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Ask Ethan: How did the Universe truly begin? (bigthink.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If you said "with the Big Bang," congratulations: that was our best answer as of ~1979. Here's what we've learned in all the time since.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Will they be similar to our universe or have less energy because inflation continued for longer?

Likely similar to ours. The energy from inflation came from energy that is inherent to the fabric of space - dark energy. So it was not diluted.

But what if we tried to go there anyway? What exists between us?

First there is distance. New space would be created faster than we could travel there. There would likely be other problems. For example, matter would not be stable enough to form atoms and probably wouldn't exist at all. In the inflation universe, the particles are hypothetical "inflatons", not the particles we have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there any part of our universe where this inflationary region is visible? Even if it’s too far for us to ever reach, I’m just curious what the edge of our universe is like and what we would see beyond it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No. Our observable universe would be way to small to be connected to the inflationary region. Also, the inflationary universe probably doesn't have any of our particles so it would not have any light photons. It would probably just look like a mysterious dark area to us.