Hints of 'time before Big Bang'

DaniFong · on June 8, 2008

This has fallen off the front page, but this article inspired me to give my own treatment of the state of cosmology, and the results mentioned here.

Read Cosmology in Ten Minutes:

http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/cosmology-in-ten-min...

Or on HN:

http://einfall.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/cosmology-in-ten-min...

dhimes · on June 8, 2008

Thanks, Dani!

dhimes · on June 6, 2008

I'd be interested in seeing the Phys Rev Letter on this one. I treat a lot of these ideas as bordering sci-fi, but PRL is a helluva journal.

The many-universe idea has been around for quite a while. They must have added something interesting. The anisotropy is probably pretty significant.

hugh · on June 6, 2008

I assume it's this one:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0377

which was submitted to PRL by those authors two days ago.

I'm a physicist, but not an astrophysicist or cosmologist, so I'm having trouble making head or tails of it. But most of the highly speculative stuff in the article isn't mentioned in the paper.

dhimes · on June 6, 2008

Thank you! I'll have a look.

herdrick · on June 8, 2008

Crappy article. Here's the only new info:

"Detailed measurements made by the satellite have shown that the fluctuations in the microwave background are about 10% stronger on one side of the sky than those on the other.

Sean Carroll conceded that this might just be a coincidence, but pointed out that a natural explanation for this discrepancy would be if it represented a structure inherited from our universe's parent."