Files in This Item:
| File | Format | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| b1155146.mp4 | Streaming Video | View/Open |
| Title: | Eternal Inflation and Its Implications |
| Originating Office: | IAS |
| Speaker: | Guth, Alan |
| Issue Date: | 1-Jun-2011 |
| Event Date: | 1-Jun-2011 |
| Group/Series/Folder: | Record Group 8.15 - Institute for Advanced Study Series 3 - Audio-visual Materials |
| Location: | 8.15:3 box 1.7 |
| Notes: | IAS Conference on Cosmology since Einstein. IAS title: Plenary Talk 3. Abstract: Almost all models of inflation lead to eternal inflation: once inflation starts, it never stops, but instead goes on forever producing a multiverse of pocket universes. If the multiverse is real, then it can offer a plausible explanation for the smallness of the cosmological constant. But if we really live in a multiverse, then anything that can happen will happen an infinite number of times, and the distinction between common and rare events becomes hard to define. Prof Guth discusses attempts to define a probability measure that regularizes these infinities. Different measures can give very different probabilities, but he argues that only a narrow class of measures – similar to scale factor cutoff measure – appear to be viable. A common feature of successful measures is that they do not favor huge amounts of inflation, so the probability of observing spatial curvature is not absurdly small. Duration: 56 min. |
| Appears in Series: | 8.15:3 - Audio-visual Materials Videos for Public -- Distinguished Lectures |