There's trouble at the start of time: the theory of cosmic inflation has got way out of control. Can quantum theory and holograms tame it?
"You know how sometimes you meet somebody and they're really nice, so you invite them over to your house and you keep talking with them and they keep telling you more and more cool stuff? But then at some point you're like, maybe we should we call it a day, but they just won't leave and they keep talking and as more stuff comes up it becomes more and more disturbing and you're like, just stop already? That's kind of what happened with inflation."
Max Tegmark's voice is animated as he talks about the idea underpinning our story of the universe's origins. The theory of cosmic inflation states that in the first fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe's fabric expanded faster than light. Without a trick like that, we have difficulty squaring some crucial features of today's cosmos with a universe that began as a hot, dense soup and has been growing and cooling since.
Yet Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is not the only person asking whether inflation has outstayed its welcome. For all its attractions, the theory has unpalatable consequences - so unpalatable that they threaten to undermine our entire understanding of the cosmos. Debate has been reopened on a question many thought had been settled: what kind of a bang was the big bang?
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