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Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse?
Professor Alan Guth
Thursday, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:00 PM

I will begin by explaining how inflation works, emphasizing how
     inflation can account for the properties of the cosmic background
     radiation, which we view as the afterglow of the big bang
     explosion.  This radiation is incredibly uniform, but also has a
     pattern of faint ripples that are attributed by inflation to the
     probabilistic behavior of quantum theory.  An interesting feature
     of inflation is that almost all versions of it lead to eternal
     inflation: once inflation starts, it goes on forever, producing a
     "multiverse" of "pocket universes," one of which would be our
     universe.  I will then turn to the biggest outstanding mystery in
     cosmology:  the "cosmological constant," which is equivalent to
     attributing a nonzero energy density to the vacuum (i.e., to
     empty space).  Physicists are not surprised that the vacuum
     energy density is nonzero, but are at a loss to explain why it is
     so small --- theoretical estimates are many orders of magnitude
     larger.  I will explain how the multiverse might help to shed
     light on this problem.

ALAN H. GUTH is the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics
     and a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts
     Institute of Technology.  Trained in particle theory at MIT,
     Guth held postdoc positions at Princeton, Columbia, Cornell,
     and SLAC before returning to MIT as a faculty member in
     1980.  His work in cosmology began at Cornell, when Henry
     Tye persuaded him to study the production of magnetic
     monopoles in the early universe.  Using standard
     assumptions, they found that far too many would be produced.
     Continuing this work at SLAC, Guth discovered that the
     magnetic monopole glut could be avoided by a new proposal
     which he called the inflationary universe.  Guth has been
     elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American
     Academy of Arts and Sciences, and had been awarded the
     Franklin Medal for Physics of the Franklin Institute, the
     Dirac Prize of the International Center for Theoretical
     Physics, the Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation,
     and the Newton Prize of the Institute of Physics (UK).
          Guth is still busy exploring the consequences of
     inflation.  He has also written a popular-level book called
     "The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of
     Cosmic Origins" (Addison-Wesley/Perseus Books, 1997).




Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at Changsho, 1712 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting.
When & Where?

Thursday, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:00 PM in Phillips Auditorium, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (60 Garden St, Cambridge, MA).

Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at Changsho, 1712 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting.


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