time it took the light to reach us. By collecting light from many standard candles at varying distances, the teams mapped a history of the universeâs expansion. Only it wasnât slowing down at all. It was speeding up.
What could accelerate the universeâs expansion in spite of gravityâs best efforts to slow it down? Some mysterious dark force had to be out there, permeating the emptiness of interstellar space, hiding in the depths of the vacuum, pushing it apart, exerting a kind of antigravity, causing spacetime to expand faster and faster. Exactly how much of this dark energy is out there according to the supernovae? The answer was a near miracle. It was exactly the amount you need to fill that 73 percent hole and flatten the universe.
All the data were in rather spectacular agreement. As for inflation, WMAP had confirmed its most generic predictions. The temperature fluctuations didnât exhibit any characteristic scale, and the hot and cold spots were distributed randomly. Plus, a flat universe was exactly what inflation had ordered, because even if it were curved, the radius of curvature would be blown up to such large proportions that it would look flat anyway, just like the Earth looks flat around my feet. The physicists were so pleased with WMAPâs vindication of inflation, theywere practically glowing. There were rumblings that Guth would win a Nobel Prize.
But beneath the celebratory mood, something wasnât quite right. One piece of the WMAP puzzle didnât add up. Inflation predicted that the temperature fluctuations would occur at all scales, but at scales larger than 60 degrees across the sky, they abruptly stopped. Whenever this problem, known as the âlow quadrupole,â was mentioned, every physicistâs face seemed to darken with worry, and while I wasnât sure why, I had the sense that it might be a bigger problem than they were letting on.
If there is one larger-than-life superstar, a Michael Jackson of physics, itâs Stephen Hawking. Seeing him in the flesh was surreal. Even the other physicists, many of whom had known him for years as a colleague and a close friend, seemed a bit slack-jawed in his presence.
During one of the lectures, I sat directly behind Hawking. I was trying my best to pay attention to the speaker, but I found myself mesmerized by the words flashing on the computer screen mounted to the arm of his wheelchair. Paralyzed to the brink by a motor neuron disease, Hawking had one last functioning muscle, in his cheek, and by twitching it he could control the cursor on his monitor. The cursor constantly scrolled through a catalog of Hawkingâs most commonly used words, and with a properly timed twitch he could select one from the list. Twitch by twitch, Hawking could slowly, arduously build sentences, which were then sent to a speech synthesizer that spoke the words for him in a robotic voice that lacked not only a sense of humanity but also, as Hawking lamented, a British accent.
Seeing him there in front of me, his body slumped over in his wheelchair like a deflating balloon, I found myself in even greater awe of all heâd been able to accomplish. And as I watched the words flash across his monitor, knowing full well that they were nothing more than random lists, I couldnât help thinking that if I watched them closely enough, Iâd glimpse the answers to the universe.
*Â *Â *
When the meeting broke for lunch, everyone headed outside. Lunch wasnât provided, so we were free to go off on our own. I noticed Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist, standing on her own, likely waiting for someone, so I approached and introduced myself. In her talk, Randall had pondered the mysterious origin of the inflaton field, which I was glad to hear, as I was sitting there pondering it myself. The inflaton, in its false vacuum condition, was responsible for triggering inflation and spawning the large, uniform, star-speckled universe
What could accelerate the universeâs expansion in spite of gravityâs best efforts to slow it down? Some mysterious dark force had to be out there, permeating the emptiness of interstellar space, hiding in the depths of the vacuum, pushing it apart, exerting a kind of antigravity, causing spacetime to expand faster and faster. Exactly how much of this dark energy is out there according to the supernovae? The answer was a near miracle. It was exactly the amount you need to fill that 73 percent hole and flatten the universe.
All the data were in rather spectacular agreement. As for inflation, WMAP had confirmed its most generic predictions. The temperature fluctuations didnât exhibit any characteristic scale, and the hot and cold spots were distributed randomly. Plus, a flat universe was exactly what inflation had ordered, because even if it were curved, the radius of curvature would be blown up to such large proportions that it would look flat anyway, just like the Earth looks flat around my feet. The physicists were so pleased with WMAPâs vindication of inflation, theywere practically glowing. There were rumblings that Guth would win a Nobel Prize.
But beneath the celebratory mood, something wasnât quite right. One piece of the WMAP puzzle didnât add up. Inflation predicted that the temperature fluctuations would occur at all scales, but at scales larger than 60 degrees across the sky, they abruptly stopped. Whenever this problem, known as the âlow quadrupole,â was mentioned, every physicistâs face seemed to darken with worry, and while I wasnât sure why, I had the sense that it might be a bigger problem than they were letting on.
If there is one larger-than-life superstar, a Michael Jackson of physics, itâs Stephen Hawking. Seeing him in the flesh was surreal. Even the other physicists, many of whom had known him for years as a colleague and a close friend, seemed a bit slack-jawed in his presence.
During one of the lectures, I sat directly behind Hawking. I was trying my best to pay attention to the speaker, but I found myself mesmerized by the words flashing on the computer screen mounted to the arm of his wheelchair. Paralyzed to the brink by a motor neuron disease, Hawking had one last functioning muscle, in his cheek, and by twitching it he could control the cursor on his monitor. The cursor constantly scrolled through a catalog of Hawkingâs most commonly used words, and with a properly timed twitch he could select one from the list. Twitch by twitch, Hawking could slowly, arduously build sentences, which were then sent to a speech synthesizer that spoke the words for him in a robotic voice that lacked not only a sense of humanity but also, as Hawking lamented, a British accent.
Seeing him there in front of me, his body slumped over in his wheelchair like a deflating balloon, I found myself in even greater awe of all heâd been able to accomplish. And as I watched the words flash across his monitor, knowing full well that they were nothing more than random lists, I couldnât help thinking that if I watched them closely enough, Iâd glimpse the answers to the universe.
*Â *Â *
When the meeting broke for lunch, everyone headed outside. Lunch wasnât provided, so we were free to go off on our own. I noticed Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist, standing on her own, likely waiting for someone, so I approached and introduced myself. In her talk, Randall had pondered the mysterious origin of the inflaton field, which I was glad to hear, as I was sitting there pondering it myself. The inflaton, in its false vacuum condition, was responsible for triggering inflation and spawning the large, uniform, star-speckled universe
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