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Probability of inflation
I've been reading this paper:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0410/0410270.pdf and most of it makes sense, but there's one part I don't get. Correct me if I'm wrong, but with temperature T, the odds against a phenomenon with energy E randomly occurring at a given time where E T are roughly exp(E/T), right? On page 25 of the above paper, the authors consider a cold, empty universe and the length of time it would take for a small region hot enough to undergo inflation to spontaneously appear. They come up with 10^56 as the difference between inflation temperature and background temperature, which sounds reasonable. I therefore expected the time estimate to be of the form exp(10^56), give or take a factor of a few zillion. The actual estimate given is of the form exp(exp(10^56)). That number makes no sense to me; it's much larger than the number of possible ways of arranging all the atoms in the visible universe. I can't imagine any way any physical phenomenon under any set of physical laws ever proposed could produce a finite number that large. Unfortunately I don't know enough physics to follow the derivation given. Can anyone explain in layman's terms where the triple exponential comes from? Thanks, -- "Always look on the bright side of life." To reply by email, replace no.spam with my last name. |
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