Speaker
Description
After reviewing some key hints and puzzles from the early
universe, I will introduce recent joint work with Neil Turok
suggesting a rigid and predictive new approach to addressing them.
Our universe seems to be dominated by radiation at early times, and
positive vacuum energy at late times. Taking the symmetry and
analyticity properties of such a spacetime seriously leads to a new
formula for the gravitational entropy of our universe, and a picture
in which the Big Bang may be regarded as a kind of mirror.
I will explain how this line of thought suggests new explanations for
a number of observed properties of the universe, including: its
homogeneity, isotropy and flatness; the arrow of time (i.e. the fact
that entropy increases away from the bang); the nature of dark
matter (which, in this picture, is a right-handed neutrino, radiated
from the early universe like Hawking radiation from a black hole); the
origin of the primordial perturbations; and even the existence of
three generations of standard model fermions. I will discuss some
observational predictions that will be tested in the coming decade,
and some key open questions.
| Keyword-1 | Early-Universe Cosmology |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | Dark Matter |
| Keyword-3 | Entropy |
