Eternal Inflation, past and future

Abstract

Cosmological inflation, if it occurred, radically alters the picture of the `big bang', which would merely point to reheating at the end of inflation. Moreover, this reheating may be only local, so that inflation continues elsewhere and forever, continually spawning big-bang-like regions. This chapter reviews this idea of `eternal inflation', then focuses on what this may mean for the ultimate beginning of the universe. In particular, I will argue that given eternal inflation, the universe may be free of a cosmological initial singularity, might be eternal (and eternally inflating) to the past, and might obey an interesting sort of cosmological time-symmetry.

38 pp., 6 color figures. Contribution to R. Vaas (ed.): Beyond the Big Bang. Springer 2008

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Towards the cold atom analog false vacuum
• Quantum Instability of the Emergent Universe
• Simulating the universe(s) II: phenomenology of cosmic bubble collisions in full General Relativity
• Superbradyons and some possible dark matter signatures
• Initial Conditions for Bubble Universes
• Singularities in FLRW Spacetimes
• Life, the Universe, and almost Everything: Signs of Cosmic Design?
• Birth of the Universe from the Multiverse, MG13
• Multiverse Scenarios in Cosmology: Classification, Cause, Challenge, Controversy, and Criticism
• Horizon Complementarity and Casimir Violations of the Null Energy Condition
• Possible relationship between initial conditions for inflation and past geodesic incompleteness of the inflationary spacetime
• The Black Hole Particle Accelerator as a Machine to make Baby Universes
• The Observer Class Hypothesis