Cosmological Intimations of Infinity

During the past two decades astronomers and cosmologists have assembled an extremely successful model that accurately describes and explains the evolution of the observable universe over the past 13.8 billion years, most recently confirmed with amazing accuracy by the PLANCK satellite's observations of the cosmic microwave background.  A key component of this cosmological "standard model" is the theory of Inflation, in which at ultra-early times the universe was expanding exponentially.  Originally envisaged as an important but brief cosmological epoch, since Inflation's invention cosmologists have realized that in many cases inflation completely upends our picture of the ultra large-scale structure of the universe, and suggests that the universe lasts forever, may not have had a beginning, and has enormous size and complexity that is best described as a 'multiverse'.  Aguirre will trace the development of these ideas, as well as look forward to prospects for testing or even confirming the idea of an infinite inflationary multiverse.

Speaker: Dr. Anthony Aguirre, UCSC