbolic plane saddle-like

structure they add up to less triangles

in 3d space obey exactly the same rules

as on 2d surfaces

and the geometry measures the curvature

of space so now think of those blobs in

the CMB

as the ends of very very long triangles

we know the size of the brightest of

those blobs they're defined by how far

sound waves could have traveled by the

time the CMB was created and we know how

far away they are they're really really

far

using basic trigonometry those distances

tell us what the little angle at this

end should be it should be one degree

assuming the universe is flat it should

be larger if the universe is positively

curved smaller if negatively curved and

yes it's pretty much exactly one degree

based on the precision of our

measurements so far we know that the

curvature is within point four of 1% of

perfect flatness okay so what the

universe is flat

no actually it's extremely weird an

expanding universe doesn't tend to stay

flat even if it starts that way analogy

one way to bowl a strike is to keep the

ball near the center of the alley all

the way to the pins if the ball isn't

moving fast enough then any initial

deviation from dead center will send it

towards the gutter same with the

universe if the center of the alley

represents a flat universe then the

gutters represent extreme curvature in

the positive or negative directions if

universe starts out even a little bit

not flat then that not flatness will

amplify quickly so if our universe is

flat to within point four of a percent

now then in the first instance the

universe had to be flat to one part in

10 to the power of 62 it's like rolling

your ball really really slowly and

having it stay within point four of a

percent of the center of the alley and

the alley is a light year long nice

bowling universe this flatness problem

is just as much of an issue as the

horizon problem

both seems strange if we assume that

regular gravity was always the only

force affecting the rate of expansion

after the initial kick of the Big Bang

we need to throw out that assumption

because it's giving us the wrong answer

that's a science thing questioning your

assumptions try it it's fun so it turns

out that we can fix both of these

problems with a single elegant idea

called inflation it goes like this

start with the universe so crunched down

that the entire currently observable

part of it was all causally connected

then for a very short period of time

blow it up much faster than the speed of

light so that most of it appears

causally disconnected at which point

inflation stops and regular expansion

takes over this works because even a

very blotchy curvy universe is going to

be much smoother and flatter on its

smaller scales inflation takes a very

tiny smooth flat speck of that blotchy

curvy greater universe and blows it up

to a macroscopic volume really really

fast that inflated speck subsequently

grows into the universe that we know but

retains its once subatomic smoothness

and flatness that's right according to

inflation the universe that we see is a

tiny part of a vastly larger universe

that itself may well be curved the

neatness with which this inflation

solves both the horizon and flatness

problems really has most cosmologists

thinking that something like this must

have happened for this to work that

inflationary expansion had to throw

neighboring regions of space apart at

many times faster than the speed of

light it needed to increase the size of

the universe by a factor of at least 10

to the power of 26 in less than 10 to

the minus 32 seconds

ending when universe was just

macroscopic something you could hold in

your hand
in the subsequent 13.7 billion years

since the universe has expanded by about

the same amount that it did during

inflation so what sort of mad physics

could do something like that actually

Einstein came up with the exact

mathematical description that we need an

antigravity term called the cosmological

constant in the field equations of his

general theory of relativity he added

this as a way to allow his theory to

describe a static space-time a universe

that's neither expanding nor contracting

when it was later discovered that the

universe is indeed expanding Einstein

retracted his constant but this bit of

math gives us exactly the type of

expansion that we need for inflation

incidentally it also describes the

effect of dark energy and that may not

be a coincidence the cosmological

constant represents something that can

happen to our space-time Einstein is

right even when is wrong the

cosmological constant adds some

energetic stuff to empty space it

doesn't tell us what this stuff is just

that it's a property of space itself and

there it acts to drive expansion the

more space the more of this stuff

and so the more space the more expansion

will delve pretty deep into how this

works in terms of general relativity on

a future episode on dark energy and

we'll explore exactly what could cause

such a weird sort of energetic vacuum

real soon in photons scalar fields false

vacuums all that for now let's just go

with the fact that empty space can

propel its own expansion and will do so

if the vacuum contains a ubiquitous

constant energy density another really

important thing about the driving

mechanism of inflation is that it

stopped the universe slowed down for

exponential to the regular old expansion

that we see today what we call Hubble

expansion and while we know the minimum

amount of inflation needed before that

stopping point we don't really know when

it began or even if it had a beginning

it may have and there are some ideas

about what got it started but it's also

possible that inflationary expansion is

the default state of the greater

universe I should say multiverse at this

point this is the idea of eternal

inflation I'll get to all of these wild

ideas very soon with inflation The Big

Bang Theory takes on new meaning when

first conceived the inflationary period

was thought to have started at a

particular point after the instant of

the Big Bang but once you accept

inflation there isn't necessarily a good

reason to think that there was a normal

expansion period before if there even

was a before inflation in fact the

instant that inflation ended can perhaps

be thought of as the moment that our

universe as we know it came into being

in that sense inflation is the initial

kick of the Big Bang we don't need to

talk about an exploding singularity at

all time may not have begun with the Big

Bang and so we'll rewind to before the

beginning of the universe very soon on

space-time in a recent episode we told

you why space things are the shape they

are and you guys brought it with the big

questions frank schneider asks why does

dark matter in a galaxy seem to form a

sphere well this is because dark matter

doesn't really interact with itself

except gravitationally the Milky Way and

our solar system were originally made of

gas giant clouds of the stuff and

guessed does interact with itself it

drags on itself so even though the gas

originally had motion in many directions

over time it sweeps into a single bulk

flow Dark Matter doesn't sweep itself it

just passes by with a tiny gravitational

tug so the orbits of any bit of dark

matter can be in any orientation or

direction and random orientation orbits

give you a spheroid this is also true of

the Stars in elliptical galaxies stars

are small enough compared to the

distances between them that they can be

in these random orbits the reason spiral

galaxies are disky is that those disks

formed before the stars actually formed

back when the material was mostly gas D

Blanding and a few others questioned my

use of the concept of a centrifugal

force and D blending I definitely chose

yours because of your particular

phrasing it's true that this force is in

a sense fictitious it emerges in a

rotating reference frame as a force like

term that resists inward motion it

doesn't exist in the inertial reference

frames for which Newton's laws are valid

for example in a reference frame of an

unmoving center of mass you have a

center pointing or centripetal force in

this case that's gravity acting on the

orbiting object and the force is

resisted by nothing the orbiting object

is subject to the full acceleration

caused by gravity which is what causes

it to move in an orbit in that reference

frame it's the velocity perpendicular to

the centripetal acceleration that

resists radial infall but centrifugal

force is easier to say and it's still

accurate a couple of you asked about the

shape of a black hole and it's a

creation disk based on the spin of the

black hole okay

so first the accretion disk that forms

around the black hole can either be very

flat or fatter but probably more

toroidal than spherical yet that doesn't

have much to do with the spin of the

black hole itself

it depends more on things like the rate

of accretion the viscosity of the

material

all the way angular momentum is lost by

that material stuff like that

although the magnetic field of a

spinning black hole can also play a part

here

however the shape of the event horizon

of the black hole itself does depend on

spin and indeed a rapidly rotating cur

black hole is flattened

it's an oblate spheroid while a non

rotating sparked shield black hole is a

perfect sphere

Omicron Vega asks if I can please do the

blue steel face from Zoolander I'm sorry

I only do Magnum
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